Yesterday was our annual founders’ day event; this year was the 31st anniversary of the founding of Wieden + Kennedy. To celebrate, the agency went on a camping trip. The excitement was in tents.

Currently, I’m involved with two different campaigns that have started more or less the same time. This means I can see two
different approaches to the way a project is set up, how the creative
brief is developed and presented, to the kind of territories (the sorts of
things we want to talk about) that are discussed, to the business aims, to the
degree of brand-work involved, and so on. It's really interesting stuff.

One key thing,
for me at least, is a chance to see how planning in different ways works across
the agency, not in some abstract fashion but in a real meeting-to-meeting,
review-to-review sense. Which is especially good for figuring out my own
approach to planning.

It’s early days
yet, but as far as I can tell it’s certainly not a case of ‘write the brief and
then that’s it.’ Of course, the planner gets stuck in in writing the brief. But
it's also clear to me that they continue to play an active role in helping shape (tailor, refine, nudge) the creative process as it goes
along. I don’t know any better – but I suspect that this is something
particular to Wiedens. 

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(Thoughts courtesy of Planning Placement newbie James.)