Northern Planner

Really easy summer, fish, pasta

This perfect for summer, really quick so you won't miss much tennis. This is a doddle. It's really tasty and if you shut your eyes when you eat it, you'll think you're in the Mediterranean. And, in cash strapped times, really cheap.

For two people you'll need:

Two whole mackerel, filleted (any decent fish counter in a supermarket will do it)

Large glass of white wine

Handful of fresh parsley, or heaped teaspoon of dried

Small punnet of cherry tomatoes.

I large clove of garlic, chopped.

Big handful of dried spaghetti

Wrap the fish in foil, with a few sprinkle of parsley and half a glass of the white wine. Roast in the oven at 180 degrees c for 20 minutes.

Roast the cherry tomatoes in the oven at the same time, uncovered for and splashed with a little olive oil.

While they're roasting, finely chop the garlic and fresh parsley

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, in the spaghetti, make sure it's covered and cook until it's soft, but with a little bite left in. Should take ten minutes.

While it's boiling, in another pan, gently fry the garlic in olive oil, don't let it colour. When your whole kitchen smells of garlic, pour in the wine, turn up the heat, bring to boil and keep boiling until 1/3 of the liquid has evaporated,

Pasta should be ready now, drain away the water from the pan, pour in the garlicky wine, take the tomatoes and fish (remove the skin from the fish if you like) from the oven tip in the parsley.

Return the pan to the heat and stir like a madman for a minute, mashing at all together, coating the pasta - leaving a think, tasty sauce coating your spaghetti. Serve immediately with crusty bread and a glass of chilled white wine.

Enjoy!

Tip - tastes better outside.

Propositions 1

I thought it was time to get back to some planning craft stuff, it's been a while. Now we've done creative briefing already, but I thought it was worthwhile looking at propositions in more detail.

I think it's important because it's always the part of the brief the creative reads first - to the point where they'll read that, hopefully plow on ahead and only read the rest of your brief when they get stuck, or want to build on their initial ideas. Like it or not, it's the most important part of the creative brief.

It's also the most debated. How it should be written, how long it should be, how simple, how single minded, how open, how closed, ask four people in any agency and you'll probably get five answers.

One thing most will agree on is that there is a part of the brief that focuses all the other information into a simple statement. The role of that statement is the bit where the conflict comes in.

Many cling to what I believe to be an outdated view of advertising, based on 'information processing'. This still dominates most thinking about how ads work. Basically, it assumes we are all rational people, you can predict our behaviour and, as long as you give people the right (usually very rational) message, they'll behave, think, do what we want. The role for creativity and emotion supports the core message by making someone 'like' the advertising, while the advertising is most effective when it gets high attention and people think a lot about what you are saying.

Another way of looking at this is to focus on response rather than 'message'. I think this is a much more credible approach. It's not what advertising 'does' to people that matters, it's how they respond to the advertising. Long gone are the days when you could assume that a person was passive, rational receiver of information, ready to do or think what you say. People make a contribution to how communication is received. Let me explain:

Humans are influenced by subconscious perception, we like people without knowing why, we act on instinct way before we have time to think about it. Decisions are always influenced by feelings. In this sense, communication is continuing process of developing and modifying relationships through behaviour, not just 'words'. There are signals that are responded to without the person knowing, feelings, associations. At the moment of communication, HOW you say it is important as WHAT.

I'm not saying delivering facts or information is wrong. I am saying though, that advertising with no clear 'message' or 'benefit' is always right, in my view, quite rarely.

What I think this means for propositions is, firstly, that they are not the most important bit on the brief, whatever the habits of creatives. Tone and manner matter too - that's hard to get across in words when these things are, of course, intangible. So the briefing and the stimulus you provide really do matter.

Secondly, a simple sentence is good, but a proposition isn't necessarily a simple benefit or USP, it the one thing you need to communicate to reach the objective set for communications. That can be a lot of things.

