This presentation was made to students and advertising interns interested to consider the career path of a Strategic Planner. Also included within this slide deck are my speaking notes as many off-slide points were also made.

1. SO YOU
THINK
YOU CAN
STRAT

2. What we could talk about…
• What’s the average?
• What’s great?
• What…me?

3. What we could talk about…
• What’s the average?: Learn P.P.T
• What’s great?: Hear T.M.I
• What…me?: Take NOT3S

4. What’s the average?
• Pay
• Progress
• Time

5. What’s great?
Choosing the Right Job
The right attitude
ALWAYS comes
before the right job.

6. M
eaningful
experiences
ransportable
skills
T
nspiring
relationshipsI
What’s great?
Choosing the Right Job

7. • Problem solving: Ability to assess a business problem and create
a plan
• Communications: Ability to write and speak persuasively
• Selling: Ability to sell, negotiate, and close a deal
• Analysis: Ability to look at a set of data and draw important
insights
• Team: Ability to mobilise a team to accomplish a meaningful
goal
• Talent: Ability to attract and develop good talent around you
• Risk & judgment: Ability to make decisions and take appropriate
risks.
About: “Transportable Skills”
Job-seekers list: Change “Ability” to “Opportunity”
Credit: Brian Fethersonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne

8. About: “Meaningful Experiences”

9. About: “Meaningful Experiences”
Speaker notes
• The ones that will be most meaningful to
you is the ones you will remember the
most.
• The ones you remember the most will be
the ones that results in the strongest
emotions.
• And the moments eliciting the strongest
emotions comes from great success AND
great failures.
• Do I focus on my strengths? An advise
that is more relevant once you have LOTS
of experience (read: at least 15 years of
working experience)
• Invest!: When starting out, you need to
invest in "experiences." Fail often. It's the
time to do it. Just make sure you learn
from it. Each and every time.

10. About: “Inspiring Relationships”
Be somewhere
you find somebody
you wish to be someday.

11. AGENCY
NON-AGENCY
Expert
By Experience
• Planning Executive
• Planning Manager
• Senior Planning Manager
• Assoc. Planning Director
• Planning Director
• Group Planning Director
• Regional Planning Director
By Expertise
• By client industry
• By consumer segment
• By functional area
What’s great?: Path of possibilities

12. “What…me?”

13. “But I Can’t…”
Don’t define your
final destination
based on how
much fuel you
have in the car.

14. “But I Can’t…”
Life’s fuel is
Experiences.

15. NOT
Sure
“You should be in Planning if you are…”
“But I Can’t…”
Gambling, credit
cards, grooming/beauty
products, cars, telecommunications,
Government e-procurement
systems, facilities like racing
circuits, nation branding
(tourism), executive
education, sweetened condensed
milk, cinema, lubricants, F1, electroni
cs, pharmaceuticals

16. “But I Can’t…”
Speaker notes
• Planning offers you the
opportunity to be exposed to
many client industries.
• Here’s a snapshot of
categories I’ve had the
opportunity of working on…

17. NOT
“Smart”
“You should be in Planning if you are…”
“But I Can’t…”

18. “But I Can’t…”
Speaker notes
• "Planners know less and less about more
and more" (vs. traditional professionals who
know more and more about less and less)
• So we'll always be "not smart" in something
(and it's OK as long as we do something
about that)
• Always keep a "rubber band" mindset of
your abilities. Failures and mistakes will
happen (even for people in PIXAR)
• Be aware of self-fulfilling prophesy (absolute
descriptions of yourself). You are what you
say you are. Beliefs --> Actions -->
Outcomes
• Be sensitive to your own passions - follow
that passion extensively - apply your passion
as a lens to solve work challenges
("Confessions of a shopaholic")

19. NOT
Sherlock
“You should be in Planning if you are…”
“But I Can’t…”

20. “But I Can’t…”
Speaker notes
• "Not good at coming up with
solutions to problems"?
• It's OK - then be the best damn
DIAGNOSTICIAN you can be (think:
House MD)
• Craft problems in a way that will
allow for a solution
• The quality of the solutions we come
up with will be in direct proportion to
the quality of the description of the
problem we're trying to solve.

21. Final Words
It’s not WHO you are
but WHAT you do
with who you are
that matters most.
Speaker notes
• Nick Vujicic: Man with no arms or legs can
play football, swim and surf
• There may be a 100 things you can’t do.
But make the decision to focus on the
tens or hundreds of thousands of things
you CAN do.