Tuesday 11 May 2010

Office Characters #5


The Planner drone:
There are many people in media for which this is the normal attire. Jeans, brown shoes and bad polo shirt (sometimes stripy shirt).
It's called smart casual apparently but I like to call it 'dad wear'
Media planners inherently love numbers above genuine reasoning. I heard a description recently that people can be 'maximisers' or 'selectors'. Maximisers want the most from life, and if they were in a shop would look at everything adding the items the wanted. Selectors want a limited choice, they are too narky and closed minded to spend more than one minute choosing, so they want a narrowed down choice.
Well, to be a planner, you have to be a selector. You get a lot of offers thrown at you and have a lot of information to digest. So you have to be impressed to even bother listening to someone. These office drones wield power over people who work for other companies. They are the clients, and love to make that fact known.
Planners don't get much chance for creative though process, machines and computer systems take care of that. Just make sure you don't get blamed for a numerical error, planners can never bear the blame they will try it on!
They tell their mates that they are the cool ones who make the decision for Coke, the BBC etc, and talk about how frustrating it is that the Times keep wanting to take them out to the Ivy. But usually, they live in drab London suburbs like Reigate or Croydon where they can afford houses and shop almost exclusively through the Cotton Traders catalogue. It's not my cup of tea.