John G.
About me
| John G. | |
| Psychology | |
| Psychology | |
| Taught Postgraduate | |
| 1999 | |
| United Kingdom |
My employment
| Associate Planning Director (Experience Planning) | |
| Dare | |
| United Kingdom | |
| Advertising, marketing and PR | |
| 2008 |
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A day in the life of a Associate Planning Director (Experience Planning) in the United Kingdom
My career history
My full career history is on LinkedIn > uk.linkedin.com/in/johngibbard/
Where I hope to be in 5 years
Board-level recognition internally and externally perceived as an industry leader in behaviour change and experience planning.
My advice to students considering work
Intern, intern, intern. Work your friends and family contact books, speculatively make a nuisance of yourself and get in the doors of the most creative agencies you can find. Produce and demonstrate your innovative thinking through a blog and social media, so that when we Google for you you have a clearly visible profile and valuable perspective. Ordinary, shy and uninformed will not cut it.
My advice about working in my industry
Intern, intern, intern. Work your friends and family contact books, speculatively make a nuisance of yourself and get in the doors of the most creative agencies you can find. Produce and demonstrate you innovative thinking through a blog and social, so that when we google for you you have a clearly visible profile and valuable perspective. Ordinary, shy and uninformed will not cut it.
What I do
My role requires me to plan the experience that brands and organisations wish to have with their audience. Put simply, this means I define the journeys that people go on with organisations like BMW, Cancer Research and Aviva all the way from the initial communications, store visits right the way through to the purchase or engagement with their products and services. This involves wireframing websites, mapping-out service experiences, researching human behaviour and running workshops to explore a huge range of creative opportunities in influencing people.
Skills I use and how I developed them
A definite combination of two relevant degrees and post-graduation experience in the field of user-centred design.
Extracurricular skills:
Transferable generic skills in time management, assertiveness, presentation skills and so on were an essential pre-requisite for a job in a media but most savvy students could be expected to demonstrate competency here.
What I like most
The client-orientated variety. One minute I might be working on the launch of a revolutionary electric car for BMW, the next minute helping to change the behaviour of people who want to donate to Cancer Research. It's a hugely creative and energetic place to work populated by a mixture of enthusiastic 20-somethings and planet-brained grey-haired Ad-agency types.
What I like least
The constant need to be on-top of trends, technology and general innovation. The project-orientated culture can feel shallow and the hours can be intolerably anti-social as you get older and have more extensive out-of-work commitments.
What would I change? Very little, perhaps the wider marketing industry's tendency to work in cycles of short-term (campaign-orientated) gain rather than seek long-term relationships and behaviour change. Personally I might have sought more opportunities to do short-term design-orientated courses and do more public speaking.
Next steps...
If you like the look of John’s profile, the next steps are down to you! You can send John a message to find out more about their career journey. If you feel you would benefit from more in-depth conversations, ask John to be your mentor.