Prior to the recent local elections this letter was put through my door telling me why I should vote Liberal Democrats. A compelling read that sparked me to get off my backside and vote it certainly wasn't.
It is the most boring thing I've read of late and pretty much sums up why only 30% of people vote in local elections - the worst levels of participation in Western Europe. It is completely lacking in any substance or opinion whatsoever and stinks of the kind of petty rhetoric that politicians get so engrossed in. Unfortunately they missed an opportunity to tell me anything remotely interesting and failed to either try and understand voters. Really, why should I bother reacting to this? They haven't told me why the Lib Dems are better, only that Debbie Tomes is nice and they are the only party that will get the Conservatives out.
Common folks, you could at least tell me what you are doing about the little oiks that have smashed my wing mirror off tiwce in the last couple of months!
Rhys Jones, the youngest person ever to climb the seven highest summits on each of the world's seven continents came into our offices last week to give us an inspirational talk and share his experiences with us. Apart from having some fascinating stories and being an excellent public speaker at the age of 20, Rhys' underlying message was: "you can do anything if you put your mind to it".
Admittedly the thought is well trodden but at least it had some context. Any how, it certainly got me thinking. I began asking whether or not planners should or could apply their skills to something more worthwhile or fulfilling? The likes of John Grant are working on 'The Green Marketing Manifesto' and Russel Davies on Interesting 2007 as an example. My intention isn't too make it sound like planners can change the world, but as good problem solvers and creative thinkers don't you ever think you could do more with your skills?
I think a planner's skills, rightly or wrongly, are much broader and transferable than they used to be and for me this is a good thing. But it also makes you wonder what else you could achieve if you put your mind and planning trade to it - even if it was just to do something personal, outside of work. I've started to create a pretty so far uncompelling list of things I would like to do over at 43 Things.
To end on a lighter note here are some of Rhys' images from everest. Some of these might put you off.
Frost bite of the eyes
Frost bit of the feet Apparently his toes shrunk to the size of raisens and then fell off not long after.
A twoer (the amount of ladders you need to bridge the gap, a fiver was the longest)
My last post got me thinking again about the old 'we're all individuals' rhetoric. This is something that probably the bitter part of me associates with the thing that got on my wick when I was looking for my first job in planning. I appreciate agencies want a diverse group of interesting individuals and I myself enjoy working with them, but I think it has gone a bit too far - it all feels a bit elitist and a touch on the tedious side at times. Richard Huntingdon posted this over at Adliterate a while ago which pretty much covers some of this debate. First of all I don't believe groups of people, who in actual fact have very similar backgrounds are as interesting as they could be if you mixed them up with people who have different backgrounds and experiences.
Looking back at my life at a 'new' University, my housemates, who are still some of my closest friends had such different backgrounds - it certainly made life there much more interesting both academically and socially. Living with the son of a working class builder who supported QPR, a public school boy who kind of followed Aston Villa (probably because of Prince William) but was more of an egg chaser and finally another public school boy, who as well as being an annoying Gooner, was Jewish and the son of a London cabbie. I'm pretty much a middle class (Brighton fan) with my Dad being a hardworking sales manager for a greetings card company and my step mum a nurse. That may all seem pretty average and stereotypical but when you put them all together that is where you find the conflicts, the enemies and the enthusiasm that many people such as John Grant and Russel Davies often talk about.
My second and final point relates to some peoples attitudes towards 'uninteresting' people and why they shouldn't work in the indusutry even though they slogged their guts out from the age of 18, got in thousands of pounds worth of debt only to discover that their careers advisor should have told them to do Zoology if they wanted to work in advertising. To give you an example this is the sort of small minded opinion that makes me ashamed of the industry at times. Taken from a coment on Richard's post, Asi says: "I've never met anyone with a 'degree' in marketing or advertising who was remotely interesting". This is all he had to say, very interesting really isn't it? It's is a very old fashioned and archaic attitude that really is an attempt to make themselves feel better.
For some reason people think that if you do a degree and yes it is a degree, you aren't interested in anything else. I have always believed in John Locke's theory on ideas. Locke states that ideas come from both knowledge and experience. The point is that people's knowledge and experiences are different, therefore shouldn't the industry do its best to find a a good mix rather than finding 'individuals' that aren't actually that individual. When we recruit people we don't have any guidlines such as how interesting is this person, or how nice, our aim is to recruit a mix of people from a variety of backgrounds and so far it has served us well. It doesn't have to be so black and white all the time. The interesting part is the grey bit in the middle.
