Northern Planner

The opportunity in being a brand people actually wish existed

I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase 'give man a hammer and all he'll see is nails'. I think it was Mark Twain. 

So this data should be approached with caution. The claim is that if 80% of brands disappeared at night, no one would care. 

The authors have an agenda to promote 'meaningful' brands (whatever that is supposed to mean). 

Of course, Bryon Sharpe would say light buyers don't care about brands, just make sure you're easy to buy.

But, come on, it makes sense if you think of your own life surely.  We're making too much stuff. No person has the bandwidth to be bothered with it all.

Too much good entertainment, endless stuff on the Netflix list that never gets watched.

To much choice on the grocery store shelf.

Too much stuff from each other on social media.

So that 80% figure makes perfect sense. You'd think people promoting brands would be upping their game to win attention and be one of the 20% wouldn't you?

Sadly not.

On TGI, people who say the ads are better than the programs goes down every year.

This same survey suggest most of us think brand content is poor and irrelevant. 

Coming back to hammers, nails and agendas, that's why the IPA agenda on long and short term is so unhelpful - it fails to consider if any of the output is actually any good. 

You could wring your hands and just say to yourself, ah well, the data says I just need to spend loads of money reaching people and building 'distinctive brand assets'. But not only is that a bit defeatist, when it's getting harder to reach people, even if you HAVE a big budget, surely it makes more sense to actually create content people actually wish existed.

How do you do that? It starts with ideas over precision but there's a lot more to it than that - but that's for another day.

Why a good strategist needs ideas, not just logic - and how to generate them (it's perspiration, not inspiration sorry)

I was ten when Purple Rain came out, so it's fairly natural I've always loved Prince. 

Between 1983 and '88 he created a body of work that was unlike anything that had come before, bursting with new ideas. However, that was only around 10% of his total output - it's just that we got to hear the very best. In fact, some was years old, honed, refined and in some cases, just ready for its time. 

Ideas just poured out of him, he never stopped making music, it's just that his strike rate of greatness as opposed to OK, or even simply forgettable was around one in ten. 

There's a lesson there for all of us when it comes to great ideas. They don't come from sudden flashes of brilliance, it's constant hard work, relentless improvement and the acceptance you have go through guff to get to great. 

This matters to strategy and planning types, especially in a world of in-housing and the way basically everybody thinks they can your job. 

Yes, logic and evidence are essential - otherwise you're just a bundle of opinions. However anyone can follow a process and spend lots of time and money justifying the obvious (it's how consultancies make profit yes?). Our work requires a leap of imagination, a new way of looking something.....an idea. It's creative act those without the right kind of brain or years of learning their craft, or the right attitude, simply can't do. What divides a real planner from those that just carry the title is the ability to have ideas. Not just follow a process.

'A previously unsuspected connection between concepts that leads to non-obvious consequences' - Josh Bernoff.

That's the opportunity in strategy world spending too much recourse overcomplicating the obvious. 

It's obvious to say that lots of men like football. It's less obvious to say that without football, many people would be insufferable to the people around them. 

Ideas are not limited to strategy, creative, tactics or whatever though.

A company is actually an idea, not a real thing. An intangible thing bringing together people. things and thoughts.

Money is an idea, is doesn't exist, it represents a shared value of what something is worth.

A nation state is an idea, an arbitrary border and shares culture, systems and traditions.

Very few things are concrete, we all swim in a sea of ideas everyday.

They are not some flouncy luxury, they are fundamental. 

So it doesn't help having things like concepts, thought starters, territories- they are all over complex names for ideas.

When it comes to strategy, there are really three species of idea: 

Why Ideas

How Ideas

What Ideas

 

Why ideas are leaps that electrify what the opportunity is, what the real problem is. I tend to think this is most important, now only does great strategy get to the crux of an issue, great problems unleash creativity. They frame a challenge in a way that also an opportunity. They show what a business problem looks like in the real world. Strategy is about change in the real world, Why ideas illuminates what that change could be. 

Make the reliability of Honda Desirable instead of dull.

The problem isn't what Skoda buyers think, it's the people around them. 

The beauty industry should make women feel great, but instead it makes them feel inadequate

 

How Ideas clearly solve the problem - closest to a classic 'proposition' or simple task that, if executed properly, they will unlock gold. 

Polaroid is social lubrication

Make Lurpak the Champion of good food

With ghd, beauty can be made, not born

The Times is history's first draft

Make beards uncool (for a shaving brand)

Make Axe part of the morning routine

Kindness is a strength not weakness (for a natural deodorant)

 

What Ideas are more around tactics and execution. Some would tell you to stay away from these, I say let them pour out of you and challenge others to so better. So many ideas these days need to be around media or PR, they are not the sole remit of a 'creative'. 

