The Weekly Wrap - Mark Gorman, Think hard

I loved Roger Williams’ opening comment in his article about the Scottish Government roster announcement. “So, there it is.”  A nice touch of understatement after a particularly long haul.  I’m not going to get caught up in the rights and wrongs of it all or even speculate on who and why, but I do know that an awful good friend of mine shed many tears on reading the announcement.  It really is that important.  However, the bottom line is that we in Scotland can get back to normal, whatever that is in the wake of the announcement.

On Thursday the SMA held its swansong event, in its current guise that is. A new body will be emerging from the SMA and The Marketeer Association that I hope will make both even stronger. Plans will be revealed very soon.  Anyway, the final event was a fantastic talk by top planner Katrina Michel, of Planning Express in which she presented the 12 books you need to read to ‘busk it’ in planning.  She claims she’s read all the rest and they’re rubbish.  If you couldn’t be there I’m sure you’ll find the article that she inspired in the Drum archives or in a recent back issue.  Read all about it I say.

I had a meeting with a really interesting guy, Tom Holmes of creativebrief, who showed a real passion to bringing new business into the regions and, lo and behold, Mediacom pop up with a £10m digital media win for Sportingbet - organised by creativebrief!  Good work and great to see big budgets placed in the regions.

Uncle Carl is really getting into his stride as Agency Agony Uncle.  He really makes me laugh.  In fact I was sent an email from a colleague last week with one of his particularly opinionated answers pasted into it.  “Opinions are like arseholes, we all have them.” he says. Fantastic.  Keep it coming Uncle.  It’s also nice to see unreserve profanity in The Drum without any fucking ast****s.  There.  I’ve done it too.  Come on you lot.  Join in.  Let’s see press releases that say  MD of Agency X, on winning Client Y, said “We’re fucking delighted.”

During the week I pitched for a piece of business that wasn’t supposed to be a pitch and I won a piece of business that turned out not to be a piece of business.  Just a normal week in pisstake Britain then.

And Woolies went bust.  That’s the wonder!