Northern Planner

Never do for others what they can do for themselves

This may well be THE iron law of advertising, media stuff and brands.

It sorts out how to manage people. Make sure they feel like you have their back, provide guidance of course, but people in modern organisations crave autonomy.They also want to feel part of a higher purpose. So let them do what they can, make them feel they're part of something they care about that's achieving stuff they couldn't do alone.

Not to mention, we're all working faster and haven't the time to duplicate work. Most importantly, having folks operate just at the edge, or even just outside of their comfort zone is the most stimulating for them and how they'll progress and learn the quickest. We all want 'mastery' too, the sense of accomplishment, the joy of doing something well.

Sometimes it's quicker to 'just do it yourself' but it's a false economy.

This iron law also neatly skewers the folks who think consumers are stupid and need to be spoon fed messages and overly simple ad constructs. When people need to hold multiple plot points together in Eastenders or your country's equivalent soap, you really don't need to do their thinking for them and simplify stuff down to banality. No one wants to work hard as decoding cryptic advertising, but a Howard Gossage said, "When baiting a mousetrap with cheese, leave room for the mouse".

It answers the dilemma of 'content' 'brand experiences' and 'ad funded programming'.

All this has a role. But don't make stuff for people they can get elsewhere, which us usually better. That's why it's normally better to work with people already doing it well, be that people already making great content people like media owners, vloggers or whatever...but even here, what have you got they might want? Why on all earth would they want to make it for you? Above and beyond paying your way into culture, you need to add to it.

It informs challenger brand mentality. People are organising themselves these days, sometimes they just need a catalyst. Rather than helping people (or pretending to) how can we empower THEM to achieve what they want. Connect them to people like them in a way social media might not be right now.

Or at least move them to do or buy something they wouldn't usually. Make them think, provoke a reaction.

I always use The Old Spice guy as an example (sorry). It's hugely funny, entertaining advertising, much of the television programming (or YouTube drivel) it interrupted isn't as good. But there's a bigger tick - it provokes men and women to think a little about masculinity and the rules of their relationship.

This simple rule also questions 'brand purpose'. So many brands decide they want to do a variation on 'make the world a better place'. Not only is usually made up and not true, someone is already doing it much better.

It crucifies planners who decide to interfere in the creative process. Or media agencies who wade into creative agency business, or bloody ad agency planners who think they can plan media. Be very, very sure you are adding something that people genuinely want, or if they don't want it (let's face it, they don't) it's better than where they're currently at, or at least adds to it.

Creatives who think they can do strategy - of course they can, but it's usually very biased to something that will win an award or 'open on a palm fringed beach'.

Media owners who think they're ad agencies.

Propositions as thinly veiled campaign lines. Creative starters. Channel recommendations in a creative presentation. Content ideas in a media presentation. We're all at it aren't we?

Agencies telling clients their job, clients telling agencies their job. There's a comfortable overlap in the best relationships, but so many client briefs are really a solution, or even a series of orders with an unrealistic budget. So many responses to brief challenge that brief because the business context doesn't free up the work the agency wants to make, or fit the deal the agency has in place.

Most advertising in all it's modern forms is still interruption. Most new innovation is chasing people ever more sneakily as they avoid ads. In many cases, that means 'native' ads, where we actually give up on actually being able to make people care and produce stuff specifically designed to add nothing at all. Even re-targeting that shows you the product you looked at 30 seconds ago - if people wanted to look at it again, they're perfectly capable of doing so.

Yep, Never Do for Others What They Can Do For Themselves. Perhaps the only rule that matters (apart from don't listen to social media planners).

 

Rule 27 Give Up The Suits- Further Questions Answered

As mentioned before, some folks have queried some of the Rules from time to time.

It doesn't surprise me that there have been some queries on dress code, it's one the most contentious and thought about issues in agency land.

So I got this question:

"I've just started work at one of the most sought after agencies in town as a junior planner. As you can imagine, as a junior planner, I'm not paid a lot, but it seems the dress code for the agency is way out of my league. Not only do I not have a clue what is cool to wear (and I don't want to be seen to be copying everyone else), I just can't afford the stuff. You mention ditching the suits, I reckon a tailor made three piece from Saville Row would be cheaper!! What do I do"

To respond to this question, I'll take you back September 1990, the year I left from secondary school and returned a 'sixth former'. Sixth formers choose to stay and do their 'A Levels' the entry qualifications required for university. As school wasn't compulsory, neither was school uniform.

Naturally, we were all excited to liberated from the tyranny of itchy grey trousers, the school tie and light blue shirts designed with the sole purpose of making you sweat bullets, even in winter when they had the added power of making you simultaneously cold.

All this at the age when young men naturally sweat if an attractive girl moved within 10 metres of them.

So we were all gung ho to express ourselves, joyously wearing what the hell we liked. Only to find freedom was a living hell.

