The Home for Planners & Strategists
What is in APG Think Tank?
The clue is in the name. It’s the place on the APG site where we bring together all the precious bits of strategic learning that can help you navigate a tricky problem, give you fresh inspiration or just wake up your jaded planning brain when you need help but don’t know where else to go.
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To get a taster of how excellent these resources are for members, we’re giving you the chance to download one example of each for free. You’re welcome!’
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There are 3 main caches of knowledge and ideas:
1. APG Awards Papers
All the winning cases from the APG Creative Strategy Awards programme going back to its inception. These are invaluable to younger planners, people who are new to planning and strategy who want to learn creative strategy from the masters and strategists with loads of experience searching for a new way into an old or difficult problem. Each paper is the story of how creative strategic thinking helped build brands, turn around a business, or create a fundamental change of mood or opinion on an issue. They are packed with charts and graphs, insights and data points and fresh approaches to problems old and new. And they are highly readable and easy to access.
2. Top Talks, Video Lectures and Pieces of On-line Learning
We are lucky at the APG to draw on the willing help and inspiring ideas and thinking of some of the Greats of Planning and Strategy. During Covid we assembled a host of Top Talks on subjects as wide ranging as 'On-line Political Advertising' and 'What Planners can Learn from Boardgames'. We have subsequently added to these with more talks and training videos creating a huge array of topics and a cornucopia of helpful advice, useful tools and artful strategic habits that can help you up your game.
Watch Martin Beverley's Top Talk on tips and tricks for selling ideas and making them happen:
3. Top Models and Super Models
Top Models and Super Models are an incredibly rich resource created by Super Strategist Jon Leach. Jon is an expert in the use and interpretation of models of thinking drawn from marketing, consultancy and various communications disciplines. In a series of 23 essays, Jon outlines each model, shows how it evolved and how to use it. The essays are highly readable and interesting and all about how to use the particular model to aid your thinking. Each has multiple examples from the real life of a strategist working across PR, Brand, Advertising, Sports marketing and more.
Read Jon Leach's first Top Model:
This is the first in a smorgasbord of models and frameworks that we will lay before you over the coming weeks. Much like a good hotel, we hope to serve you up something fresh and tasty on most visits, although weekend service may be a little patchy...
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So rather than pontificate on what is a model, or a framework, and what makes a good one, let me introduce the series by placing before you a rough and ready model I created for a PR agency.
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It is merely an amuse bouche, a taster, a starter. Nothing grand. Nothing fancy. But kind of fun.
APG Think Tank is a resource for members only. If you would like to become a member just click here or contact molly@apg.org.uk