Since my return in France at the begining of the year I have been receiving a few requests/applications  from French planners willing to start their careers in style at one of the very prestigious London agency.
Since the whole planning in London appears to be a trendy topic, I’ve deceived to come back from my blog agony to share a few thoughts!

I have tried to make it as actionable as possible with the 5 following points:

1- Learn planning the British way
Let’s start with the beginning, the first thing you need to do is to understand British Planning specificities. France and the UK have some basics in common, increasingly so since most French agencies are embracing digital, but the size and the impact have nothing in common between French and English agencies.

I have already talked about twice on the blog so have a look at the following links to understand the main British planning specificities. here and here

2- Get to know the British Plannersphere and its wisdom.
What is great about planning in the UK as a discipline is that sharing is embedded in its roots. I have learnt a lot of things about planning by reading books, blogs, getting to meet top planners and going at events. It is different to France, the planners blogging, tweeting in the UK actually have day jobs and are pretty good at it! They are genuinely willing to help and to share interesting stuff about the job, the industry, culture…

People like Russell Davies, John Grant, Richard Huntington, Iain Tait and Faris Yacob have been amongst the pioneers in sharing their thoughts, advices… these blogs are a great place to start (and are my personal favorites)

Beyond blogs, if you want to know more about planning, you should have a look at the pages I saved on my Delicious under ‘planning’. You’ll find a collection of articles, presentation, podcasts… about planning including these must reads according to me:

Here, here, here, here, here, and here

And obviously, make sure you’ve check out the APG – Account planning group – website, the daddy of the modern plannersphere.

If you prefer printed content, I would read Jon Steel’s Truth lies and advertising and John Grant’s Brand innovation manifesto, these are brilliant starters.

3 – Have a point of view on planning
Once you are pretty clear about what planning is, your best bet to enter a London agency is to put together your portfolio with the stuff you’ve been doing whether they are personal or at an internship, explaining the way you worked, your input…
As you will the need to prepare your applications, a great place to start is Ad Grads where you will find the latest job offers from the planning world as well as getting to know all about grad schemes (The British way to recruit new talent on a yearly basis) and obviously interviews.

4- Be creative, you operate on a crowded market
Planning directors receive a zillion application a year so if you want to stand out from the crowd you will need to have your own vision of planning and to treat your application as your first brief.
Not all agencies have a grad scheme, especially the start ups so make sure you check them out because you will be quickly in touch with senior and respected planners – on a daily basis.
Check out the IPA (English version of the AACC) and their agency list to get to know the various agencies.

For smaller agencies and creative boutiques, make sure you read Campaign Magazine (British equivalent for Stratégies) and have a look at the new business wins to see which are the agencies doing well at the moment.

When it comes to creating an original an meaningful application, your must read is Asi Sharabi’s experience, it is a model of what young planners should be doing.

I also gave my humble point of view of my Organic Frog experience as it proved to be quite successful for me. You can read about it here and here.

5 – Be social, planners love to talk and it’s not that difficult to find them

After reading all this and getting your portfolio ready you will probably want to meet people and to take it even further. Two places are great for this: The plannersphere wiki and the Ning. The last one exists also in a Facebook version.
They are great places to get to know who works where and to start casual conversations.

If you want to chat and get some wisdom from French planners in London, I also created a Facebook group to get the conversation starting.

If it’s real interaction you’re looking for, no worries all you have to do is to turn up to one of the Cwoffee Morning. I am not sure often these are happening but I am sure it is worth checking out and getting to know people in ‘real life’.

That’s it for me now. I hope you’ll find these few lines helpful and that you’re odyssey into planning will be a successful one. I am always open for discussion (at least most days!) so if you want to contact me you can find my email under the ‘about the frog’ tab.
Best of luck

I am very pleased to introduce you AOC III, the book you be published at some point in April.
“It’s time to get busy!” is the subtitle of the book this year. After all it’s been 4 years since the Times Magazine and Adage have voted the consumers, sorry people as the person/agency of the year. We have move a long way on since then and we have to start making thing as tangible as possible.

You will be able to read my ramblings on why we have to roll our sleeves and start to do stuff instead of just theorizing them.

Feel free to discover all the contributors of the book by clicking on the names below.  Can’t wait for the book to be released.

As always, many thanks to Drew and Gavin for organizing everything. And kuddos to Chris Wilson for the cover design.

Here is a random though I’ve had for a very long time. I’ve actually had it since my childhood…

Why does the next challenge always seems to be the one you are going to struggle with when in fact things go mostly OK if not smoothly?

I don’t know if there is psychological pattern here but for instance when I was a child and changed to the next class, I was always unconsciously dramatising the difficulty of the next chapter but found it relatively straightforward when I was actually stuck in the middle of the year.

To give you an analogy, it is like staring at massive book and thinking, ‘god that’s a lot of pages!’ and then actually not finding it particularly huge nor painful to read.

Well I still have this feeling when I am introduce to a new brief or a new problem to solve and I think that this uncertainty it is what keeps you on your toes, ready to find the best possible answer.

That’s it, I nothing particularly insightful to add here but I’d love to hear your experiences if you have ever felt something similar.

