APG Noisy Thinking 2015
Our flagship evening event held 6 times a year in association with Flamingo. Each event addresses a provocative question or current theme focused on Planning & Strategy. These events are supported by Google.
21st Century Strategy
11 March 2015
Our first Noisy Thinking event for 2015 set the agenda for the year with the theme: 21st Century Strategy. To help us explore this theme in action we invited three top thinkers and do'ers to give us their diverse perspectives on what 21st Century Strategy means to them and how it plays out in their approach to brands and business.
Agathe Guerrier | Head of Planning at BBH asked whether 21st Century strategy is actually about planning any more? When the world demands tactical, reactive, consumer focus what is the role for planned out brand centric thinking? Is it in fact all about vision and a more open-ended sense of why we do what we do? And what kind of framework could give us guidance?
Neil Perkin | Founder of Only Dead Fish went trichological with 'Mullet Strategy'. What he's getting at is a strategy that looks respectable at the front but is actually 'wild and hairy' at the back. If our environment is becoming increasingly uncertain and messy, is it all about joining stuff up so that it looks seamless to end users but allows us to be experimental and iterative from behind?
Giles Rhys Jones |Marketing Director of new start-up what3words talked from the head and the heart about what 21st Century Strategy has meant for him in action: What challenges they faced bringing the idea to market and how very different strategy looks when you move from a global agency to a start-up, investing your own money.
21st Century Strategy
APG Noisy Thinking - 21st Century Strategy (Q&A)
APG Noisy Thinking - 21st Century Strategy (with Giles Rhys Jones)
APG Noisy Thinking - 21st Century Strategy (with Agathe Guerrier)
APG Noisy Thinking - 21st Century Strategy (with Neil Perkin)
The future is bright, the future is...
14 April 2015
This month Noisy Thinking asked about the future for our industry, and for a change, it was the under 30's who taking to the stage.
It made a refreshing change to hear from the strategy leaders of tomorrow. We gave them an open brief and this allowed them to put across some passionately held personal views, whilst effectively channeling the best of each agency's culture and beliefs.
It was a humbling evening: The range of opinions we heard was diverse, perceptive, passionate and clever. There were some interesting common themes and plenty of hearty disagreement.
Speakers Including:
Pippa Morris | Planner at AMV BBDO
Enni-Kukka Tuomala | Planner at Saatchi & Saatchi
Thomas Griffiths | Strategist at DigitasLbi
Hannah Mackenzie | Planner at Adam&EveDDB
Sam Reid | Account Director at Mindshare
Melanie Arrow | Partner at BBH
The future is bright, the future is...
APG Noisy Thinking - 'The future's bright, the future's...' Introduction (with Sarah Newman)
APG Noisy Thinking - 'The future's bright, the future's...' (with Enni-Kukka Tuomala)
APG Noisy Thinking - 'The future's bright, the future's...' (with Hannah Mackenzie)
APG Noisy Thinking - 'The future's bright, the future's...' (with Pippa Morris)
14 Apr 2015 | Pippa Morris
14 Apr 2015 | Enni-Kukka Tuomala
14 Apr 2015| Hannah Mackenzie
The future is so radically indeterminate
14 Apr 2015 | Melanie Arrow
Jon Steel: Reasons to be Grumpy
9 June 2015
Jon is not only the author of great books on planning such as ‘Truth, Lies and Advertising’ but a brilliant practitioner. He was our sole speaker and talked about his 'Reasons to be Grumpy.'
According to the boxes he checks when completing surveys, Jon is now '50 to 60 years old.’ This gives him the excuse to be grumpy in public. On June 9th, he voiced his complaints noisily on a number of changes that undermine not only planning, but also our industry as a whole.
He is Global Planning Director for WPP, CSO of George Patterson Y&R in Sydney and runs the WPP Fellowship
How do you get noticed and influence people?
7 July 2015
Building on the theme of 'Strategies of Influence' for the APG Creative Strategy Awards, we asked Faris to answer the question: 'How do you get noticed and influence people?'
Faris Yakob | Industry veteran, former Chief Digital Officer of McCann and Chief Innovation Officer of MDC/NY-based kbs+ is the author of Paid Attention and co-founder of Genius Steals.
How does Advertising work in the 21st Century?
22 September 2015
Back from the summer, we dive straight into the big questions and we're thrilled to have author and guru Paul Feldwick, and author and top CSO, Giles Hedger thinking deeply about the future for advertising.
Paul will be asking how advertising will work in the C21; accepting that the same models and metaphors are likely to abide, he believes that the radical changes in the social environment and culture will leave people far less tolerant of advertising, and effectiveness far harder to achieve. So it will be down to advertisers in all media to think much more carefully about maintaining the 'social contract' with the public and question the current rhetoric of impressions, targeting, getting around adblockers which militate against that contract.
Giles' theme will be entropy. He will talk about the fact that the marketing ‘system’ in which media, brands and consumers come together is subject to an irreversible break-down in structure; using physics to explain why, all things being equal, we are set on an accelerating course towards chaos. Giles believes that if we simply follow the dynamics of the new environment, marketing will die; not all new paradigms are conducive to our success. So he will outline what the industry and its clients need to do to restore coherence and intensity of meaning in a world where all stimulus risks becoming equal.
Planning in a Post-Capitalist World
17 November 2015
For our final Noisy Thinking of the year we decided to consider social change, and what it might mean for the way we think, plan and do our jobs.
Do you agree that people power, a decentralised and continuously evolving, sharing society, declining major institutions, Corbynism, poor economic prospects for millennials and the 'precariat' add up to something bigger? Is post-capitalism a useful way of thinking about it? If it is, what does it mean in practical terms and how should we respond?
If you weren't able to make it to this Noisy, you can still see what our speakers had to say in the videos from the evening.
Kirsty Fuller | Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Flamingo
Fern Miller | Chief Strategy and Insight Officer at DigitasLBi
Tracey Follows | APG Chair and Founder and Futurist at AnyDayNow