So, to give us more of a flavour of the debate around advertising and sustainability here’s a planner who has recently left his day job to focus on sustainability full time, Jonathan Wise. Jonathan worked as a planner for 15 years, the majority of it at JWT. He left Red Bee (where he won an IPA Gold for the Dave rebrand, among other things) to pursue a variety of different sustainability-related experiences from living alone in a wood for a month, working with WWF, and living with a Maori community.

So from his gently rocking couch on a shared houseboat, over to you Mr Wise…

Why do you feel sustainability is so important?

Sustainability, to me, is about being able to live the lives we want without compromising the ability of future generations to lead the lives they want. Given how quickly we’re heating the planet and chewing through the world’s resources, the future’s not looking too great. So, it’s a question to what degree do you feel responsible for this, and how are you able to act?

What has advertising got to do with sustainability?

A lot. The recent WWF report ‘Think of me as Evil?’ (title based on a Rory Sutherland quote) raises some serious ethical and moral questions that the advertising industry needs to address. In particular, a large amount of advertising appeals to ‘extrinsic’ values; namely it appeals to our desire to be different and stand out. For starters, most fashion, car, fragrance, mobile phone and technology advertising fits in here. The problem is that when a person concentrates more on satisfying ‘extrinsic’ values they care less about others and the environment. The advertising industry needs to decide what it’s going to do about this. Doing nothing is not the right answer.

Is it even possible for the advertising industry to behave in a way that supports sustainability?

There’s a massive opportunity for advertising to do the right thing. The report highlights how influential advertising is in shaping what we value and so, as Peter Parker’s uncle said ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. It’s therefore a question of how we can harness and direct the creative power of the industry to help us all think and act more sustainably.

Is any of this happening at the moment?

What’s interesting is that there are already examples of people taking it upon themselves to do something powerful and meaningful. So, Dan Burgess setting up the ‘Good for Nothing’ weekends and Sophie Dollar and the ‘OFF/ON’ campaign. The question is how you take that sort of passion, thinking and creativity and apply it to clients or into society as a whole? If we can do that, then we might just be able to save the world.

Do you think that as a planner, having a deep understanding of sustainability issues makes you more employable?

Part of being a planner is understanding the big forces changing society and determining how a brand and its communications should adjust to those changes. To me, sustainability is one of those forces. Further, in my experience, encouraging people to act more sustainably requires a significant cultural and psychological shift – so planners are perfectly placed to advise companies and brands on how they can lead consumers to a more sustainable future.

Current Title / Job Description:

I am about to go on maternity leave, but my current title is Head of Strategy and Innovation (in a few weeks it will be mum / general household dogsbody)

Who has been your biggest influence:

Jeremy Bullmore who as my mentor at WPP when I was a WPP Fellow from 1997 – 2000. Just the wisest and nicest man in advertising. Devour every book and article that he has ever written. Likewise with Jon Steel who was Planning Director at Berlin Cameron / Red Cell in New York – his books are essential reading in my opinion.

What’s your best interview question?

I usually ask people to tell me about something they’re passionate about outside of advertising.

What’s the worst question you’ve ever been asked in an interview?

So many painfully bad questions that I have simply thrown them out of my mind.

What piece of career advice would you give  to a younger you?

Remember to work out what makes you different to everyone else interviewing for the same job.

And here’s someone else extolling its virtues in no uncertain terms:

Daily Muse – Words to strike from your resume

If anyone is interested in getting some CV guidance, we’re always happy to help. Just don’t expect us to be anything less than brutal if you’re starting with five pages. We also have a one-page ‘Copper CV Clinic’ guide – get in touch if you’d like a copy (info@copperlondon.co.uk)

Young creatives hijacking twitter to find themselves a job. Good on them. Brilliantly simple.

twitter Job Hustle

Title

Joint Head of Strategy, Mother London

Who has been your biggest influence?

My bosses. John Poorta at Leos, Dave Cobban at W+K, Dylan and Bob at Mother. I’ve been lucky I think.

What’s the best idea you’ve seen recently?

http://girlsmakinggunsounds.com

What’s your best interview question?

Now that I’m done grilling you, are there any questions you’d like to ask me?

What’s the worst question you’ve ever been asked in an interview?

I was trying to get into Cambridge and the Professor of evolutionary biology presented me with a box of dessicated crab parts and asked me if I could reassemble it. Then he turned over an egg timer and said ‘You have three minutes’.

What piece of career advice would you give a younger you?

The days you feel guilty about because you just spent them talking to people are actually the days you will do your best work.

(Copper takes full responsibility for the terrible picture, Loz is actually older now but much better looking).

North Kingdom were started, and still have their head office in a town called Skelleftea, way up in the North of Sweden. A town with only 30,000 inhabitants, and so far away from Stockholm that very few Swedish clients would work with them because it was too remote (their founding clients, conversely, were in places like San Francisco, London and Tokyo). Agencies here in London worry about whether they can attract talent to Hackney or West Kensington, yet these guys have managed to build a world-renowned agency in the Swedish equivalent of Aberdeen.

How they did this didn’t seem to be that complicated. Their passion for their projects and creative output was evident, and they talked about doing ‘good stuff, which makes money, so that you give yourself the freedom to do good stuff’. And for most people who choose to work in this industry, which after all leaves them over-worked and under-paid, it is still because they want to do ‘good stuff’. If you set the right agenda, and care about what your do, then clients will come, and good people will naturally be drawn to you too.

Apparently in Sweden once you’ve employed somebody it’s almost impossible to fire them, and so they have no choice but to get the best out of people once they’re there – and conversely I suspect it’s this ‘need’ that helps them retain the good ones too. They talked alot about working hard to realise people’s potential – be that employees or local companies they worked with on specific projects: ‘finding frogs and turning them into princes’. They also talked about embracing failure – creating a culture that is experimental and takes big risks to do great things but also sometimes falling flat. And they talked about lots of things they do to make North Kingdom feel like a team, or probably more accurately a family – from not wearing shoes to having a symbolic ‘camp fire’ in the office in Stockholm that they could sit around and tell stories (although they can’t light it very often as it smokes out the office).

Lovely people, great work, lots of passion. Great to see them all together under one roof.

Title
Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis UK

Who has been your biggest influence?
All the people I worked with at BMP DDB who taught me that quality of work and quality of ideas is everything. And all the people I worked with on Virgin who taught me the art of challenger branding.

What’s the best idea you’ve seen recently?
Chrysler’s Imported from Detroit. Brand ideas are so much deeper when they come from the crude fundamental truths of a brand.

What’s your best interview question?
I give people the chance to say something original. if you say something I haven’t thought of before, you’re through to the next round.

What’s the worst question you’ve ever been asked in an interview?
“Why did you ask to see me?” (From someone who had asked to see me)

What piece of career advice would you give to a younger you?
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. So choose and agency where you think you’re most likely to succeed inside that culture.

Tom’s blog on brand, culture and politics: Tom Morton blog