It was not what I would have described as an unqualified success.

Things that went well

• Big old desks with carrels, just like at school
• Quiet. Really. Very quiet.
• Old men in tweed grappling with oversized musty reference tomes

Things that went less well

• Free wi-fi (that ran so slowly that I got out my dongle. Yes, I know its free, but I had my hopes raised, and a woman scorned etc.)
• Not enough power points for plugging in laptops
• A strange smelling man who I am pretty sure didn’t work there busted me working in a closed section of the library and insisted that my desk was not a ‘Designated Laptop Position’ and I should therefore interrupt my life’s work and move. (Yes I was in the wrong, but I needed juice and a woman scorned etc).

So I am not going back. Mainly because of the skeevy man, but also because I want to keep trying new places. They need to have electricity and wi-fi or at least a mobile (dongle) signal. They also need to be quiet so I can think and a bit noisy so I can argue with Oli, Mike, Gabby etc. So herewith a list of alternative work locations that I’d love you to add to;

• On a train to Cornwall. Get out at Penzance, have a swim and come back.
• The Waterloo Suset Room at the Haward Gallery
• In Duncan’s cottage in Wiltshire (added feature: send a second team there sepearately by train with the proviso that they have to finish writing / answering the brief by Tisbury. Pick them up have a slap-up meal at the Beckford Arms, sleep at the cottage and return the next morning.
• In another professional work environment; a room in a hospital, an architect’s office, an artist’s studio, a science lab, an engineering workshop…(volunteers?)
• Walking through The National Gallery as I did the other day with Mark Hancock
• On a ferry down the Thames

I also wondered if using different documentation formats might throw up some interesting things;

• Do all of the brief writing correspondence by posting letters
• Paint the response to the client brief (oils not water colours obviously) Some starters here at SXSWi with each keynote being illustrated / interpreted in real time by a different artist / designer.
• Tweet the brief to the creative team
• Only use photos
• Write it all collaboratively on a wiki

And of course working with different people. When we set up RMM we agreed that the three of us would work in planning pairs. Given the very different planners that we were, by personality; experience and interests, this worked so well that we used to joke that between the three of us we were actually quite a decent planner. The pairs idea is also alive and well at Draftfcb but now I have access to an even wider range of planners to pair with. The next thing I am keen to try is working really closely with a creative team; you know, actually sitting with them, kicking ideas around, sharing sandwiches. I am curious to see how that might work given the swan-like relationships that creative teams have. This is not the post for it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the growing interest I have in the creative technologist as another useful way of interrupting the creative pairing process.

Thanks to @wipspace for pointing me to this talk by Filip Nilsson from the agency F&B at Cannes last year;

Filip Nilsson speaks at Cannes Lions 2009 from Jimmy Wulff on Vimeo.

In it, Nilsson observes that agency structures haven’t changed since WWII, so he instigated  a few initiatives. While most of these don’t seem that radical.  consider what impact they might have on your agency; No titles. Seated all mixed in together, not by discipline. Collective, public (within the agency) reviews of work. All creatives as of 8AM on Monday are digital. Owned by the staff. And while each of these initiatives or variations has been tried by different agencies e.g. Mother and no account people between creatives and clients. St Lukes and all staff ownership, I’m not aware of anyone bundling them all up and working in this way so successfully.

Your thoughts on the back of a post card to the usual address. (See what I did there?)

Its obviously of enormous interest to us as a network and as an agency and of course is becoming a large part of the things that Keep Our Clients Awake At Night. So that they are able to sleep soundly and market effectively we’re developing deeper capabilities and partnerships to offer strategic advice and delivery. And it’s keeping me busy. So I am looking for help in the from of a Junior planner / researcher.

Once again lunch to anyone who can assist and details after the jump…

Job description: Junior Influence Planner / Researcher

The Agency
Draftfcb London. Digital, Advertising, CRM & Retail all united under a single P&L.
130 people, a top 20 billings UK agency based in Victoria. Part of the worldwide Draftfcb network – 1,125 people across Europe and 9,150 worldwide.

Current London clients: Beiersdorf (Nivea & Eucerin), Boeing, COI (Children’s Workforce Development Council), Savanna cider, Dorchester Collection hotels, General Motors (Vauxhall & Chevrolet), Heal’s, Internaxx, Jamaica Tourist Board, Kraft (Oreo), Motorola, Post Office, SC Johnson (Pledge, Duck, Oust, Mr Muscle & Glade), TD Waterhouse & the Training & Development Agency (Teachers).
What are you being asked to buy into?
2009 has been a year of significant change that, in the last six months, has delivered an operational restructure, a stealth-relaunch, 3 significant new business wins & a financial turnaround in London.

About Influence Planning
Influence Planning seeks to understand how audiences use evolving social technologies to make decisions. We use that understanding to improve our clients’ business.
Fundamental to our approach is the belief that social technologies and marketing practices need to be integrated into all communication and not exist as a silo. Social or influence activity should not be regarded as a separate discipline, it is simply best practice use of digital, and indeed of all marketing activity. Draftfcb is unique as a global integrated agency where this can be realised. We believe that consumers have no respect for, or interest in specific channels; they just want to engage. The Influence Planners at Draftfcb strive to ensure that the agency develops marketing communications that does the same.