Whatever you write should be interesting, true and shouldn't be an endline. Sources for it might be:

Product characteristics

Ways of using it

How it is made

Surprising things about who uses it, how they use it

Price characteristics

Product/brand heritage

Direct comparison with competitors

Picking new competitors

Philosophy of the company

They tend to be written as a statement, promise or observation, but should never be just information, it should be information that's relevant. Imagine telling someone your proposition in a pub, would they be interested.

You should already know your strategy, for example make people trust British Airways because of its scale.

So explore the product/brand truths - every year British Airways carries 12 million people

But then follow the argument through - every year BA carries 12 million people...to other people.

Then find the observation that brings all that to life, something that makes it human, emotional relevant and reflects tone of voice a little - BA brings more people together than any other airline.

I guess I mean push it. Whatever fact, benefit or observation you have, find the fact behind the fact, the benefit behind the benefit.

It's fast...it saves you time.......it saves you time......it gives you more time with your family.......it gives your family more time with you.

Polaroid lets you look at pictures just after you've taken them....everyone can look at the picture you've just taken.....polaroid isn't a camera it's social lubrication.

For brand usage - Eating Revels is a risky business

For target audience - Harvey Nichols is heaven for fashion addicts

Benefit - The new VW makes you feel safer than the average small car

Philosophy - Irn Bru is the maverick of soft drinks

Comparison- Umbro don't make leotards, they only make gear for football

Product usage - you either love or hate Marmite

                        Oasis is for people who hate water

Now, we could stop there, if we weren't going on to go about process. In fact, we will, I've run out of time. We'll go on to show how 'task' based propositions free up a different kind of work, a different kind of process and maybe lend themselves to the 'take-out' or 'emotional school of thought' a little better.

11 things I wish were not true but are

1. 30 years of sport leaves you with a variety of long term niggles that means you'll always be playing in pain
2. The gap between how you feel inside and how others view you widens as you get older, especially the young
3. This a recession that few are truly immune from
4. Speed bumps exist
5. Most people make their tea in the cup, not the pot
6. Most people couldn't give a monkey's about government and politics
7. I'm not a particle physicist
8. I'll never own my own seaside restaurant cafe stacked with books and regulars
9. I didn't work in advertising in the 1980's but if I met a me who was born 15 years earlier and had, I would detest him (only a few people know my potential for pretension and self delusion, and saved me way before it was too late)
10. My parents will live 6 hours drive away from their grand child
11. I'll never get to work in another country

The Matrix, disappointment and making the best of what you have

If you've seen the Matrix, and I presume you have, you'll be familiar with the moment Morpheus offers a choice of the red pill or the blue pill to Neo. The blue pill will result in forgetting the whole thing and going back to daily life, but the other offers the truth - no promises of happiness or anything else, just the truth.

As you know, he wakes up to find himself a human battery and the first words he hears are, "Welcome to the real world". The ultimate dose of reality, and yes it may be science fiction, but it's rooted in a deep truth about us humans that either makes disappointment and frustration inevitable, or keeps us sane and happy depending on your point of view.

We have all experienced moments of reality, that feeling of being jolted, like being slapped around the face with a wet fish, when something we strongly believed in, took for granted, or longed for is shredded before our eyes.

It can be all sorts of things, such as realising that somebody doesn't love you, that you will be made redundant, that the career you have built for all those years is not for you. It may be as profound as loved one dying, or realising that your parents are not perfect, it could be realising that you've run up too much debt on you credit card.

Seems to me that ad agencies will get one soon when they finally realise that they can't work the same way they have done. Clients see through the bollocks now, telly alone isn't good enough and the old brand models we're probably wrong and certainly don't work now.

Probably, ivory tower creatives will get a shock when the molly coddling ends.

God knows, we're getting one at the moment with a worldwide recession. Even for the lucky ones who's income and mental health remain OK, you wonder how much self indulgence and 'have it now' culture has been given a rude awakening.

Every now and then, we are given the red pill, irrespective of whether we want it or not.

