The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

The English look down on the Welsh.

The French look down on everyone.

Obviously there’s no justification for these views, it’s all based on childish stereotypes, designed to create a sense of [misguided] superiority to hide the fact they’re no where near as good as they want to be or expected to be.

Of course this attitude is not unique to cultures, we see it everywhere and just recently, I saw another pathetic example of it … The 10 Worst People In Digital Media.

Basically it’s a massive diatribe against the ‘old’.

Those individuals who are out-of-date & out-of-touch simply because they need more than 23 candles on their next birthday cake.

Where achievement and attitude counts for absolutely nothing, because the general consensus is that if you can remember the World before the internet, you should go the way of the dinosaur.

Oh but hang on, it’s not all ageist, there’s a bit of cultural & discipline cliche in there too.

What’s this? An ode against the British Planner … especially those who ‘blog too much’.

“The Brits invented planning, so every planning department in New York (and beyond) needs at least one, it seems. The reason for this is simple: To Americans, they sound smart, even if they’re spouting absolute bullshit. The British planner is typically someone who did a bit of graduate studies and fancies himself a quasi-academic at heart. His presentations – sorry, decks – are filled with random examples of “the sharing economy.” And Marshall McLuhan references.”

OK, so I blog waaaaaaay too much, but I didn’t go to uni, I am not sure who Marshall McLuhan is and even Americans think I am a sad bastard … so does this mean I can’t really class myself as a planner?

Has Dan & co been wrongly paying me for the past 3 years?

OK, we know they have, but I mean in terms of calling me a planner when I’m not.

Alright … alright … I’m getting on my high horse here aren’t I.

Look, I appreciate some of their ‘top 10’ might be tongue-in-cheek [or at least I hope it is], I accept there are some older guys who are blinkered to the realities of the modern World [just like there’s new guys who are ignorant to the realities of most people’s lives] … and I know for a fact that there are some ‘types’ of professional that can annoy the fuck out of anyone [from social media ‘gurus’ to planning ego twats] but for an industry that is fighting for its life, these childish cliches are simply highlighting to the business world:

1. We cannot play nicely with each other.

3. We will kill eachother for the slightest bit of praise or fee.

It’s bad enough when the industry tries to pick fights with sister industries – like creative agencies and media agencies – but when you start picking fault with members within your own collective, we’re utterly fucked.

Creatives think planners are a waste-of-space.

Etc Etc Etc.

Now of course there are bad people out there. People who should not be in their job. People who bring the whole industry into disrepute.

And they should be sacked.

But in my experience, they’re more the [bad] exception rather than the rule, so maybe it’s time the industry stops trying to stab itself in the back and learn how to work – let alone play – nicely with each other and see what real collaboration can do.

That said, this will only truly happen when agencies, clients and the industry as a whole start encouraging it rather than using it as a means to satisfy their own personal agendas, things would be easier.

Having ‘effectiveness awards’ that basically ignore the importance and role of creativity – be it thinking or application – is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as celebrating creativity that has almost zero commercial value to anyone – other than maybe the agency. Which is not helped by having clients talk about partnership but then demand their agencies to do more and more of what they dictate, for less and less recompense.

There’s so many elements we need to fix, but the easiest way to start is to get up off your seat, walk over to a colleague in another department – or another discipline – and say:

“Hello, my name is _______, can I ask for your help in something I’m working on?”