About the candidate
This role is suitable for a junior planner who is currently working in either a traditional advertising or a specialist digital agency. In both situations you are frustrated by having to reverse engineer digital and social activities into broadcast advertising ideas. You see social as digital ‘because that’s just how the web is these days’. You create online content at least at an amateur level by blogging, tweeting or obsessively maintaining an online presence on a social network. You will be exited about discussing your favorite bloggers.

Specific Responsibilities
The level of your responsibility will vary on each project and grow over time as your skills and experience develop. We work in teams on all projects and initially you will learn by supporting Leo Ryan, Planning Director: Influence.

Research & report writing
You will need to be able to cover a wide body of information, distill it to salient points and present these in an engaging and informative manner.
Research areas will include;
- Desk research (mostly gathering and analysing public domain information)
- Online surveys (including questionnaire design, set-up and analysis)
- Competitive reviews
- Market analysis
- Best practice research and analysis
- Online conversation monitoring using free and paid for and proprietary tools
- Helping us organise & maintain our internal knowledgebase of influence planning frameworks, articles and research tools

Planning
Implementing the above research
Working with the Influence planning team (and our clients) to set objectives, identify strategies and the tactical mix.
Help us develop & implement evaluation tools & practices.

Training
Helping plan, write and present client and internal staff training programs
Workshops: Helping plan, run (”facilitate”) and document client workshops

Type of person
- Insightful: sees opportunities that others can’t see.
- Different: gets to unexpected solutions.
- Enterprising: has proven he/she can drive commercial success for clients
- Multinational: in outlook & experience
- Social media obsessed and proud of it

As an industry veteran a candidate will have spent time on both client and agency sides; they understand both the needs and demands our clients have but are also familiar with and comfortable in an agency culture and its particular demands and rewards.

First out of the blocks is a role as a web data analyst working with me and Oli (Commercial Planning Director) to dredge data from the web, merge it with other data sources and make sense of it.

A rather splendid lunch for anyone who can help. Details after the jump;

The Agency
Draftfcb London. Digital, Advertising, CRM & Retail all united under a single P&L.
130 people, a top 20 billings UK agency based in Victoria. Part of the worldwide Draftfcb network – 1,125 people across Europe and 9,150 worldwide.

Current London clients: Beiersdorf (Nivea & Eucerin), Boeing, COI (Children’s Workforce Development Council), Savanna cider, Dorchester Collection hotels, General Motors (Vauxhall & Chevrolet), Heal’s, Internaxx, Jamaica Tourist Board, Kraft (Oreo), Motorola, Post Office, SC Johnson (Pledge, Duck, Oust, Mr Muscle & Glade), TD Waterhouse & the Training & Development Agency (Teachers).

What are you being asked to buy into?
2009 has been a year of significant change that, in the last six months, has delivered an operational restructure, a stealth-relaunch, 3 significant new business wins and & a financial turnaround in London.

Position: Commercial Planner – Web Analyst
This is a role that could be suitable to a recent graduate who has the curiosity and talents to grow into a first-class analyst. As a graduate they will bring a freshness and intuitive understanding of the web, but may be limited in their actual knowledge of specific software packages.

Alternatively this could be a role for an industry veteran who is looking for an environment to be entrepreneurial, developing new methodologies, products and services that take advantage of the wealth of data that is now available online.

Specific Roles and Responsibilities
- Specific account responsibilities (to be confirmed).
- New business opportunities
- Re-rating the value & influence of our thinking internally & with clients / prospects
- Developing new tools and services that provide planners and their clients with a better understanding of their data
- Providing the planning team with
- Insights to inform the brand planning process; e.g. an analysis and interpretation of server log files to reveal a new insight about a client’s audience
- Information that can be used to take action; e.g. the location and nature of influential bloggers in a specific conversation or community

Specific skills

A graduate will be expected to have an interest in these tools and their potential and be able to use them
- Google Labs specifically Analytics, Trends, AdPlanner
- Web APIs
- Programming language (which one isn’t really important, it’s indicative of a mindset not a skill set, but any of Visual Basic, ASP.Net, PHP
- Excel and or PPT
An industry veteran will be expected to be able to use all of the above and
- Crystal Xcelsius
- Web analystics including Omniture and Hitwise
- SAS / SPSS Exposure

Type of person
- Insightful – sees opportunities that others can’t see.
- Different – gets to unexpected solutions.
- Enterprising – has proven he/she can drive commercial success for clients
- Multinational - in outlook & experience
- Geek and proud

Background
As a graduate candidate might come from an educational background that combines creativity with accountability such as;
- Maths or English
- Economics
- Computer Science
- Music
- Architecture
- Engineering

As an industry veteran a candidate will have spent time on both client and agency sides; they understand both the needs and demands our clients have but are also familiar with and comfortable in an agency culture and its particular demands and rewards.