tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70817122715849514072011-07-31T04:42:03.270+01:00Planning is fun, isn't it? It should be. This is a celebration of all the glorious adventures, the experiments, the utter cultural smash-and-grab that good planning brings to life.Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.comBlogger161100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-5379003995014817932010-05-06T13:43:00.000+01:002010-05-06T13:43:11.097+01:00

So, it's finally Polling Day, and about time too. I tell you, if we didn't have this every four years I don't know how I'd satisfy my putting-crosses-in-boxes proclivity. This time around, I was up at 5am in South-West London to play direct mail boy for the Lib Dems, and it was pretty enlightening. Great fun too. (and I have to say in passing that the feeling I got from having helped out was

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-54456715272963626242010-02-18T15:12:00.000Z2010-02-18T15:12:26.704Z

The following is a continuation of my behind the scenes One&Other story from last week. Sorry it took so long. What do people like? Do they like your thing, that thing you do? What are they prepared to do to get it? Do they like you? These are the main questions of marketing, really. If we knew exactly what people wanted - and believe me, they often don't know themselves - then we'd know

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-16765509883340767632010-02-11T17:37:00.000Z2010-02-11T17:37:11.909Z

When we try and talk to someone, how often do we consider what they're willing to hear? Last summer, I was part of officially the UK's Most Indulgent Event: Anthony Gormley's One&Other. 2,400 people stood on a bit of brick in Trafalgar Square, and a nation had the word 'plinth' on its lips for probably the only time, ever. It was gloriously cringe-y, trashy, serious, ridiculous. But was it art?

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-50564310567353493602010-01-19T13:25:00.000Z2010-01-19T13:25:36.507Z

Well, not as such. Let's call it applied empathy. A great passage from Hey Whipple, including a piece from one of my luminaries, Howard Luck Gossage. It's this kind of human understanding that underpins any good communication, personal or corporate. Except for the handful I see in the One Show every year, most billboards are mediocre or bad. When an ad in a magazine sucks, I can turn the page.

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-60114676150860064412010-01-18T12:44:00.000Z2010-01-18T12:44:43.567Z

I read with passing interest (read: loathing) the swirl of speculation and gossip surrounding last night's Golden Globes. What was more interesting was the slew of new information about this year's Summer Blockbusters. Odeon are warming my seat already. Read on... The Road: Billed as the ultimate vision of a bleak, nightmarish future without purpose, without hope, this docu-drama into the

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-6456824490032406902010-01-07T15:38:00.001Z2010-01-07T18:43:39.508Z

So here's a difficult one. The internet, that Janus-faced mistress, has thrown up two completely contradictory philosophies in 2009. It won't take a lot of editorialising to work out what I'm getting at: Heads: Apps. Crowdsourcing. Blogging. 'Beta' as a positive state. Projects like Platform. Threadless. Personal data visualisers, like ManyEyes. A Battle Of Big Thinking winner espousing 'Brand

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-17100504081031069642009-12-09T09:49:00.000Z2009-12-09T09:49:17.411Z

There is a phrase now: Digital Native. It's a funny one. It implies that you can somehow gain citizenry of the magical land called Internet. But think about it - the youngest person in the biz will be, what, 18 now, and if they're lucky they might have been introduced to the internet in 2000-ish, at about the age of 9. That is not native. Childrens' dialect, accent etc. are often fully

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-4733141371628323172009-11-27T16:15:00.002Z2010-01-07T13:11:44.100Z

What a day. The APG's Battle of Big Thinking had joy, tears, insight, and that fizzy water that nobody likes but still shows up all the time at these kinds of things. And what a joy to see big brains (and hearts too) running free and happy. Every slot had a different appeal, but the true standouts seemed to be (with a couple of examples but there are many, many more) people who gave us a new

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-65551807978505607512009-11-22T22:14:00.000Z2009-11-22T22:14:13.934Z

I am in the APG's Battle Of Big Thinking on Thursday - in the open section, the one where you get three minutes to, I don't know, invent the next internet on stage or something. I sent in a submission that I thought was pretty gutsy and clever at the time but it's getting hard to substantiate and illustrate without looking really contrived. But then, is that not the pitch process in a nutshell?

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-92187778960306337702009-11-13T17:50:00.000Z2009-11-13T17:50:33.702Z

Author’s Note: I actually really really love the following things: Freedom. Bravery. Charity. The idea that people can feel so strongly about their ideals that they’ll die for them, and for each other. I also happen to love good ideas. So I hope you’ll take the following thoughts in the spirit in which they’re written. Once a year, this country becomes reacquainted with one of the most powerful

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-21418044354603407652009-11-01T22:15:00.000Z2009-11-01T22:15:27.387Z

So the Campbell Lace Beta competition vote (that's it, there) is well underway - but for me, the term 'well' is misleading: oh :( and I was totally optimistic, too. Well, it looks like that's most probably that then. Who knows what went wrong: entered too late, incredibly long to the point of being unreadable, just plain bad. The point is that I enjoyed it, a lot. II found myself typing and

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-10777444429094376402009-10-30T09:26:00.000Z2009-10-30T09:26:41.850Z

By now, you might have seen this. Here's the backstory as to how such craziness came about: The Campbell Lace Beta blog (via Campaign Live) are running a competition this month: to get things going again and to celebrate our good fortune so far we're going to give a prize of £1000 to the most interesting, amusing, useful, useless, outrageous comment posted on our blog during the month of

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-19656350474241510332009-10-28T15:30:00.000Z2009-10-28T15:30:28.749Z

Congratulations, Will! Winner of the first "Tell Me What To Blog", Will (curator of Confessions Of A Wannabe Advertising Man and the formidable Adgrads) asked a real doozy: James, how do you think laterally? I want you to describe your thought process, and the feeling you have when you think you've cracked it. What does it feel like?  Well yeah, how can I not fall for a bait question like "How

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-51305371902511112512009-10-21T17:13:00.000+01:002009-10-21T17:13:11.599+01:00

So, have you heard of this thing? This new thing? Behavioural Economics, they call it. Because up until now, economics wasn't really concerned with human behaviour.Did you think that was a joke? I'm afraid it wasn't. I wasn't there, but I'm told that for the last - well, ever - economics has run on the principle of Rational Man, that is to say that any person will, without fail, use rational

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-20258181984387990302009-10-20T16:29:00.000+01:002009-10-20T16:29:57.961+01:00

In which we draw parallels between medieval society and twitter's new 'mob mentality'. Last Saturday saw me in Hailsham for their annual Bonfire Night. "But James," you protest, "Bonfire Night is on the fifth of November. Don't you remember, remember?"  While that was a very witty thing of you to say, you are in fact wrong here. For reasons best known to the people who live there, Sussex is

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7081712271584951407.post-50393799588301405672009-10-16T14:45:00.000+01:002009-10-16T14:45:11.953+01:00

Hey! Welcome to this brand new thing. It's not that new, not really. I've thought about it for ages, but it didn't have a name 'til recently. Let me try and explain what's going to happen here. What is planning, really? Technically, John Steel describes it as being the voice of the consumer. That's nice, and it's definitely a way to make you feel good about your job. Sneaky suits hoodwink the

Jamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561744141903668309noreply@blogger.com4