Little girl with binoculars on SHOOK agency news page

SHOOK thinks

What SHOOK us this week?

Here’s what SHOOK us this week… 

Step on it: Exercise has been proven (again) to increase creativity: aerobic workouts help encourage new brain cells to grow says Business Insider. This can help with long-term memory but also help brains to “imagine new situations”. We can’t imagine many creatives would want a daily 5K or a beep test as part of a job description though. So if this isn’t for you, also proven to boost creativity are: switching round items on your desk, getting 5 mins of new, very specific information about an obscure subject or writing down every idea that passes through your mind – however bad (“Capture now – evaluate later” is the advice from academic Robert Epstein).

Helping parents facing one of life’s toughest tests: 19 – 26 November is Children’s Grief Awareness Week. The amazing Ruth Strauss Foundation has a goal to launch a training programme that will mean when a parent of young children gets the news they have incurable cancer (as 14,000 parents a year do), they and their family can be offered professional emotional support. They’re offering a Q&A with experts on how to help children through bereavement on their social channels and website throughout November.

Own it: The IPA ran an event on Wednesday on new marketing metric Share of Search. It’s a faster, cheaper and predictive method developed by Les Binet and James Hankins to measure effect.

Oh wow this cohort is gonna rule the world: We had the pleasure of (Zoom)meeting the Taylor Bennett Foundation’s trainees today and – wow! They’re choosing communications as their career because they can see how they can use it to change the world. It was a pleasure to give them a short run down of why behaviour design and creativity get us out of bed every morning and hear about the work that interests them.

Kinda Cool: Shout outs to Broadcast Revolution, Smoking Gun, Dino, AMEC and PR Week for their support and brains this week.

See ya next week!