How does this happen? Why are these things such a shock? They happen all the time, to lots of people and even if they've happened to us before, and why are we are still bemused when they happen again?

I think it's because we con ourselves. This happens in so many ways.

Firstly, we're incedibly good at post rationalization. After the event, we convine ourselves that things didn't happen as they actually did, usually making ourselves come out a lot better than we should. You were not happy with the partner that dumped you anyway and you never were, someone else was to blame for that disaster at work, I wasn't sacked for being useless it was politics, my point at that meeting was clear but no one wanted to listen. So we don't learn from our mistakes and are doomed to repeat them.

Deep down, we know a relationship isn't working, we know when our job isn't going well, we know we'll never be a film star, we know we'll never go home with the prom queen, we know how much money we need to spend. But we're constantly post rationalizing every situation, or skewing our knowledge of the future to fit what we want to believe.

So when we're dumped, demoted, sacked, find we can't pay the bills or amazed we're going home alone, what we should have prepared for as inevitable, we see as bad luck, unfair or punishment from the fates.

You could argue this is a good thing, it protects us from feeling too bad it stops our confidence being shot forever, or you could argue it stops you understanding your reality a little better and living a happier life in the future.

This curious optimism appears in other ways. In western society a, largely wrong, belief that humans exist as individuals enables us to believe that terrible things that happen won't happen to us. We won't ever get divorced, we won't work in a recession, we'll succeed where others have not. All because, despite the experiences of others showing otherwise, we believe we're different, so it won't happen to us. Despite the fact we're 99.9% the same as every other human being in the world.

This optimism means we're not so good at recognising luck. When good things happen, it was down to us, rather than the truth that fortune affects everything. In Outliers, Gladwell shows that even world famous geniuses got lucky. We only seem to believe in bad luck, when something bad happens we take it much harder because it isn't balanced by us recognising good fortune.

We're always going to get a dose of the red pill, but the more we can prepare for it by understanding that things just happen - it's the way of the world, the better.

I don't mean just accepting your fate, I mean be realistic about it. There's plenty of room for optimism, but it needs to be based on a true picture of what we're like and what we can do, forcing ourselves to learn from what happens to us, rather than post rationalizing events. We're all great in our own way, we all have chronic faults. I don't think we would be happier by being less optimistic,I do think we would be better off understanding and appreciating our true selves, making the very best we can of what we have.

I'm back

On holiday for a week. Byeeee.

What have they done to my beloved Yorkshire Tea?

New telly ad here. What do you reckon?

Brands = good

To fill the thick silence between people who have only just met there is often the most dreaded question in small talk:

"So what do you do?"

If you work in advertising, this question is to be dreaded. You'll get:

1.The armchair creative geniuses who love to pound you with reasons why they don't make any decent any ads any more ("What was that gorilla all about?"), before unleashing their own gems that will re-write the creative lexicon.

2. The (wrongly) envious, bored jobsworth who refuses to believe you don't enjoy a swanky, overpaid lark for layabouts while coked up to the eyeballs.

3. It's this one I'd like to draw your attention to. The 'no logo' protagonist. You know, the one who believes advertising is an evil capitalist conspiracy, hoodwinking defenseless people into buying things they don't need, that brands are evil and represent everything that is wrong with capitalism. And cannot resist letting you know.

Now, before I go further, I totally agree that capitalism needs to take a long, hard, look at itself. If the mess we're in right now proves anything, it proves that. 

But advertising and 'brands' isn't simply about making people want things they don't need. It's everywhere and it always was. Information to help people make informed decisions has always been important. We wear wedding rings to advertise our unavailability, we wear religious symbols like the cross to communicate our beliefs and let others identify with us, or modify their behaviour. Clothes code all sorts of messages for us, what group we belong to, availability, mood and even rebellion.

Now of course, the easy response to this is that straightforward information isn't the same as artful persuasion intended to make us do things and think things. I say there isn't anything more carefully calculated and well executed as religious propaganda. But then there's personal propaganda too. A push up bra greatly distorts the truth and could be construed as false advertising (yes I know women dress for themselves a lot, but sometimes they really don't).

