Down The Pub, Polar Expeditions and Good Reads - Jo Arden's Surprising Stimuli

Going to The Pub

I'm not a massively sociable person, but every Friday night, my other half [Mark Elwood, CCO of Leo’s] and I go to our local pub. When we moved to the countryside four years ago, we wanted to find a pub with a real sense of community – we found The Good Intent on day one and it’s been our home from home ever since. Every week we’re in there for a couple of pints, our tea and our ‘Friday Night Debrief’. It’s a treasured chance to catch up: from domestic stuff, to what’s going on in the world, to a bit of good old-fashioned gossiping. We’ve gradually got to know some of the other regulars too. It’s really interesting to have lived and worked in London for so long and to now be a newbie in a relatively rural community. It’s a new perspective (always good!) on all sorts of things, from the recategorization of the green belt, to inheritance tax changes and plenty of debate about the merits of the various ‘guest ales’ (in that at least I feel I have a valid contribution to make). In a country where most communities used to revolve around the pub, I think we’re extremely lucky for that to be a truth. The romance of a meeting place for strangers and friends is alive and well and there’s no better way to slip back into normal life after a week at work.

Read Anything And Everything

I appreciate it’s a cliché for a strategist, but you have to own your truth – I’m a major book nerd. I've read a book a week since I was at school. I literally read anything and everything that crosses my path. I have been in a book club with the same core group of women for twenty years; one of our ‘rules’ is that you finish the book even if you hate it. I think it’s an excellent policy because it forces a better debate when we get together. Being in a book club also means you never read yourself into a rut – we’re big on exploring genres, formats and themes. When I left Ogilvy, my lovely team there bought me books as a farewell gift, two big boxes of books complete with gorgeous messages. I’m making my way through those and there have been some incredible books I wouldn’t have found otherwise (Playing Possum by Kevin Davey is a great example: if you love language, read this). I love how books open your mind through the pages and beyond. I just finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - a book which Dirty Dancing fans will recognise as the one which Robbie tries to lend to Baby. It’s Rand’s philosophical manifesto on Objectivism told through architecture. I’d never heard of it beyond the film but chatting to our own Peter Mead about it this week, it turns out it was very revered by certain sections of our industry decades ago. If you’ve read it, you’ll see why!

A Polar Obsession

My enduring, lifelong obsession is with polar travel. It started off as a fascination with Antarctica. I tried to get there through all kinds of unsuccessful means: I applied to do a PhD in glaciology, to be a chef with the British Antarctic Survey, and I've applied 12 times to work at, Port Lockroy, the British Post Office on Antarctica. The heyday of polar exploration is like catnip to me: fortunately, there is an inexhaustible supply of lectures, books, talks and documentaries about it to indulge in. Spending a day with a group of (usually more elderly gents) fellow enthusiasts at the Scott Polar Research Institute, having a lecture about the nature of glacial structures, or listening to polar diary excerpts is heaven.

I did manage to go to Antarctica a few years ago, on my own, in a dorm. It was a life-changing experience and I met the best bunch of people from all over the world, connected by this shared passion. Six of us met up the following year in Svalbard, Norway to see the Arctic together too.

The postcard [see above] has been on my various desks for decades, it represents some of the characteristics I admire most of that era: hard-work, focus, teamwork. It’s also a good reminder that getting obsessive about the task at hand is no bad thing for a strategist, sometimes you need to dig in!