What I most like about my work as digital planner
by asi
There are oh so many things in my work as a digital planner that makes me a happy person and Iain already had a mega-series-posts-cum-presentation about the stuff we enjoy in digiland. I’d like to talk about one particular aspect of my work, which makes my life as a digital planner in general and at Poke in particular rather lovely.
Most traditional planners (i.e. advertising but probably digital planners in big agencies as well) are usually assigned to one major client/brand and perhaps one or two additional small ones. That indeed gives them a very deep understanding of the brand they are working on but personally it’d be a bit difficult.
Luckily for me in the past year I’ve been involved – from a quicky brainstorm chip-in to new business pitch, to a couple of months strategic lead (see point 3 here) – with at least 12 different projects. So rather than having long months to learn every aspect of a client/brand I have something between 2 hours to 2 weeks to learn/interrogate everything I can on a particular subject. And that personally what makes me tick – to learn everything I can on a particular market / brand / behaviour in a fairly short period of time.
From books to fashion to food to pregnancy to climate change to personal banking to luxury good (to name but a few) I’m always excited when I need to dive into something rather new to me which I don’t have much knowledge about to the point of being able to say something clever strategically as well as creatively on how to make people’s interaction / experience with this brand / field better.
I guess that it is a bit of a counter reaction to my previous life where I focused in ultimate depth on one thing, and perhaps in the future I’ll change my mind and I would like to stay close to one business for a long period of time. For now, I really enjoy hoping from one project to another, learning new things on a daily basis and opening my mind to lots of new stuff.
What do you most like about your job?
I most like the working relationship I have with my colleague. Over the years we have developed into a strong academic partnership. We share an office which has given us the opportunity to share many hours of discussion, exchanging ideas and coming up with projects. He has the same philosophy and values as I do but thinks in a completely different way – it’s like having 2 brains! The best thing is that we always spend a proportion of the day in fits of laughter as we seem to need it to get creative! He’s a bit crazy at the moment as he has his PhD viva in 2 weeks, but that’s pretty normal!