And what's the difference between a well crafted headline and the witty market stall patter?

Amazingly, within the same breath, there will be depictions of the brand alchemist, a terrifying magician capable of incredible feats of manipulation, followed by assertions that it's mostly an annoying waste of time.

The thing is, it mostly is isn't it. The public doesn't care about advertising, they don't lay awake at night thinking about brands. Nor should they. Most brand communication is annoying, crass and just not very good and doesn't really work.

But some do of course, very well. But we're making far too much stuff, we're buying far too much stuff and there's too much choice, we need a guide through the clutter. Without all this choice, brands and their communications help us navigate on our own terms.

Now we could do away with the choice, but the economy would grind to halt. If there was just one choice for everything, the jobs would disappear very quickly.

Even if we could find a way to just make one of everything and still make sure everyone is fed watered and have all their needs taken care of, I don't believe that's enough. We need novelty, we like choice, we want ways of both belonging and expressing who we are.

Many science fiction films depict humans eating food concentrates -convenient, simple and reliable. But no would want that, food is so much more than fuel. It's tasty, congregation, fun, novelty, surprise, discovery, indulgence. We don't need it to be that way, we WANT it to be.

We don't need sex (how often in your life have you only had sex to reproduce?), telly, more than a few clothes, sport, holidays, reading.

We could just go back in caves and hunt, but that's not fun, it's also bloody hard. Where's the play? Where's the joy?

We need brands and advertising because we NEED the things we DON'T NEED. It's the same joy as finding the perfect black dress, playing your favourite song (we don't need music either) or arriving in a new country for the first time. We need novelty, we need to dream.

Like we need people who are more glamorous than we are, like monarchs and aristocrats in the old days or film stars now, we want a release from the realities, the banality of everyday life, some magic dust spread over the humdrum.

If it's not brands, it would be something else. It still is... religion, sport all pointless, but very necessary releases from the reality of life. Life can never be perfect, so we all need to dream. Brands are a part of that. This. Is. A. Good. Thing.

Final point. Belonging, self expression, play they are all basic human needs. We all need to both discover who we are, express it and belong to communities who share our beliefs and interests. That's prettymuch what brands do for us, they both help us find who we are and demonstrate it.

By the way, don't worry, I don't bore people with this when they ask me what I do, I just try and explain what a planner does. The conversation tends to move on very quickly... 

Account Planning School of the Web results are in

Rob Campbell's posted the results to the Account Planning School of the Web. You should read it because:

The submissions are really good.

The advice from the reboubtable Mr C is useful to all.

Rob's a bald planner like me (but considerably more succesful).

Tea Appreciation Society

 

I will be of litte surprise to you that I bought this t-shirt. Naturally I'm a member of the Tea-Appreciation Society. Everything I love about the sacred brew and other stuff too. Lovely (as I'm writing this, I'm pouring my second cup of Earl Grey/English Breakfast blended in a warmed pot).

Sitting comfortably?

You won't be after reading this.

What is your dangerous idea?

The Edge Questionnaire asked in 2006, 'What is your dangerous idea?'. Something dangerous not because it's false, but because it might be true. It was posed to the worlds best thinkers, ergo not to the likes of me. Nevertheless, here's some dangerous ideas, not completely things I've thought of (as if!) but things I think about don't always say in certain company. What are yours? 

1. The world would be better run by women. They have a natural impulse to navigate life through building relationships, empathy and strengthening connections, rather than the male imperative for hierarchy and winning.

2. Fashion is good thing. It isn't a way to con women (or men for that matter) into feeling bad about themselves by spending a fortune on unattainable images, it's a source of profound pleasure and adventure, an escape from the humdrum of everyday life.

3. It just isn't possible for every to eat organic, free range, non-GM pure, fresh locally sourced food. Without mass production and science, even more people would go hungry than now. Either we turn back the clock, going back to much smaller populations living like they did decades ago or we look to strike a correct balance between nature and science.