Ad funded documentary of real Christmas moments

One off TV ad celebrating Commonwealth Games supporters

Use programatic digital to weave Ikea products into the moments they matter the most

What if we got Snoop Dog to change his name for Smooth Dog for Klarna?

Staff as Stars

 

Getting involved in 'what' is essential, just as IDEAS about how and why are so important. The data fluctuates, but the IPA data bank shows that great creative ideas boost payback by a factor of, as much as, 11. Econometrics from a media group (can't share who) show that innovation destroys 'precision' when it comes to ROI. 

That said, don't let creative types tell you that an execution by itself is an idea, be that a line, a visual or even a 60 second film. Sadly,  they many just have tactics, or something that just looks or sounds nice.

There are few lines like 'Just Do It' that just transcend. 

This Cadbury Gorilla was really a big fat stunt that worked to drive impulse. The case study will try and tell you it's about conveying 'joy' - but in truth, it's a one trick pony delivering the element of surprise. When they try to do more 'joy' ads, they mostly failed, because the idea wasn't really about that.

In a creative review, sometimes the best thing you can do is ask 'what is the idea in a sentence'? You'd be amazed how many times they don't kn0w.

 

When it comes to your ideas, like Prince, there isn't a flash of insight, I'm afraid it's all hard work.

James Dyson didn't invent the bagless vacuum, he worked harder than everyone else to get it to market.

A sculpture is the removal of rock to reveal the beauty inside. 

In other words, make a start, get something down, then continually improve it.

Great ideas do not appear, they emerge. 

Ideas are re-combinations of what is already out there.

So fill your brain with as much raw material as you can.

Read more non-marketing books.

Don't just sit there waiting for inspiration that won't come.

When it comes to a project, read stuff that isn't totally about the product or service - but has a tenuous link.  If you're selling coffee, read about commuting, the original coffee salons, how people get together socially these days (let's go for coffee), which leads to stuff about shyness, public speaking, making time for non-screen stuff, the new rhythms of hybrid work, for example. 

It also means injecting newness into your process. Get a change of scenery, take purposeful breaks, do the process in a different way, talk to a stranger.

As long as you've done lots of hard work already, this is where a lightbulb moment actually happens, Stimulating change in the brain and letting the subconscious work while you do something else creates moments of revelation - but not without those first hard yards. 

Most importantly, find your flow. Diarise time without distractions - phone, email, Slack, Teams -wrench free from the web of brain fog -  focus.

Now, of course, it's also your job to help others have ideas.

To be even clearer, I think it's your job to help EVERYONE have a voice. The more experienced people are, the more their ego and fear of losing authority, mean they won't listen to other thoughts, they are more slavish to the process and in general, ideas get less input.

They feel they have they have more to lose by being open. 

It's the challenge in creative reviews where the CD's word is law.

Yet Pixar has daily crit sessions. Their best films are the result of a tortuous process of incremental gains - their films are a result of continuous improvement and collaboration. It doesn't sound very romantic, yet it's what works.

Coming back to Prince, he needed editors - his worse output came when he didn't have a recording contract and put out what the hell he liked.

So, with your own work, forget your ego and talk to as many people as you can about your thinking. Try and get to a First Pass and invite the world and his wife to crit it. Think of every interaction as a chisel getting to the sculpture within.

Listen to what others say, spot the idea in it. 

We all know workshops are trojan horses for bad ideas mostly. However, you should embrace them as ways to blunt the auth0rity of senior people and bring in new thinking. Just don't look for NEW ideas, look for input on thinking already in play - including your own. 

If you really need to do an ideas workshop though- make it so concepts and unrelated areas collide. A quick foolproof agenda:

Lay out the task

Clear out the closet - flush out first ideas

Do a brain game to get the subconscious going

More ideas

What would your target audience do - a day quick day in the life and then GO!

Opposites - what is the very opposite of what everyone else is doing?

Wrongness - what is the wrong thing to do, how do you make it right?

Objects - what's the connection between, say, some animals - what ideas come?

Simple.

 

So yes, ideas. Your lifeblood, not logic.

Be more Energizer Bunny, it's actually about quantity before quality.

Don't be an island, get as much input as you can.

Challenge experience and authority - bigger egos lead to worse ideas.

Be fast, be prolific, embrace imperfection and wrongness - you want others trying to slow you down, not the other way around.

In other words, be a radiator, not a drain.