Do’s

• Don’t ask for a job, ask for an opportunity to do great stuff.
• Present valuable skills beyond traditional planner skills.
• Be clear why you want a job at this particular agency.
• Have an idea about what you can offer the agency.
• Have a strong opinion about what’s great advertising to you.
• Be clear about what type of planner you are (e.g. are you strategic or creative?).
• Try to figure out what type of culture the agency you’re applying for has (and how to fit in).
• Be more concerned about getting the right planner job rather than any planner job.

Dont’s

• Don’t interrupt the flow of conversation by showing a three minute case video.
• Don’t give a sloppy or rude impression.
• Don’t be vague. Clarity in speech reflects clarity of thought.
• Don’t interrupt the interviewer.
• Don’t be obvious in your opinions.
• Don’t oversell yourself – overpromising can backfire later.

Possible reasons why you haven’t been called to an interview

• Your profile is vague. Bad: applying for three different roles. Even worse: not even mentioning for what type of role you’re applying for. Solution: be clear what you want. You can’t have it all.
• Your application is too long. Solution: cut out unimportant stuff, like summer jobs at the ice cream stand you had in high school.
• Your application is generic. Solution: find the time to customise your application rather than copy-pasting it.
• Your application style is too corporate, too creative or just plain-old weird. Don’t play around with fonts and illustrations unless you really know what you’re doing. Solution: keep it neutral and simple.
• Your application is sloppy. Avoid spelling errors, it reflects how you work.
• The agency is too busy at the moment. Yes, we’re only people.

(click for full-size)

Most agencies like winning awards because it boosts egos (and arguably work morale) and impresses clients. It’s not strange, therefore, that agencies at the top take awards very seriously. Most often, as above graphics clearly show, it becomes a numbers game. The more award entries you submit, the better your chances are for an award – given the fact that your work holds a certain standard (let’s say seven out of ten points).

I did a quick calculation on the handful Swedish agencies that got awarded this year in Cannes and found that the entry-to-award ratio didn’t differ that much among the agencies. Average ratio was about seven percent plus minus two percent (so, between 5 and 9 percent). In other words, given a certain quality of work, a Swedish top agency can expect to get ONE Cannes Lion for every 10-14 entries.

Then there are agencies like Wieden+Kennedy and Droga that totally beat the statistics through absolutely fantastic work. I think getting there takes a lot more than just above average work and statistics. In this world it’s probably more about how the things that make your agency different and how these translate into real-world advantages. Things such as creative culture, business philosophy and a powerful agency brand are probably key in building and sustaining a successful agency over time when the exact same people go in and out of every agency. Either that or you can go building a large global network with hundreds of thousands of people and hope for the best (yes, that works too).

Moleskine notebook + portable harddrive + sharp knife = Moleskine harddrive.

Agency: Jung von Matt, Stockholm
Client: MINI / BMW Sweden
Creative Director: Johan Jäger
Art Director: Daniel Wahlgren
Copywriter: Magnus Andersson
Visual Director: Daniel Forero
Account Director: Jan Casserlöv
Account Manager: Ida Modin
Planner: Leon Phang
Application production company: Monterosa
Web production company: Suddenly

This model comes from Kay Plantes, a PhD strategist from MIT that has her own consulting practice. I had the pleasure of hearing her talking about innovation at a seminar. Her thesis is simple: the ONLY source of competitive advantage a company can have is its business model. A winning business model is proactive and changes with time. The consequence (rather than the business model) are great products and services.

Today’s agency challenge isn’t digital thinking or innovation but a reality check.

Why?

Because too many agencies (i.e. offices with people that have advertising background and sell creative services to companies that want to sell more stuff and/or build their brand) see themselves as more than just advertising agencies. Which is fair when it comes to marketing yourself as the new hot shit. But a bit problematic, given the fact that zero advertising people throughout history have managed to come up with anything really innovative. Like the computer on the picture. Or even the cable that attaches to it. If advertising people could invent iPhones or come up with new search engine logarithms and be rich as f**ks, trust me they would.

Books are more inspirational than blogs. Real conversations are better than tweets. Vinyls sound better than Spotify. Spending time at a café is nicer than hanging out at Facebook. But these days it’s easy to forget the dimensions of slow media. Balance is everything.

Update: apparently there’s a book written about how internet fries our brains. (Thanks Lia for the tip!)

As advertising and agencies has changed, so has planning. Here’s how I see what planning is (or at least what it should be) in 2010.