Russell Davies

fat controlling

Great excitement in the house today. We got an email from Sir Topham Hatt. We're going to the Thomas The Tank Engine 60th birthday celebrations in a week or so and The Fat Controller himself emailled us with suggestions for the day. More brands should have fictional characters who can email you and cause this much excitement.

out late

My mate Ben took me to see The Chemical Brothers last night. fantastic to see that the Great British public are rejecting all this nonsense about dance being 'over'. The place was packed.

I always like the desultory dancing acts like The Brothers Chemical do - especially when they raise a single arm like a platform inspector announcing the departure of a drum pattern.

the force is strong in this one

more

Be The Planner

Most of the emails I get about this site are people asking how to get into planning. Which just goes to show how fascinating all my pictures of Arthur are. So in a bid to offer a little bit of public service, I'm going to share some thoughts about that. And then hopefully other planners will add their thoughts too and the world of the would-be planner will be immeasurably improved.

I'm going to start with what kind of person you need to be, to be a good planner. This is about temperament, rather than skills. And, NB, its based on my own peculiar view of the world.

1. You Need To Be Interesting

Which means someone who's Interested in stuff. Planners tend not to have much power. They have influence. They're often competing for attention - of their clients or of the creative people - the best way to win that attention is to be interesting. So you need to be good at presenting, talking, listening, writing and you need to be interested in what you're doing.

2. You Need To Be Broad

See Creative Generalist. Planning is, for the most part, not about originality or startling creative breakthroughs. It's about making connections between seemingly un-connected stuff. Or taking lessons from one category to another. You need to be able to get interested in, and up-to-speed with all sorts of odd things, pretty quickly. Yellow fats one day, mobile telephony the next. All the time being able to talk about top directors and photographers. And exciting new regression analysis tools. And you should want to read the HBR, Blueprint, Heat and The Beano. You need to be numerate, literate and visually competent. You need to be happy to talk to all kinds of people about all kinds of things. (This is where I fall down. I'm too shy to be a good researcher.)

3. You Need An Enthusiasm For Brands And Communications And Advertising And That.

Yes, lots of your friends think brands suck and are manipulative and are ruining the world. If you think that, then a) you're mostly wrong and b) you probably shouldn't be a planner. If you think they're just trivial in the larger scheme of things, then a) you're mostly right and b) you probably shouldn't be a planner.

4. You Need To Be Happy Not To Be The Hero

Planners don't do much on their own. They're always part of a team. The clients build the brand. The creatives make the ads (or whatever). Account management have the power. You're always part of a process - never at the end of it. So you have to be comfortable with never being the hero; never being the striker. The best you can hope for is mid-field general. If you want to be a hero you have to sublimate it into something else, like starting your own blog.

Anyone got anything else to add?

Next time I'll get to skills. And then talk about the good and bad bits about the job.

account planning
brands
advertising

baton down the hatches

things has passed the musical baton, which has made me anxious, because I'm not sure I know five people to pass it too, but I'll worry about that later.

Total volume of music on my computer: 41.85 GB representing 7264 songs, most of which I don't like, according to my ipod shuffle behaviour. I'm always shuffling, never listening. There's probably that much again on vinyl. And I seem to like that stuff a lot more. Perhaps it's just because there's not a convenient shuffle button on a turntable.

The last CD I bought Billy Crystal presents The Milt Gabler story. Fantastic.

Song playing right now: You're In A Bad Way by Saint Etienne. (From Smash The System, Singles And More)

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

ABC: The Look of Love
Genesis: Supper's Ready (live from Seconds Out)
Major Force: Return Of The Original Art Form
The Carpenters: Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Trouble Funk: Drop The Bomb

Five people to whom I'm passing the baton: Richard, Anne, Gareth, Dave and Sergio.

soft play, vader cake, birthday

Arthur's 5th birthday party today. 5. Already. Blimey. In a big church-hall-like place with lots of big soft-play things. Soft play is a one of those things that's better than it used to be. We didn't have soft play when I was 5, just hard play.

Even at a party for 5-year olds, I end up in the kitchen. Beyond the counter and the parents you can see The Great Custardo working his magic on the kids. A top man. The children adored him.

The Vader cake. This was Sainsbury's response to the Star Wars cake dilemma. We're going to try making a Millennium Falcon cake next week.

You can guess what he's wishing for.

28 channels

Is this getting boring yet? More hotel television - the Crowne Plaza, Schipol.

fun at Schiphol

I'm a big fan of Schiphol. Though I'm there too much at the moment.

This is a Kodak printing machine at the airport. It sits in the corner and intices you with its cheery voice. It even tells you to 'share and enjoy'. Just like a product of the Sirus Cybernetics Corporation.

They have a nice museum, with work from Mondrian and De Stijl.

And who would expect an airport to use words like Meditation and Comfort?

This little WiFi station's nice too. Like an old-fashioned cafe table.

24 channels

More hotel television. You can tell I've been traveling too much recently. This time pictures from the Hotel Jan Tabak, Amsterdam

I have seen the future and it's Dutch

I'm sitting blogging at Schipol, killing time donated to me by a delayed KLM flight.

I've just used the extra time to sign-up for the Privium programme which is a marvel of the future.

It's an iris scanner and card-reader thing which allows you to bypass passport control and sail past your fellow passengers, who all think you're some kind of James Bond. Incredibly swift and efficient and easy to use. If this is the future in DavidBlunkettLand then sign me up. I'd love to pay for the bus via an iris scanner which automatically debits my GovCreds account. And so what if they were continually monitoring me, at least then they might be able to tell me where I dropped my keys.