Still in college I found out how to derail the automatic pilot at McDonalds. Just ask for a cheeseburger without cheese. 'Oh, you want a hamburger!' No, I want a cheeseburger without cheese. The policy was (at least in those days) that they had to make one for you using all the cheeseburger ingredients without well... the cheese. Do they taste different? Oh yes and the cheeseburger without cheese was at least fresh. I haven't tried this trick since. Now living in Paris I should maybe go out there and ask for a Royal Without Cheese...

‘How many of our engagements really, really take advantage of true data sources and provide us and our clients with informed thinking and planning? How often do we just let it go because “they” won’t let us at it’ David Sable Too often the problem is not how many of us just let it go - but rather how many of us really WANT to know ourselves?! How can we expect our clients to make the time or give true importance to these elements if we ourselves do not? Just as we need to believe in what we are selling to the client creatively – we need to believe in data and planning before the client will. With a Director of Planning as a brother, and having spent a good month whilst freelancing seated in the Planning Department (it was the only desk free), I feel I am able to say (hand on heart) that many of us in client services do not appreciate or understand the time it takes to craft these insights – and therefore let it go because we don’t know the arguments to make to change “their” minds. To truly get the most out of our work – we should push back and start training the client to understand how much better a campaign could be with a little extra planning. In our lunchtime sessions we learn how to run meetings, how to sell creative, how to write a brief – but we haven’t once heard – how to get the most out of Planning for your client…. Is this not a shame? We creative endless plans based on production timelines and how long we need to give our creative teams to come up with that ‘hit idea’ but do we actually know how long it takes to analyse data? 9 days is often a good indication I am told. With enough forethought, and a budget, our planning departments can discover new customer avenues, tell us why our ‘hit idea’ may not work with the supplied data list and ensure the quality of the finished project is first rate. Understanding the creative process is a must for Client Services – we’d never baulk at taking the time to understand it – but along with new marketing mediums (remember how hard selling interactive was to clients at the start) so too must we take the time to understand the role planning and data analysis has in the future of our work. And whilst I may have just undertaken Client Services suicide – I know at least my brother will be proud *grin*