What does a planner do anyway?
If people working in the media and marketing industry have one thing in common, it’s the fact that their families have almost no idea what they do.
Which is why I love the insight behind this call for entries video from Account Planning Group chairman Jeremy Nicholas’s mum.
As a nice additional touch, the link to this ad was sent out in an email from “Jeremy’s Mum”:
Hello Tim,
It’s Sue Nicholas here again, Jeremy’s mother. Hope you got the letter I sent. Thought just to be safe, that I’d follow it up with an email as well – just in case!
Anyway, I just had Jeremy over on the weekend who (after he finished telling me all about his new promotion at BMF) told me a bit more about these APG awards. But it also turns out that I’m not the only mother who has had trouble understanding all this planning and strategy malarkey. Some of the nice people at Host went and spoke to some other mothers too and made a little video about it. They gave me a link to it. Hope this works. APG Video.
So, after chatting to Jeremy now I know a few more things about what they’re doing with this year’s exciting APG awards. I thought it best that I share what I’ve learned with you so that you can share things with people you might know.
Ok, so as I understand it, APG are now opening up their award categories to include ‘communications and media strategists’. So entries will be judged based on either ‘brand’ or ‘channel’ categories with awards for ‘Campaigns for Established Service Brands, Campaigns for Established Product Brands, Campaigns for New Brands or Advertisers and Campaigns for Public Service and Charity’.
There are some other special prizes too! There are prizes for things like best insight, best approach to research, best use of data, best creative brief and briefing, best non-advertising idea and best under 50k budget. And best mum. (That last one might be a little hopeful!). Entries close Monday 27 September 2010.
Well I think that’s everything I need to tell you. Again, thank you for your time.
If you’d like to know any more about these awards, just go that website of theirs which is at
www.accountplanninggroup.com.au
Kind regards,
Sue.
Wishing you all the best with your award entry,
from Jeremy’s mum.
Tim Burrowes
That is wonderful.
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Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to answer that question either.
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If you can’t sell your own proposition what chance do you have of selling others’?
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Just shows how “in touch” these communications experts are with the real world!
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Good idea – love it. And the concept might actually be applicable to other marketing and advertising disciplines! How many of our parents struggle to articulate what we do? Then again could this simply be a sign that they’re just not that interested…?
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Awesome.
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I work in online, therefore, apparently, I work in IT.
“My son works in IT, don’t you? He’ll help you fix your widget.” Erm – I use a computer. You drive to work, you’re not a racing driver, are you?
Great ad though – new take on the elevator pitch ‘explain it to your parents’.
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Are they ALL Poms? Hard to tell with that audio..
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love it, i work in marketing and social research and after a decade of doing so my mother still thinks I stand on a street corner with a clip board asking people questions….
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Great concept, but… was also done a few years ago – think it was either UK marketing or UK mortgage industry, basically a message from the Director’s mum – I’ll have to do some Googling to find out, but all the same, the old ones are often the best ones.
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Love it
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Very nicely done, Jeremy’s mum.
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@Blue I cop that all the time. Well put!
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Still dont know
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The whole campaign for the 2007 ADMA Awards was “Your mum doesn’t know what you do, but she likes it.”
Surely Jeremy knew that.
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@blue – hit the nail on the head, hilarious.
This is a really nice idea, and very relatable.
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so good. It should be entered in the APG awards – best insight.
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I thought yesterday when I saw this that there were some similarities, but that’s just a coincidence, Concerned Citizen. After all, the truth in it is exactly what makes it a great idea, so it isn’t really surprising that someone else would have had the same thought.
This is lovely and gets my thumbs up.
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Isn’t the planner’s job to sit for 3 weeks on a brief, act like they are writing a thesis, then the creatives come along and have two days to re-write the insight and prop to be something that it should’ve been in the first place and then it’s back to the planner to retro fit it so they can present to the client with some sort of pie chart that means nothing at all?
Maybe not though, just guessing.
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My mother in law used to be deeply suspicious of the amount of time I spent at the computer.
How could it be ‘man work’ if a shovel wasn’t involved?
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Great idea – was even better when Zig Toronto did exactly this idea 8 years ago for their website – really pushing the envelope on that one!
Everyone seems to ‘borrow’ these days but at least steal an idea that you are going to improve upon rather than take backwards.
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Try telling your mum what social media is…..
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My only criticism is i wish you explained what we did, so i could cut and paste it and send it on to my mum!
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