Russell Davies: no more mr late guy

Right, following my slipshod behaviour with the last two assignments it's time to get a little rigorous. I will post on the first of the month. Entries need to be in by the 15th. Feedback will be posted by the end of the month. Honest.

So this is Assignment 13. (I'm counting the 'tell the future thing' as number 12, which I still need to think about). This one's supposed to be a little more real-worldy. See what you think. Imagine you get this email from a senior management person at an agency where you work:

"Dear Planner,

How are you? Good. Anyway.

We have an important new business prospect coming in to see us in 15 days. They are a packaged goods company considering launching a range of eco-friendly cleaning and laundry products. Exactly what that means isn't clear yet. We're going to do all the usual creds and stuff. I'm taking care of this. Then they would like a 10 minute presentation on what we think the state of the market is in this country. This needs to cover - who are the most significant brands and competitors? what are the opportunities in the local market? what important things do they need to consider? You know the kind of thing - come up with some stuff to impress them. Don't worry about international considerations - just concentrate on this country, the one you live in.

As you know, since we spent all that money installing a marble floor in reception we now have no money to spend on any kind of market research or competitive information so you'll have to find all the information you need on the internet. And, I should point out that IT have informed me that email, phones, elevators and electric doors will be down for the next 15 days so there will be absolutely no opportunity for you to ask me any more questions on this project. This is the only information you will receive.

I know you'll enjoy rising to the challenge of this considerable opportunity, I look forward to seeing your thoughts when I'm presenting them to the client. Please bear in mind that if you blow this and fail to impress these people we'll probably have to fire 30 or 40 people.

Good luck"

Does that make sense? That's the assignment. If you'd like to take part please email me (russell at russelldavies.com) a PowerPoint document of 10 pages or less. No more than 3MB. Before 10pm (GMT) on February 15th. No extensions. No other formats will be accepted. 11 pages? Won't get marked. pdf? Won't get marked. 3.1MB? Won't get marked. Is that all clear? Remember to RTFQ. My plan, as part of the feedback process, is to round up some people and record a discussion of what they'd do when facing such a task. So that'll be interesting too.