4. Advertising in a paid for space is still the most effective way to persuade lots of people to become loyal to a brand. Brands are not important enough in our lives to make us want to spend lots of time with them.

5. It's true that old style advertising dinosaurs could learn a thing or two from the digital brigade, but that goes the other way too. 25years ago, ad agencies made a fortune because clients didn't really know what they did. It was easy too thanks to the hegemony of ITV. It's like that now with digital. There are some brilliant practitioners our there, who graft at finding good ideas that will work. Then there are the charlatans that blind others with jargon and get away with murder. For now, others don't quite understand the technicalities of what they do, but when they catch up, things will change.

6. Every agency and client should do a job swap once a year. Both would respect each other more for doing something the other cannot and wouldn't want to. The agency people be refreshed from the short hours, but glad to escape the boredom. The client would come back to the dayjob shattered, glad to escape the relentless pace and chaos, really pissed off at cancelling things at someone else's whim. The agency people would then appreciate that the client has their own internal clients and has to justify everything they do. The client people would be a little more patient, take more care to ask for what they actually want and less inclined to make impossible demands.

Baby Northern Update

You may have noticed me mention I'm an expectant father.

Baby Northern is now the size of a cantaloupe melon. The little blighter is moving, eyes are virtually fully formed beneath eyelids that won't open just yet. Not long until October 11th, our due date.

Funny how it changes how I feel inside already, the job has become at once less and more important.

Less because I already know I'll resent anything that gets in the way of being home for bath time, generating market share growth or shifting perceptions just won't match seeing the first smile. Right now, nothing's more important than making sure a tired, hormonal Mrs Northern is okay.

It's bloody, massively more important than ever because I'm already stopping wanting things for myself and realised  a, slightly cavalier attitude towards life will no longer cut it. I don't want my baby to want for anything (although in a grumpy, Northern way, he/she won't be spoiled either).

I just can't wait though, thinking about all the things we're going to do together. Hours spent in the kitchen cooking and baking stuff, tennis lessons, the fun we'll have going swimming (God help me if we have another good swimmer on our hands, transport to 5am training sessions and then a full day's work is a little scary), staying with Grandma and Grandad in Cornwall - digging in the sand, rowing in dingy and playing in the waves.

Not long, not long.

Top 10 favourite ads

Considering this blog is at least a little bit about advertising I've just realised how odd it is that I've never posted about favourite ads. I avoid talking about other people's work if I can help it, without knowing the background, who really made the decisions and what the objectives were I don't think it's fair.

Can't resist posting my Top 10. This is as a human being by the way, not a planner, this is just stuff that affected me, that I remembered or I just liked.

1. This Nike tennis ad from the 1980's captured everything a teenager who hated being told to wear white, leave the court when the senior joined up....felt about the whole stuffy air of tennis - I just wanted to play. This ad made me a fan of Nike for life.

2. There's a pattern here, but Levi's Drugstore commercial captured a natural feeling of teenage rebellion, not to mention that fear a teenage boy has of a girl's father who knows perfectly well what you want to do to her. At the time I thought this was so clever. Don't ever try and tell me you cannot do product attribute in an interesting way.

3. Nike Hurt (sorry it's Nike again). This actually made me miss being  a proper athlete, training so hard I threw up, rage at losing races I should have lost, daily agony getting up at dawn. There's an intense joy in pain and failure that is very much a part of real sport and life too to be honest.

4. This Irn Bru ad was so funny at the time -poking fun at virtually every soft drinks ad of the time, imported from America with fake, unnatainable images of a teenage world where dating was easy and you always got the prom Queen. It even managed to keep the long running advertising conceit that Irn Bru made you hard/was for tough people.

