When Jimmy joins a new school and spots the girl of his dreams, he develops a communications strategy to get her. We’ve all been there. Haven’t we?

This is a guest post by my brother, Joe, a digital media planner in Edinburgh (but willing to travel. Tell me if you want to hire him – I’ll make him give me a cut).

Jimmy had just joined a new school, and as he was being shown around on his first day, he saw the most beautiful girl ever across the school grounds. She was also being shown round, and he couldn’t believe his luck; his future girlfriend had joined the same school on the same day.

After his first morning of lessons Jimmy was sitting at lunch when the girl came in and sat down just a few tables away. So infatuated was Jimmy that he decided that she must be his, and proceeded to develop an integrated communications strategy to get her.

His first thought was that he had to identify what was special about himself. Having moved to the area from a couple of towns away, he could call himself new and exotic. He was a bit geeky – call that “intelligent.” He was good in goal (“sporty”) but wasn’t as big as some of the boys here. If his first gym lesson was anything to go by, he was not as hairy either. “Refined,” thought Jimmy.

Happy that he had worked out his brand identity, Jimmy began to focus on the next step of his communication strategy, market research. He would ask the girl’s friends what sort of person she was, what music she liked, where she liked to hang out, what hobbies she had, and what she looked for in boys.

Once he’d laid out his strategy for establishing a brand identity and gathering market research, Jimmy turned to message delivery. His first communication would be through getting the girl’s friends to tell her how good nice he was. He’d do this by helping them with their homework to make them big him up. This would be his PR.

Then he’d make sure that she noticed him by doing making a farting noise with his armpit behind her in assembly. This would be his experiential strategy.

By this point she would be aware of him, and probably a bit aware of some of his good points from his PR, but he wouldn’t be standing out from all the other boys that he knew would be after her. For that, he’d need to employ some more market research. He’d make friends with her on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, this would let him find out what she liked, where she hung out, and where she was at any time. He’d let her see how funny he was by using jokes from Sickipedia as his status updates, and how caring he was with links to Lolcats.

With his social media strategy in place, he would now need to meet her out and about. He’d do this by buying tickets to concerts he knew she’d be at, and eating at the same McDonald’s on a Saturday. Maybe he’d even join some of her classes. This was to be his media planning and buying.

He set out his sponsorship campaign of joining the school football team, and maybe coaching the younger years’ basketball class so he’d have something to talk to her about. And to look as good as he could, he’d wear clothes from her favourite shop and ask his older brother for witty and slightly suggestive chat-up lines. “If you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” She’d never have heard that before, he thought, ticking his creative check box.

If, at this point in the year, there was anyone else competing for her affections he would launch his viral strategy, by telling the school gossip his competitor had gonorrhea.

Jimmy was pleased with his communications plan so far. He had covered brand identity, market research, PR, experiential marketing, social media, media planning and buying, sponsorship, creative and viral, but he still felt he had missed something.

As he looked up from his fish fingers and beans, hesaw one of the boys from the year above was sitting next to her. Jimmy strained his ears to catch their conversation, and heard the older boy finish asking her if she wanted to hang out by the chip shop that Friday. She agreed, and Jimmy realised what he had missed: direct marketing.