A Bright Day in November

On a bright Autumnal day late in 2022, the current IPA Excellence Diploma cohort met at The Curzon Cinema in The Brunswick Centre near Russell Square to present their final “I Believe” assignment.

A more suitable venue is hard to think of. The Brunswick Centre was being built at around the same time that Stanley Pollit and Stephen King were formalising the discipline of Account Planning. The building is also a shining example of Brutalist Architecture. A style which RIBA suggests is characterised by “an emphasis on materials, textures and construction to produce highly expressive forms”, a description which could equally apply to the marking criteria of the Diploma itself.

The session on the 30th November, not unlike a mini TED conference, is a new addition to the curriculum. Candidates were given a maximum of 15 minutes to present their final thesis to an audience of agency leaders and Diploma ‘faculty’ and alumni. The presentation counting for 20% of the marks available for their thesis. As a result, there is an element of jeopardy for those presenting. This is not a ceremonial affair, their performance matters.

It would be impossible to do each of the 12 presentations justice here, but some clear themes emerged across the course of the day.

1/ Sustainability is the dominant concern for the next generation of Brand thinkers

From new ways of thinking about ethics, to greater representation and inclusion within the agency world, to the environmental and societal cost of the advertising industry ‘doing business’, a sizeable proportion of the presentations concerned themselves with addressing issues broadly associated to the topic of sustainability.

Given it’s prevalence in industry discourse, it was telling that many of the presentations managed to deal with issues related to sustainability whilst niftily avoiding ‘purpose’. Having said this, one of my favourite presentations of the day lent heavily into this topic, only to undercut it. In doing so, the presenter questioned the reasons and the value of our colleactive obsession with doing good in the world.

2/ Some metaphors have an almost inescapable gravity

A major part of the Diploma is originality: originality of thought, originality of expression and originality of application. There was an abundance of original thinking on display over the course of the presentations. But, having said this, many of the metaphors used by delegates were ones which Diploma students and indeed, industry figures more broadly, routinely rely on to communicate their thinking. Try as we might to find new and novel ideas, it would seem that the metaphors and similes we use to either establish or solve those problems, remain quite consistent. Nature and Biology, Space and Time, Human relationships, Religion and Spirituality all feature during the day. Look back through Diploma essays of old and you’ll find these have all featured quite regularly. In some ways this is entirely understandable; these presentations are trying to persuade. As Rob Estreitinho said in one of his newsletters this year, metaphors are powerful in helping communicate a challenge but also contextualising the reponse too. Metaphors help reduce complexity and enhance the audience’s ability to understand what is being said.

Genuine originality though, is tough. And maybe we’re at the stage where we can all admit, that perhaps there are no new ideas anymore, just new expresssions. Everything is a remix. But, as I’ll come back to shortly, the presenters routinely ensured that their own personal experiences, their own lives and their own cultural references were woven heavily into their thinking. This elevated those familiar metaphors and frames of reference and imbued them with freshness, gravitas and energy. This is a feature which the presentation format allows more acutely than an essay submission alone. To be successful, the audience had to buy into the person as much as the provocation.

3/ Media thinking (and Media thinkers) is more important than ever before

Having spent the majority of my career working in Media Agencies, it’s a small point of pride that media businesses provided the majority of candidates in this years intake. Historically, Wavemaker (formerly MEC) have been keen supporters of the course, as have Omnicom agencies.

It can on occassion feel like media thinking has been diminished by the empiricism of Binet, Field and Sharp. What we might have called creativity in media thinking has been reduced to a formula: reach + recency equaling success. Whilst I’m not going to challenge these sacred texts, increasingly the sums just don’t add up in media for many marketers. The current challenges facing brand owners - media fragmentation, media cost inflation and brand safety - are media challenges, rather than purely ‘creative’ or brand orientated ones and so strong representation on the Diploma from media agencies is important. I’m a firm believer we need to start thinking about media differently. We need a broader definition of what we consider to be media and advertising. We need to get better at thinking about how we start the process, placing more emphasis on a brand’s owned channels. We need to be rethinking ‘reach’. A number of the presentation used these structural challenges as their jumping off point, calling for brand owners to question the doctrine of broad reach at all costs or think about how it can be modified for a high cost/low reach context.

CEOs and Training and Development leads at media agencies should continue to prioritise this course. Similarly, other types of agencies could benefit from sending their people as well. It’s a great forum for your best and brightest to learn the foundations of brand strategy and brand building, it provides a forum for your people to develop thinking which you can apply with your clients and it represents a significant marketing opportunity too.

4/ Application, application, application

Beyond originality, the other thing the Diploma requires of it’s delegates is to demonstrate how their thinking is to be applied: To show how the candidate’s belief will help brands plot a course to a more profitable, vibrant and successful future.

If there was a small criticism to be levyed at the delegates it is that broadly, they collectively spent far more time setting up their provocations than they did resolving them. As I remarked in my post about the Diploma at the beginning of last year: Insight is nothing without execution. The Diploma challenges people to create applicable solutions to the problems that are identified. This is a valuable lesson to any strategist. Clients don’t necessarily pay us to do situational analysis. In fact, in many instances they will understand the context around a brief better than we will. Go back to Chekhov - if you place a gun on the mantel in act one, it has to go off in act three.

The best presenters on the day manage this dynamic well. The formula required is 40% set up, 60% resolution. Not the other way round. Less context. Less provocation. More solution. More application.

5/ We need more forums like this

I came away from the session energised and a great deal more optimistic and enthused about the world of our work than I went in. It was the first time, since the outbreak of COVID, that I’d been able to sit in a conference room with other people and for a whole day absorb fresh ideas and thinking.

At the start of my career, at the advent of Web 2.0, there was a thing called the ‘plannersphere’. It was a constellation of blogs run primarily by planners and strategists working in communications agencies. Their posts discussed new models of brand building, new theories of how planning and strategy should work… It was an amazing time. It was a time that personally, was filled with energy and optimism and excitement about what advertising was and indeed what it could be. For one reason or another, blogging and the plannersphere faded slowly. I’ve written about that before, here. There were even real life manifestations of the online discourse which made up this time - events such as The APGs ‘Battle of the Big Thinking’ or Russell Davies’ Interesting Conference (which returned last year after a five year hiatus).

This session felt incredibly reminiscent of that time and those events. A forum for ideas. A forum for people to offer opinions and a forum for inspiration. As an industry we need to find a way back to this type of thing more often. I’m not advocating for what Byron Sharp might consider mystical quackery - but so many industry conferences now dwell either on what people have done (glossy case studies) or re-presenting data and evidence (what we know). Listening to people’s beliefs and their opinions was invigorating and enlightening. On several occassions during the day, course leads Amelia Torode and Sera Holland remarked that the quality of the thinking was such that the IPA could have charged for tickets. I think that next time round, they should.

I believe… in the IPA Excellence Diploma

I’ve talked at length, both here and in previous posts, about my gratitude and affection for the Diploma. It was a pivotal experience in my career. It continues to offer value through the community around the course which has emerged.

For any strategist - young, old, in media, advertising or elsewhere, there is a significant amount of value to be had in taking part. The evolution of the course syllabus, to include more performative elements such as the one discussed above is good to see. Requiring candidates to stand on stage and present their beliefs (and then defend them at a Viva the week after) adds a layer of jeopardy which essay based assessment alone lacked.

At a time when there is so much pessimism in the industry, It was encouraging and fortifying to see the next generation of brand thinkers stand up and present their work - the sessions offered a glimmer of hope for a future full of new thinking and indeed, new thinkers.

If you’re interested in doing the Diploma - find more information here.