I wrote the start of this article thousands of feet circling high above Gatwick.
Gatwick is one of the worst airports. I don’t know what makes it worse than, say, Stansted, which seems to be universally loathed. I quite like Stansted because it’s small and feels regional and therefore quite friendly.
Anyway, this isn’t about airports. I was just dreading getting off the plane and doing the Gatwick palaver, which was a total palaver. And I was annoyed that I forgot my laptop charger and the emergency one I bought cost sixty quid and doesn’t even charge my laptop, it’s just a power lead that stops it from dying. What’s a blog for if you can’t put your gripes and grizzles into it?
Thanks for reading this far. I promise it gets better.
I’m now having a much nicer trip back, on a Virgin train. People keep bringing me food and coffee and I’ve got loads of work done. The wifi even mostly works. I like trains so much more than planes.
ANYWAY. The main purpose of my trip was to attend the first meeting of the judging panel of the BIMA awards which was great fun…
…But before that, I met up with Sarah Newman of the APG to talk about building a stronger network of strategic minds in Scotland.
For those of you who don’t know the APG, they are the industry body for planners and strategists in the UK. Here’s what they say about themselves:
The APG is a not-for-profit organisation run for and by its members: primarily account planners in advertising agencies, but increasingly the wider community of communications strategists, including media planners, channel planners, digital planners and DM planners.
Their training is top notch (I should know, I’ve done a few of their courses) and they run fab events which are all up on YouTube if you want to check them out. Both training and events are held mainly in London and that was what I wanted to talk to Sarah about – could we try doing some events and/or training in Scotland?
The proposed events and training sessions would feature world class thinkers from all corners of the industry(ies) and bring people together – any person who does strategy and planning, from traditional agencies, design agencies, digital, and also from client-side.
From all over Scotland there are lots of people seeking out insight and applying them to make their communications stronger, their businesses more effective and it would be fab to do more to support each other and build a network that is both competitive and collaborative.
Events where we discuss things like, ‘what is an insight’? from different perspectives, we look at how insights are developed into ideas, how we know whether an idea is ‘good’ or not… And of course understand how to build strong brands that mean something in the complex world we now live in.
These events would be distinctive from other events in Scotland because their primary focus would be on strategy and would be aimed at people who have a say in their brand’s or their clients’ strategies in some way.
Just some initial thoughts, some of which might be wrong but I think the benefits of trying this could be as follows:
- Creating a network of known ‘strategic minds’ – primarily for collaboration and support
- Nurturing and growing strategic talent in Scotland
- Building awareness of what strategy is and the value it adds
- Enabling clients to understand whether their agencies are doing strategy right
- Enabling agencies to find ways to improve their strategic offer
If you’re currently a member of the APG in Scotland you should have received an email from them asking your permission for me to email you – but if you’re not a member I’d still like to know if you would be interested in events/training that has a strategic focus. Let me know via the comments below, or via my Twitter or Linked In. You don’t need to be a planner or a strategist – I can see this appealing to designers, content managers, UX professionals, creatives, brand managers, insight peeps, analysts… So please get in touch if you would like to hear more as and when I get around to doing something.
Think bubbles 