A while back the IPA asked me to deliver the graduation keynote to the grads who had completed the IPA Search Summer School. They asked me to talk to them about the future and my advice for their careers moving forward.

One of my many learnings from my WPP mentor Jeremy Bullmore is to treat every audience regardless of level with time and respect. So I sat down and did some serious thinking about the world of Search and the skills that I thought the discipline unlocked.

This is where I netted out - I think that these Search grads are the Chief Strategy Officers of tomorrow.

Why do I think that?

This slide tries to sum up why:

In a nutshell I think that the grads who are immersed in the world of Search have a better understanding of Brands, Technology, People and Culture than anyone else in the agency world.

The old traditional view of a Planner is someone who understands the consumer and represents them as the agency develops work. This could be done through focus groups, research panel information, ethnographic studies etc. But the fact is that its through the words that people type into Google that give you the best sense of a brand's health. Search terms capture people's inner-most feelings in a way that focus groups never do. So these grads have their finger on the pulse in an utterly unparalleled way.

So keep an eye out for the IPA Search Grads of 2012 and if you have a Search division in your agency and you don't know the guys who are working there, then make it your new years resolution to go and take them out for coffee and find out more about what they do and what they think.

My bet is that you'll be talking to a CSO of tomorrow.

I love pitches.

I love the adrenaline.

I love the tension.

I love the brutal focus on a client problem and  the relentless concentration on a strategic and creative solution.

I love working out how best to tell the story that sells the strategy and creative ideas.

I've wanted to meet David Magliano since reading the chapter on the London 2012 bid in Jon Steel's excellent book, Perfect Pitch (best book I have read on how to pitch and win) David's pitch strategy for the bid is a world-class example. He talked at an event at the IPA on the 27th as part of their "Pitching Legends" series. What a speaker! If you ever get the chance to go and hear him talk move mountains to do so - you really won't regret it.

I am going to try and encapsulate his story and share what I took out.

The first thing that David asked the audience to do was to think about the audience, the members of the IOC. He wanted us to put themselves in their shoes. He then showed us the first 30' of each potential host cities opening video - Paris, Rio, Madrid, Moscow, New York and finally London. Each video felt like a love story to a city - beautiful, stirring, emotional. Expansive cityscape shots, fly over views and smiling friendly people. London on the other hand started with footage of a sprinter at the beginning of a race and then showed the story going backwards to that moment when as young child in Africa this boy was inspired by grainy footage that he was seeing on a TV screen of London 2012. This wasn't a film selling a city, this was a film selling a vision - a vision of using the power of a London games to inspire young people all over the world to choose sport, a vision of re-connecting the ideals of the Olympic movement to millions of young people and a vision of legacy. It dramatized a problem and showcased a solution.

It still amazes me that so often agencies still choose to start their pitch with their credentials, Magliano calls it "the plumbing." He said "I trust that you have offices in the right place." Get to the heart of your thought right from the start, build that emotional connection from the outset, show you understand the problem, demonstrate empathy and understanding and then work from there.

The London 2012 bid script was so tight, each word was important. not a single word was extraneous. There was one phrase in particular that I just loved: "As leaders we have a duty to reach beyond our own time and borders." It's beautiful, like poetry even. It also makes the audience feel that its not a choice between cities, its a vote for the belief in the lasting legacy that the Games can bring. "What city," they asked, "has the vision that best serves the Olympic vision?"

In the Q&A David was asked how they could prove that London was more likely to inspire young people than New York or Paris. David's response was fascinating. "We didn't have to prove it because no-one else claimed it." I asked whether any other city had a similar singled minded thought that there pitch was based on, he said no and that they all  had multiple messages and all sold the city, not an aspiration.

Some other take outs - Authentic stories not just research facts: Seb's story of being 12 and being taken in a school hall to watch the Mexico City Olympics was hugely moving because it was authentic and because it turned Seb into a walking case study of what the London 2012 team were hoping to achieve around the world. Seb also talked about the fact that his heros were Olympics, "my children's heros change every month." Every parents or grandparent in the IOC must have been nodding along. 'But we must understand and respond to their world."

Know your audiences and tailor your messages: On the night before the bid the London 2012 team had a list of the floating voters (mainly the South Americans) who they needed to convert. Blair took a suite on the 55th floor of the convention centre and as each floating voter was coming up in the lift, he was being texted to say what hot buttons to push. Did this IOC member care most about the legacy in the UK of their particular sport, were they passionate about sustainability, did their grandchild just want a kick around with Beckham. They had all the options covered.

Ownership: Let one person write the script of the pitch, the "narrative arch", rather than each presenter write their own little bit and then worry how to piece it together. Its one story, with different parts voiced by different people. Think of it like a script for a play.

It was a night of illuminating anecdotes about the pitch - for example, when London and Paris when back into the conference hall to find out the result there were 57 photographers stationed in front of the Parisian team and only 3 in front of the London team, apparently in some TV footage you see photographers fighting and scrambling to get over to get pictures of the victors, so utterly convinced was everyone that Paris had won. David talked about the fact that they used images of Tony and Cherie Blair at the opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Games, because Chirac and Bush had both decided that post 2001 the security risks were too great and had not gone. Simply by showing this image as part of a much longer film the IOC were being subtly reminded that GB was always an active supporter of the Olympic movement. Fascinating. Final anecdote, the strategy about inspiring a generation actually came out of an insight into a business problem that the IOC had, namely an aging TV viewing population which was less attractive for broadcasters and advertisers, so originally the strategy had been to get more young people watch the Games than ever before. It was Seb who made the strategic leap to say that actually its not about getting young people viewing, its about getting young people viewing.

I will find out if the event was videoed and post a link if it was.

Great night!

 

I was running a "behind the scenes in advertising" mentoring session today with a group of sixth form students. I really enjoy doing things like this, it reminds me why I love the industry I am in. It is so easy to get bogged down in the day to day, the niggles and the frustrations that occur in our world of advertising/media/PR etc but when you have to tell a smart bunch of teenagers, who smell bullshit from 100m, what it is that is that makes your chosen profession so exciting it forces you to look up from your desk and remember the good bits. And there are so many good bits!

One of the things that we covered in our session today was presenting and how to engage an audience and tell stories that sell - sell a strategy, an idea or a campaign. One of the students presented to us and to illustrate his point he said, "you know that feeling when you have priority boarding on an aeroplane and you walk past everyone else in the queue and you just feel so special and a bit smug. That's the feeling that we want to bring to life." We just sat there nodding because we all know that feeling. And half the battle of any pitch type presentation is getting your audience onside and nodding. I was trying to think of the best example to give to the students and I still think that the Don Draper "Carousel" example is one of the very best examples that I can think of.

If you haven't seen it recently, take a look again. It's pitch genius.