5. I hate Tesco's now. I hate their size and their relentless march towards a UK with no wrinkles or bumps. But I loved them back in the 1980's when the Dudley Moore commercials ran. Really funny, witty and every commercial told you something about what they sold you didn't know before all on a premise that he was searching for some free range chickens. I didn't care then though, Mum did the shopping. I just liked them.

6. The Old 'Papa' Nicole Renault Clio commercials were great, but I remember the surprise and delight of Vic and Bob in the final one, I loved them, I loved the Graduate so I loved this.

7. Smash speaks for itself. Genius.

8. More recently, I love everything that Lurpak does. I'm a pretentious foodie who bought Flora now and again, Lurpak made me totally loyal. I knew what they were doing and I still couldn't help it. This Lurpak lighter ad says everthing I believe about healthy eating and fad dieting.

9. This is the best Cinzano ad. Followed a series of Leonard Rossiter constantly spilling his drink over Joan Collin's breasts. This couldn't have been made without casting these two, shows how well celebrities work if you use them right.

10. As an overly ironic, seventies/eighties nostalgic loving grown -up (ish) I'm going to cheat and pick two for number 10. The first is Orange's Darth Vader commercial, simply because it's ironically funny and it has Star Wars in. The second is this Old Spice re-launch - I'm at that grumpy age when I agree you can't do without experience and it's so funny (and I'm old enough to admit that Duran Duran were quite good at times).

This list would be very different if it was based on craft or a great strategy, but since I've loved and remember all of these beyond all reason, I would argue they must have both been pretty good.

State of play and proper writing

I went to see State of Play last night, which was very, very good. You may or may not remember the original series but I thought it did it justice.

They've added an extra dimension with a newspaper struggling in the face of online and an experienced journalist less that complimentary towards bloggers. Towards the end, the film makes the point that you cannot really do without what proper investigative journalists do - both the rigour and the checks and balances against government's authorities, business and whatever else.

I think they've got a point. Rampant gossip, hearsay and assertion all have their place, and I know a big proportion of print journalism is total bollocks, but the world would be a worse place without those people who insist on looking for and writing about the things others would rather they didn't.

I hope there's always a place for proper craft.

Things I believe but cannot prove:

1. We're having a girl

2. The Smiths are better than BoneyM

3. Solar power will become the answer to the energy crisis, suddenly making poorer, desert countries, with lots space for massive panels in demand

4. Prince has one more great album left to make

5. You get further by being nice, it just takes longer

6. Enough of us will watch the endless re-runs of the Top 100 ads programmes and go back to making more ads with story, drama and even jingles

7. As the people with money in culture become increasingly older, the profile for agency staff will eventually follow

8. Creatives will get found out

9. Leeds United will get back in the premiership

10. Everything's going to be fine

What social networking has to do with going on the pull

What follows is stories of blokes trying to attract women. Both come from my time as a student. Both have something to tell us about brands and social networks.

The first concerns me, or the me I was back then. Shy, odd, and wonky (no change today). Fortunately, one of my best friends happened to be a girl who both both funny and cool. We used to go out a lot and I was even invited on girls' nights out.

What a revelation. There was none of the natural one-upmanship that typifies young men, none of the false bravado, you could talk about all sorts of stuff you couldn't with the lads. At that age, girls tend to be far more interesting than boys. A little more grown up, a lot less led by base desires.

Amazingly, there began some success with girls she knew and a little more from strangers. They even came up and talked to me, escaping the horrors of making a first move. The secret? Simple. Girls seeing boys around girls decide your 'endorsed', you must be OK if women in general like your company. You're 'let in'. This was no cunning stratagem devised by a dark mind, just happy accident, Every now and then, nice things happen to shy people. 

The next concerns someone I used to work with at a nightclub, where I earned precious beer money. This dashing fellow was something of a player. Confident, good looking, never short of something to say, he was funny if a little arrogant.

For two weeks, he was given the job of checking on the women's toilets. The girl that usually did it was away. He jumped at the chance, believing this was a goldmine to chat up all the lovelies just waiting to swoon at his unquestionable charm and dark good looks.

