Why not a mid mortem? Why wait till the car crashes?
Alternatively, I don’t know that I’ve ever had a post mortem after a project that went well. But it is just as important to discuss what worked.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Credit to Justin Davis for this one.
Most new strategists fall into one of two buckets;
the right mind
or
the right mindset.
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THE RIGHT MIND: those who have the ability to think on their feet, connect dots into big thoughts. Basically, this bucket is intelligence = finding answers
THE RIGHT MINDSET: the other side of the coin is those who come into the industry with a deep curiosity and thirst for knowledge. they usually aren’t great with excel but likely know a LOT about a weird mix of things and will always want to know why they are doing what they are doing. Intelligence = asking questions.
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As a manager, your job is to figure out where they are starting (and obviously nothing is binary) and help them build up that mindset around the industry and job function.
The thing you’ll hear a lot is that you need to teach them the other thing. the mindset they are not coming into the room with naturally.
My opinion; build confidence through cultivating how they think already. Learning a whole new mindset is a task for once you’ve been in the job for a few years.
You can’t teach someone new info if they are also teaching themselves to think from a whole different starting point.
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Accidentally dropped my phone wile driving and took this photo… Realized I haven’t seen a campaign with “accidental” as a visual tone guideline. possible there is a reason for that, but it also seems like the logical end destination of the “authentic lo-fi” aesthetic.
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The Creative team is who your job serves, but your Strategy team is a resource stronger than any other. Make time to share work with strat team members and talk through the ask. Do this early.
Then do one on one reviews with creative before showing the full team anything1.
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Old notes
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Pretty recognizable representation of the process, right? One of the most common agency workflow styles.
And its a good one… UNLESS the person who has final say on approvals isn’t present for the KO or any rounds of review.
This is the number one thing I see blowing up projects. A team trying to bring an ask to life, only to have an exec level internal employee (or a client depending on the specifics) come in and say “what if we…” or “actually, we’ve decided” or “It needs more…”
The only question at this point should be “does it do ________” (objective defined in the brief). How a team accomplished a creative task the
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The agency: “we have heart for all the concepts”
The concepts:
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a thought:
“Your actions have consequences” should be the single most uplifting thing to hear, but if your hearing it from someone else, it is only in a negative context.
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Not totally unrelated to the above image;
In offices, there are a few types of planned communication..
Presentations. Meetings. One on Ones.
And thats pretty much it.
In a presentation, one is generally expected to leave with approval or direct direction on how to get approval.
One on ones are rarely a cause for confusion.
But “meeting” has to cover ALL the ground in-between those two.
We don’t need more meetings, but maybe we need more types of meetings.
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New site draft:
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(can’t remember if if this was in a recent issue or not)
Three types of jobs.
Building.
Reacting
Providing.
Often we think we’re doing number one but are actually doing number 2.
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WEEKLY MONSTER
Found a bunch of my doodles from the first month of covid lock down. I was recently unemployed but still being paid and had time on my hands…
(this is admittedly relevant to a very specific sub-function of the job).