I was lucky enought to meet Ed Cotton, Planning Director of BSSP and Influx fame. I was late for our meeting, sorry Ed.

We talked about the quality of UK and US advertising, blog tracking, the ubiquitous Piers Fawkes, junior planners and blogging, apathy to new media from agencies, Zidane's headbutt, the decline of the TV spot and the rise of the 'idea'. I wish I was as prepared as Paul and had an mp3 recorder to hand.

We also touched on creative spaces and Ed mentioned that BSSP's planners, inspired by IDEO, have a wall which they will curate and put up interesting images, articles etc so that creatives can 'find' inpiration rather than being spoon fed it by the planning team.

Another interesting conversation centered on the self-fulfilling prophecies of some trend spotting agencies. For example, those with the ear of major content producing corporations such as the BBC can be influenced by a trend agencies whim and base their content around an artificial trend, this in turn influences other content providers and opinion leaders in a traditional diffusion fashion and an artificial trend is fully born without any real grass roots.

It was great to have a chat with Ed, he's a lovely bloke and was also kind enough to pay for my dinner. Thanks Ed!