After two nights he begged for someone else to do it. His success was less than he had envisaged; not only did suffer zero pulling success, he was soundly abused, verbally and physically. Girls simply hated a bloke in their territory, where they re-applied war paint, swapped gossip and (still don't know why) went to the loo together.

So what's this got to do with brands and social networks? The breath- takingly tenuous link is the laziness, nay, arrogance of brands expecting something for nothing.

There is still an amazing contingent and marketing and creative types that believes it's easy to get people doing marketing for them for free, that the newly web enabled consumer (don't yu hate that word!) is impatiently waiting for them to turn up on Facebook with all sorts of spurious groups, apparently they're all salivating at the prospect of co-creating all sorts of stuff with brands, itching to tell all their friends how shiny and perfect the latest washing powder is.

But just like my colleague in the women's toilets, the breathtaking of trying to infiltrate and interrupt their territory with nothing if value, the hubris of expecting anyone to even pay attention, let alone even bother to get angry gets you nowhere. There is maybe a tiny minority of brands with fans who may do this, but they're incredibly rare.

If you want people to join in, or pass things on,you can't get away from creating something interesting, useful and rewarding. Seed it in the right places by all means, but if you're not creating anything of value, don't expect to generate anything of value. In other words, it doesn't matter if you're creating telly ads or something online, you can't get away with being lazy. Worse than being abused, you'll just get ignored.

Which brings me back to my limited success with student girls. If you make the effort to win genuine acceptance, don't pretend to be something you're not, good things can happen, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Seafood linguine

I spent most of myweekend on the sofa, moaning about being ill. Despite this, along with missing a golfing for idiots session with friends (just call me Jim Hacker) and following drinking activities, it didn't turn out that bad. I got to cook some good stuff.

Mrs Northern was out, so I was able to make something something that's banned usually - seafood linguine. It's off the menu because she's pregnant, making shellfish a no-no and as far as I'm concerned, it needs a stinging dose of chilli.

Here's a very, simple version, takes 10 minutes. It's nowhere near the classic version, but it's simple and very tasty.

You'll need:

1 glass of dry white wine

Small carton of tomato passata

1 garlic glove, finely chopped

A good handful of cooked mussels

A good handful of cooked prawns

A good handful of cooked squid

Packet of linguine

Glug of olive oil

Two teaspoons of dried chilli

Teaspoon of dried parsley

Pinch of sugar

In a pan, ggently fry the garlic in the olive oil. Don't let it colour. You know it's ready when you can start to smell it. Pour in the white wine and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and add the passata, chilli and parsley.

In another, big  pan, fill it two third with water and start bringing to the boil.

Then turn up the heat on the sauce and bring to the boil. Once boiling, turn right down to simmer and add all the fish. This will gently warm the fish through.

Once the water is boiling properly, cook the half the packet of pasta, should take ten minutes. Drain, return to the pan, add the sauce, whack the heat right up until the sauce starts boiling again, stirring it all the time.

Then you're done. Serve with crusty bread. If anyone likes it hotter, more chilli sprinkled on works a treat.

That's it, easy.

Here's to the juniors

There's two juniors planners where I work, Dave (Dave Mortimer younger sibling of Famous Rob) and Martin. I'm not sure I like the term 'junior' planner, your either planner or not, some have done it for a little longer, that's all..but there you go.

Poor Dave get's quite a bit of grief from me. On his paleness, horrific diet, lesbian haircut and interesting taste in cardigans, but to be fair he gives it back in equal measure. He even stole someone's last biscuit and distributed the crumbs all over my chair, a la Gollum.

Martin escapes the bulk of this so called banter, purely down to the face he doesn't sit opposite me. That said, I think I've succeeded in giving him a complex about his newly beardless demeanor, and how it makes him look taller. Aaaaanywaaaayy........

Of course it's nice to have juniors around, they do some of the jobs you hate. Even better, they're great people to talk to about ideas and thorny little problems. If you want a sense check, talk to someone who hasn't learned to be set in their ways yet. They haven't got an axe to grind or developed their own 'schtick' yet.

