Tag Archive for Jonathan Wakeham

Blatant plug for AQR’s Bring It!

Booking now open for AQR’s ‘Bring It’

How do YOU enter a room? Do you ever find yourself watching other people present and wish YOU could swagger around the stage like you own it? Do you know what first impression you make? Find out how to be more confident, charismatic and memorable with performance coach Charlotte Austin.
I know you think you can’t draw. But you can. And not only can you draw but you can get better, quicker and more concise in your ability to distil a single thought into just that great one-liner. Learn how with marketing cartoonist Jake Goretzki.
Co-Founder of the London Comedy Film Festival (LoCo) and screenplay writer Jonathan Wakeham will get us thinking about how we tell stories and how we can tell them better by following some simple rules of genre, character, plot and action. Debrief as Spaghetti Western? You got it.
Even the term cliché is a cliché. Nick Southgate’s bag of tricks will help us unleash our inner creative beasts and think outside our boxes as we turn idea into insight. Feel the fear and do it anyway. What goes around comes around and you’ll never take language for granted again.
Finally, Datch Datchens (really), copy-writer at Saatchi & Saatchi will pit us against the clock to create memorable, snappy, meaningful descriptions of brands. You think they just sit and drink martinis all day. Well, maybe they do, but we can all sip with them.
During Bring It we’ll all be challenged to make weird noises, weird shapes and use words we tend to forget when we write our debriefs. It’ll get us thinking harder, being more confident and ultimately, remembering that we do is a lot more creative than sometimes we give it credit for. It’s not often we get to spend a day with such inspiring, charismatic and clever people…and that includes you…so come along.

Friday 18th May, 9:00pm – 6:00pm
Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre
108 Stamford St, SE1 9HN (a few minutes walk from Waterloo)

£210+VAT for AQR members and £350+VAT for non-AQR members (includes 1 year of membership)

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Session leaders include:
Charlotte Austin is a Performance and Development Consultant to some very swanky people indeed, including creative agency AKQA, the BBC and the Ministry of Justice.
If she can get chap from the Ministry miming ‘climbing the stairs’ and ‘opening the gate’ (with sound effects), then she can do anything. Seriously though, her expertise lies in helping you do things, say things and BE things you didn’t know you could be.

Jonathan Wakeham is the co-founder of LoCo and the London Comedy FIlm Festival at BFI Southbank. He was an advertising planner in a past life (AMV, St Lukes)
and has worked with entertainment companies including Disney, Discovery, the BBC, ITV and Random House, and is a director of Arts Emergency and Camden People’s Theatre. His screenplay The Nile will be directed by Susanna White. He’s still trying to work out whether he’s a man or a Muppet.

Nick Southgate is the IPA’s very special advisor when it comes to all things Behavioural Economics. But fear not (or I’m sorry), we’re going to be borrowing his skills as a ‘thinker’ for this course.
He’s a philosopher, a planner, a lover of art. And he teaches people ‘how to be cool’ at the School of Life.
You never know, if we stand close enough, some of it might just rub off on us.

Datch is an enigma. A man for whom only one name is sufficient. And whose surname is Datchens. Proof that some traditions in ad agencies are still upheld, he is a copywriter
who has worked alongside his art director partner (Reuben) since before they got their first ‘creative pair’ job at RPM (they’re now the hot stuff at Saatchi’s).

Jake Goretzki is a freelance researcher and consultant but that’s not why he’s Bringing It with us. He’s also a satirical cartoonist and illustrator, specialising in cartoons that lampoon,
reflect, challenge our marketing ways. Can’t think where he gets his inspiration from.

To Book: complete and return attached form or book online at http://www.aqr.org.uk/calendar/info.shtml?event=TC12BI

MRS Conference 2012: The Book Club reading list

For anyone curious, the list of books discussed at the very first Research Book Club that launched at the annual MRS Conference last week:

Andrew Bradley (ThinkBritain) read ’1984′ by George Orwell, though I doubt I needed to tell you that
But he ALSO read his bosses book, Talking to a Brick Wall by Deborah Mattinson.
Jonathan Wakeham (Co-founder of LoCo) read ‘Comedy Rules’ by Jonathan Lynn
Layla Northern (Boots) read ‘Nickel and Dimed’ by Barbara Ehrenreich
Rose Van Orden (BBC) read ‘The Trusted Advisor’ David H. Maister, Robert Galford and Charles Green

Honourable mentions from the floor:

‘The e-Myth’, Michael E. Gerber, about entrepreneurs
‘Presentation Zen’, Garr Reynolds, which is attached to a good website
‘Influence and the Power of Persuasion’ Robert Cialdini
‘The Listen Lady’ F. Annie Pettit – about social media and market research
‘Nixonland’, Rick Perlstein
‘Never had it so good – a history of Britain from Suez to the Beatles’, Dominic Sandbrook
‘Capital’ John Lanchester
‘The Game’ Neil Strauss – about becoming world’s greatest pick-up artist

For details about how to sign up to come along to the next MRS Book Club go to http://www.mrs.org.uk/event/course/535. There are 2 coming up – the 20th April and 15th June. Turn up with some thoughts on something you’ve read and we’ll take it from there.

Chloe

PS. And with MASSIVE thanks to Rose who actually had the foresight to take notes during the session. My failing utterly. I was nervous and excited and realised (too late) that my pen was on the other side of the room. It won’t happen again.

How to write better – Pimp up your Qual

You know when you’ve been planning something for months and months and then it happens and you think, ‘what took me so long?’ That’s how I feel today, a day after the fabulous (though I say it myself) Creative Writing Meets Qual Research course that I had the pleasure of organising for the AQR.

The premise was simple. I wanted to devise a course that took qual researchers OUT OF research for a day and to spend some time being inspired by writers (not researchers). So much of what we do is written and yet I don’t think enough of us spend enough time thinking about HOW we write, as opposed to WHAT we write.

We had 4 speakers:
Joanna Pocock, a writer and creative writing tutor. She took us through the ‘rules’ of good and bad writing – watch out for those stretches, thickeners and all that jazz.
Jonathan Wakeham, a freelance planner, currently writing various screenplays. He used film as an example of how drama’s tell a great story. We were challenged to create and pitch a film in less than 25 words and in little more than 25 minutes.
Robert Bain, features editor of Research Magazine. We were reminded that good editing is as important as good writing and we practised writing better headlines.
Nick Southgate, freelance planner and tutor at the School of Life. Nick gave a whistlestop tour of Oulipo and got us committing ‘vowel-icide’, writing Haiku’s and writing like Martian’s sending a postcard home. Yup.

35 attendees: loads of different research agencies: champagne: blunt pencils: pigeons: popes and the complete opposite of writer’s block.

So, what next?!

Chloe