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This is one of the most fascinating and scary video I have ever watched. It is interesting on so many different levels that you definitely have to watch it although it is 28 minutes long.

The first part of the video is a very eloquent state of where the gaming industry is at the moment with games like Farmville, MafiaWars and the blurring between real and virtual. Quoting James H. Gilmore’s book What consumers want: Authenticity, Jesse Schell very rightly pointed out that the need for authenticity and reality are the main reasons for the success of these new kind of games.

The second part of the video is a the ultimate marketeers dream, transforming our life into a big RPG game where  – for instance – we would have points for brushing our teeth, (courtesy of a tooth brush manufacturer) getting at work on time, paying attention to ads on TV… Foursquare is already starting to do it as people earn point by going out therefore consuming more. This is where we have to be really careful when advising our clients. As I pointed out a while ago technology and capitalism have no moral sense as they are amoral, however we lot (clients and agency people) should have a strong moral sense and decide what the next steps are. I only hope we didn’t escape the tyranny of image for the tyranny of reality.

Have a watch at the video (in three parts) it is thoughts provoking:

If you have one ad to remember from the Superbowl XLIV, it has to be the Google one. This ad stands out from the crowd for two obvious reasons, they have a great product and they have matched it with an interesting storytelling. You can enjoy the ad below.

Only a few moments after the ad was aired, it has already its parody. Now this is what I call success!

You can’t force an idea to spread but you can influence its diffusion. This sentence is basic common sense to me, however as Voltaire once said “common sense is not so common”. So many times I have seen people debating for the wrong reasons because they are only trying to force it to happen rather than provoking constructive discussions.

It you have a look at what recently happened in France with the so called “national identity” debate, it is very representative of a non discussion.
If you don’t have a clear point of view, you cannot generate any debate and worst, you are only giving more room for personal subjectivity.
What has been done here reminds me of what large corporations are doing when they have lost their purpose in life, they write corporate documents using meaningless empty words trying to fill the void.

We must fight for a genuine point of view on things not necessarily the right one, but the one that seems worth fight for. When you have done this work you have solid foundations for a constructive debate.

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Here is one for all the French readers of this blog. I have always been looking for in-depth thinkers of the Internet. I have been reading Francis Pisani’s blog for a few years now but I’ve came across Paul Mathias’ blog just recently.
His work is very interesting, you can find his thoughts on ‘What is the Internet?‘, Google and the cultural issues and the future of mobile here.

I particularly like the fact that unlike many academic thinkers he isn’t all negative about the evolution of the Internet but he underlines how this ‘global phenomenon’ grows beyond the technology to create its own reality. According to Paul Mathias the Internet isn’t only a semantic place, it an extension of our lives.

By growing beyond the technology he means that the Internet is changing many aspects of our life: juridical (downloading), social and anthropological (love and sex), moral, the border between private and public…

“When we think about the the Internet, we need to think beyond the Internet, we need to think about us, what we think we are and the world we want to create.”

Have a look at his book for more informations.

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First of all I would like to apologise for the lack of content on the blog over the last few months. I have always said that being busy is not an excuse but hopefully the lack of motivation could be one?

If they are a few people that haven’t deleted my feed on their RSS aggregator, I wish you all the best for the New Year.

Today I want to talk about a campaign that I don’t get. I’ve seen the creative below in London last November I think and it reinforced what I thought about Pierre Cardin: What a weird brand this is.

Pierre Cardin is for me the typical example of a brand without a position and therefore not being able to think about long terms perspectives.

Here is the problem on one hand you can’t pretend to be a luxury brand and on the other hand being sold at Lillywhites. It shows us how crucial the need for a solid distribution strategy is. No brand campaign will fix the harm made to them. When you have a look at their website it shows how hard it is for some brands to keep innovating in the way they communicate. Please Pierre Cardin, you have to react; you are a part of the French heritage!

I have been asked by Carlos Henrique Vilela, Brazilian planner, what my favourite campaign is. You can find my answer below.

My favourite campaign it is a French one from the mid 90’s for Kiss Cool (Cadbury).
You can read about the campaign and see some ads here. (In French)

I have tried very hard to look for the best campaign with a great strategy and a great execution and then I though it maybe wasn’t a perfect way to find one. I digged in my personal memories and remembered this campaign I loved as a teenager. I may be trusting my guts than my brain here but it feels like the right thing to do!

Although the brand just died this year, this is the typical example of a brand built mainly by communication. No only the ads were funny but they entered popular culture in a very deep way in a time where the Internet wasn’t really developed. Some people are still using the tag line from the campaign: “Kisscool, c’est frais mais c’est pas grave”.

This is for me what good advertising should tend to be: a brilliant piece of content tapping into common references.

I guess they will have the opportunity to relaunch the brand in a little while a la Wispa, an other Cadbury brand…

Here is a rant I’ve been wanting to write for quite a while and today I’ve decided to stick it on the blog and see if it makes any sense.

We may have much more digital tools available to our fingertips these days but are we more knowledgeable? I am not talking about the whole ‘Google making us stupid’ thing here, I am talking about finding genuine and interesting content that could make us more knowledgeable.