I've also found I really like mentoring. I use the word cautiously, it suggests arrogantly knowing better and telling others how it is. That really isn't the case. Having to explain things in more detail than youwould otherwise forces you to question your own practices. Relinquishing control a little bit and letting others get on with gradually more and more forces you to organise yourself better. And best of all, they end up teaching you stuff, how not to get set in your ways, how to use Tumblr. They'ev read stuff you haven't come across, met and done things you haven't.

There's also a real joy in passing on the things you've learned. I don't mean planning craft and al that gubbins, more things you've learned from having been around a little longer. Sometimes small, commonsensical things, sometimes things a little bigger. There's that responsibility of judging when to tell, when to suggest and when you should let someone learn from their mistakes.

Best of all, there's the thrill of seeing them flourish, find their stride and 'become' (and the worry that soon you'll be obsolete).

But, above and beyond that, there's the satisfaction of showing them how to make tea properly and always getting a decent mug poured straight from the pot.

That said, Dave gets very shirty when it's a coffee round and he gets left out (he hates coffee).

Harder is better

As you may have noticed, I've much of life has involved sport and swimming in particular. Much of who I am is because of the pain, joy, disappointment, surprise, setbacks, victories, exhilaration and challenge of being a serious athlete.

But it never came easily as a young junior. There were others who didn't have to work at it, they had perfectly natural strokes and didn't have to train very hard. It wasn't fair, but I got a lot of silvers, more bronzes and only a few golds at first, mostly by working harder than boys, yet losing to others who seemed to get there by doing nothing.

But something happened when we became teenagers. We had all sorts of growth funny growth spurts in all sorts of funny places. Boys who had been relative midgets suddenly towered over their peers, those who had been naturally bigger than others found themselves looking at other lads for the first time. We were little hormonal hurricanes.

I was lucky enough to be one of those who suddenly turned into a little teenage mountain. Clothes didn't fit, one arm was stronger than the other, I went from fly half to prop at rugby. I got big.

Almost overnight, my times in the pool got quicker. Demon fast. There is a point in swimming race for juniors when you hit wall, the arms turn to lead, you have no breath left in your lungs and it's a matter if surviving the final few meters. This point got closer and closer to the finish. Suddenly, when it came I was able to look inside, see what was there and find another gear. There's quite like it, thinking there's nothing more to give and discovering more there than you ever dreamed.

Many of the boys who had it easy before didn't know what to do. They'd never suffered losing before, they'd never had to really work for it. They gave up, they didn't know how to fight, had no idea what pushing themselves really meant. There was no patience for training longer and harder, no will. Those of us who were used to struggle never slacked off, even  when the growth spurts evened out a bit we kept on fighting, we didn't know any other way.

You see, sometimes, the worst thing that can happen to you is to be supernaturally gifted. You haven't had the chance to learn from failing, you haven't really found out all that you are. Eventually, someone always comes along more gifted, or more beautiful and you simply don't know how to respond. When it comes down to the wire, you choke never having to really compete before. You find it harder to come back from losing.

I sometimes think planning and creative is like that too. There are some very lucky people for whom ideas come easily. Sorry for aligning creative with planning, but in the end, both are about having ideas. Ideas have never come easy for me, I have to work that little bit harder. I came later to this and in the back of my mind there's always the fear that I don't deserve this job, should have stayed a suit. It's irrational (I hope), but I don't mind, makes me work that little bit harder.

I never fear the blank creative brief or the new project, even when nothing's coming, when it all doesn't make sense yet. I wonder how others, for whom ideas come easily, react when the well suddenly runs dry. It always does you know, no matter who you are, sometimes you get a mental block, you can't get anywhere, nothing comes.

If you're used to having to chip away at the rock to find the vein of gold, you just chip another way, you're used to having to slave to find it. But if you're used to having that gold just magically appear, what do you then?