This article isn't exactly a new opinion on fashion, or people's desire to appear 'individual' and 'interesting', but I do love the way Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker articulates it in his own distinctive way.
"If Grazia magazine printed an article declaring it fashionable to smack yourself in the forehead with a limited-edition ball-pein hammer designed exclusively by Coleen McLoughlin, a mob would form outside your local B&Q before the ink had dried on the page. It's a mystery to me. If the whole point of fashion is to distinguish yourself from the herd, why queue up to be part of it? Am I missing something here?"
I'm off to see Shane Meadows' latest film, This is England, at the weekend. If you are unfamiliar with the writer and directors previous work he's responsible for Dead Man's Shoes, Once upon a time in the Midlands and 24/7. This is England is a movie about the British skinhead movement in the 80s. Loosely auto biographical, the movie is based on the life of a troubled, working class boy from the Midlands who seeks refuge with a group of 'Skins'.
The movie touches on a number of interesting areas such as youth culture, Ska, social marginalisation, identity, racism and politics. Now I was born in 1980, so I don't really recall much of this movement, apart from the occasional menacing looking types, a couple of which happened to be my babysitter and her boyfriend. However, only since the movie has come out have I bothered to look into it in more detail - I like The Specials and a bit of Madness but that's it really. I'm fascinated with how it all started and evolved over time but I've mostly been surprised with how my original, mostly negative perceptions have been formed by the minority that turned it into the racist movement that my generation at least see it as.
Newsnight recently discussed this film and Mark Kermode made a cracking point when debating with Sunday Times columnist Peter Whittle. In response to the pompous and out of touch, Whittle, Kermode stated that people always tend to look at cultures from the outside and fail to truly understand them. As much as we hate to admit it, I think the majority of us working in communications continue to do this, merely scratching the surface of what's out there. Even those of us in research do it with tired methodologies . I think this is why I'm becoming more and more interested in ethnography. It might not go down well with a positivist but I think I'm finding my work more interesting.
Guy Murphy has a really interesting post on objectives over at the IPA Strategy Group’s blog. I personally find poor and restrictive objectives really frustrating. You end up spending too much time in ‘strategy’ meetings going round in circles, but more importantly it stops you from creating great work.
The way an objective is formed, presented and articulated can have such a major influence on the direction of a strategy. I agree with Guy, people should give it more attention. I’m always surprised by how often people fail to make a distinction between the different types of objective you may see in a brief such as campaign objectives, project objectives, business objectives, marketing objectives and communications objectives.
I love the analogy Guy has given: “If the objective set by Dick Fosbury in the high jump was to complete a perfectly executed Western Roll we would not have heard of him. A Western Roll is an interim measure of success. Instead, he set himself the objective of ‘jumping as high as possible’. Enter the Fosbury Flop. Not only did getting the objective right achieve a better result, it released creativity and freedom into the strategy”.
Working on a brief without a good objective is like playing football when you are a kid. Every time the ball gets kicked in a different direction everyone on the pitch runs after it with no purpose, other than to get the ball. You might win you might not. Only once you have decided on a match-winning objective can you play the beautiful game and not just win, but also win in style.
I’ve probably just made another educational mistake. After all my marketing communications degree from Bournemouth University obviously wasn’t that appealing when I was looking for my first job in planning. Marketing communications is so cliché apparently. Perhaps Universities should start adding ‘interesting’ units to their courses with the aim of proving how interesting a student is. Things like Zoology, French History and Biochemistry being my favourites.
Anywhooo. The controversial words are; Open University and Ethnography. I start my course next month and I’ve been racking my brains trying to come up with an idea for my practical work. So far I have only come up with a couple of ideas.
The creative development process. I’m interested in how the dynamics of groups solve problems.
Something on fandom. My work is full of Southampton fans and they must be the most pessimistic bunch in the world. I’d like to know why.
Over at the Plannersphere I’ve also been given a couple more ideas. One from John Grant relating to how the planning community manage social and professional identities and another from Michael Johnston on moving research in web 2.0.
Hello, I'm Carl. An English communications strategist/plannery type, living in Australia.
I use this blog to rant, praise, think about things, log stuff and generally talk to myself. Just like I'm doing now.