The more the Internet is growing the more difficulties we have to find new and interesting content. Google ranking works in such ways that it is now very hard to look for information beyond Wikipedia for instance. I have nothing against Wikipedia, it is an amazing and very reliable way to look for information however it is only one way to look for knowledge.

By creating hubs like Wikipedia and RSS feeds, we are easing the process of looking for information but we are to a certain extend creating an illusion of knowledge. Looking for a Wikipedia entry isn’t enough, it is only giving you some surface knowledge.

This is quite paradoxical for a planner but I am now operating in a vacuum online. I have spent so much time building my Netvibes page over the years that I am now doing 80% of my browsing on it. It is becoming increasingly difficult to fight against laziness and browse beyond the RSS feed.

To fight against my digital routine I try to post one interesting link/idea a day on my Twitter. Most of the time I try not to use any content from my Netvibes to post these links and it hasn’t been an easy task so far.

Balance between efficiency and discovery, that’s what it is all about!

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A while ago I wrote a post called French Planning. As I have been interviewed, together with a few other French planners working in London to give our perspectives on British planning by Stratégies magazine, I have decided to write a second one.

Overall I am pretty happy with the article, as the major points I wanted to make have been landed properly, however I just have one small concern about the title of the article.

“La recette du  (vrai) planning a l’anglaise” could be translated like this ‘The (true) recipe of English planning’. The problem I have with this title is that planning can’t be summarised by right or wrong as every planner will have his very own definition of the discipline. And the truth is, there is no magical recipe as every briefs and contexts are different. It is even truer for the digital environment as sometimes you will have to lead and sometimes you will have to work on a very small piece of the business.

Anyway, sorry to be picky but I thought I had to precise this last point!

You can have a read of the article here (in French) and make up your own mind.

You properly understand things when you get stuck into them. This is one of the most important things to understand when it comes to digital. I’ve been using Twitter for about two years now, however I am only using it as a link provider tool to look at other people and inspirations.

I have truly experienced Twitter as an alternative way to look for information during Le tour de France this year. Although I knew the immediacy of the site allows you get a snapshot of the news quite swiftly, following professional riders has been a very interesting experience.

The Herd and Tipping Point effects are interesting to follow. A famous rider starts twitting: Lance Armstrong and then you can follow half of the peloton and a few team manager.

But the most interesting thing to look at is the way they are using Twitter. Digital blurs the borders between virtual and real and by reading some of the twitts I was wondering if the riders realise they are talking in a public environment. Have a look at some of the samples below; we are miles away from the traditional, consensual post effort interviews.

Following Le tour on Twitter has been far more exciting than on the press. Even sport newspapers were using Twitter as a source for information anyway! I am obviously not saying media are dead or something like that. There is of course a role for media in the future. As they can’t compete for the immediacy of the news anymore they should focus on the quality, taking the time to go one step back and having a look at the bigger picture in order to add value.

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Very clever use of YouTube.

Who needs a website these days!

Seeding is increasingly important in today’s digital world. However, seeding isn’t working. Good seeding is rare and most of time treated like media buying.

If things aren’t done in a right way from a seeders perspective, it is the same from a bloggers perspective as some saw here the opportunity to participate in a vicious business model. As Paul Boutin from Wired puts it, “The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge.”

Of course you could argue that good content will always spread, the reality of things is that you will need some solid seeding thoughts beyond the send to a friend button.

Here is the main issue: ‘Industrial seeding’ isn’t talking to the real actors of the web anymore. It is talking to people that transformed their blogs into magazines. These aren’t the genuine actors of the blogosphere, all they are interested in are financial deals not content.  By doing so these bloggers have lost their only real power: credibility. The problem isn’t therefore about the blogosphere not being right to spread new ideas but more about finding the genuine actors of the web.

Indeed finding the right persons or groups take a lot of time and often require people with connections within these communities not a media buying agency.  Moving forward, seeding should be considered earlier in the process to allow enough time for research, making the right connections. If you are short on time anyway, sources like the Social Media Library (for the UK) are interesting and will give you an idea of the persons to contact.

Of course the two main things to remember are: great content is paramount and be transparent and collaborative when contacting bloggers.

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The recent French law called Hadopi bill is a total nonsense. The law is supposed to resolve piracy by canceling the users Internet access after three illegal downloads. Have a read at this article from the Guardian if you want to have a better understanding of the law.

The law is wrong on many levels but mainly because it doesn’t take into consideration the reality of things, it is only made to solve problems on a short-term basis. It is focused on the causes and isn’t answering the real issue: the business models used by the music and film industries aren’t working anymore.

And as Philippe Maltere wrote, P2P may well disappear in France, however illegal downloads will still exit with Rapidshare, Megaupload and likes.

This law is just smoke and mirrors and meant to please a few people in the French media industry. After all the next presidential elections is just happening in 3 years time.

(Source via Transnet | pic via)

How surreal is that? Lance Armstrong telling the world that his bike got stolen on Twitter! Just trying to help.

Anyway probably not the best post to get back into blogging however I’ve been quite disconnected recently so I had to use Metro as a source.

Great documentary about the campaign, the use of digital…