Spent today in swanky Shoreditch House with a top team of industry legends and luminaries judging the APG Awards. Obviously confidentiality prevents me from revealing any of the discussion amongst the judges but I can say, to tantalise you, that it was a very interesting process. The awards recognise excellence in strategic planning and each agency presents its case in a 20 minute slot, so as chairman of the judges Guy Murphy of JWT said, it's kind of like 'the X-Factor of planning'.

We saw thirteen presentations today and there are another twelve tomorrow. These have been whittled down from 150-odd submissions so I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that the standard overall is very high indeed. There's been some genuinely interesting thinking presented and it's fascinating to observe the cultural body language each agency displays in the way it presents itself. Some went for low-tech flip-charts (one involuntarily, following a tech meltdown), some went to the other extreme, going to advanced levels of technical accomplishment in style of presentation. Some had shiny shoes, some had knitted their own trousers. Presenting agencies today were: BBH (for Lynx and Johnnie Walker), M&C Saatchi (PC World), AMV (Royal Mail, Dept for Transport and The Economist), Tribal DDB (VW), Grey (BHF – heart attack), W+K (Nokia), Mother (PG Tips and Orange), McCann (Skcin) and VCCP (Comparethemarket.com). You can read the shortlisted papers here.

It's also interesting to see just how much stuff you can fit into a 20 minute presentation. When it comes to presentations, shorter is ALWAYS better.

The panel of judges, who you can see above, arguing the toss, tucking into cake and ensuring that their caffeine intake is kept hot-wiringly high, is comprised of Guy Murphy (JWT), Derek Morris (Zenith), Claire Beale (Campaign), John Owen (Dare), Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy), Lucy Jameson (DDB), Matt Willifer (APG/nDreams), Simon Clift (Unilever), Axel Chaldecott (JWT), Bill Griffin (Rapier), Rob Forshaw (Grand Union) and me, Neil Christie (Wieden + Kennedy). 

Below, W+K's own Andrew Stirk girds his strategy loins for what could be his Susan Boyle moment, presenting the Nokia Supernova case history. And just to make things more nerve-wracking for him, he had me taking photos of him.

Another twelve presentations tomorrow. Partly daunting. Partly quite exciting.

Personally, I found it inspiring to see the good work being done out there. As Tarantino says (referencing his own relationship with PT Anderson), it was the fact that Brando had to compete with Montgomery Clift that made Brando a better actor. And nothing makes QT happier than to see his friend and rival produce a masterpiece. So, W+K is kind of like the Brando in this analogy. Inspired to do better by our competition. And possibly about to get fat and lazy and go bonkers and rarely work again.