Suddenly, every morning, you had to decide what to wear. The fine balance between looking like an individual and fitting in.

Having to know what was fashionable, avoiding the crushing shame of turning up wearing the same as someone else. The horror of being caught out for wearing the same thing twice in a week.

So much pressure and thought, many of use quickly pined for the bygone days of the school uniform. Sweating through the polyester of your uniform shirt  if Gabriella Bentley even threatened to looked at you seemed like nirvana.

I often feel this way about the bygone days of suits in ad agencies (the simplicity, not the sexual tension).

I remember going to an APG training thing in London, when the venerable planning director running the session, (expensively dressed like a poverty stricken skater) commented, "The thing I always notice about the North is that they're still wearing suits".  This was 2002 and he was right, the suits still wore suits while the planning types tended to opt for smart jeans or chinos and some sort of suit jacket, with polo shirt usually.

It was blessedly simple.

Then everyone started to wear what the hell they wanted and a Pandora's Box of pain and suffering opened up on us.

Media agencies lasted a few years longer. Even now, you can get away with jeans, brogues the size of ships and a designer suits jacket, if you are 45 or over.

For the rest of us, it's the deliberations over how smart do you go when you see the client, are flip flops acceptable, shorts in high summer and what sort of image you want to put across. And, of course, spending loads of money on garb only agency folk will appreciate, while to everyone else, you look like you dressed in the dark.

In other words, a world without uniforms still forces you to conform, but without the comfort of easy to follow guidelines.

I used to work with Mother and loved the way the creatives all managed to look the same.

Three years ago, walk around Clerkenwell, all you could see was agency people with selvedge jeans turned up so far they were nearly shorts.

So, back to the question of what to do about it if you're in an extreme case, like the author of my question.

This brings us to the Devil Wears Prada (the film never read the book). It's not a classic, apart from the performance from Meryl Streep and the fact the hitherto unknown Emily Blunt stole the film.

Our hero, Andi, joins Runway magazine (Vogue basically) to find she will never fit in unless she loses weight (from thin to emaciated) and starts to wear the gear in the magazines with suitable panache.

 

By the way, this scene reminds me a many a discussion over two words in a 100 slide powerpoint presentation at work.

Oh, and I've worked for Meryl Streep's character twice. They know who they are.

Anyway.

After fighting the inevitable for a bit, like a racing cyclist in the 1990's trying to win without EPO, she gives in, loses a few pounds ad starts to rock the latest styles....and of course sees her star ride within the office.

 

If this doesn't look like the drip of folks walking into Mother then I don't know what does.

Of course, our hero eventually realises she has lost her identity and what she really cares about, ditches the wardrobe and leaves for a very different kind of publisher - always knowing she came so close to being seduced forever by the dark side.

My correspondent faces a similar dilemma. Clothes send out social signals, they always do. Not just on a personal level, they say something about the organisation. What you wear represents you and your employer, it's a fact, get used to it.

If you work at a place where you're under pressure to look amazing, or achingly obscurely cool, you know it will have a certain kind of culture. Probably, it will have a certain kind of work - usually, sometimes great, more often than not, up it's own arse. But always, always, a place people will die to work for.

That's for some, not for all.

Others will have some sort of uniform, sometimes more relaxed, sometimes it really is 'be yourself' we don't care. These places do great work, have a deeper relationship with the client because they care more about the actual relationship, rather than intimidating clients into buying what they're told.

This is for some, not all.

So, clothes, totally tangled up in identity on a personal and corporate level really matter. If you can find an overlap between your attitude to clothes and your employer's, you'll most likely find a cultural fit too. If they don't blend, get the hell out before it's too late.

Or at last until you've done enough time and got some 'cool work' on your CV - just don't stay too long to forget you're only pretending. 

Back to the cycling metaphor, Lance Armstrong only started taking drugs when he realised everyone else was, we all know what happened next.

One more thought - the more you try to look different, the more you usually ending up looking like everyone else .

 

 

 

 

Rule 30, getting out of the bubble - further questions answered

You might remember I posted some Rules a while back.

It might surprise you that people have asked one or two questions about it. This worries me, I didn't think of them myself, they are merely the sum total of years of observing what really goes on.

I thought  I would nevertheless publish some elaborations  I have shared based on requests for clarification here and there.

Today we'll focus on Rule 30. Getting out the bubble. Someone asked how they were supposed to do this when they are chained to their desk and also required to support their thinking with 'established' forms of research....you know, primary surveys, Google Trends or TGI and Touchpoints.

The response to this begins with a sad truth about a close friend and the breakdown a the person's relationship with their girlfriend.  The individual got the job of his dreams, you would want to work there, everyone does. He soon found that the new employer new this, and demanded the highest commitment and work ethic. 14 hour days in other words. He didn't mind, it was fun, it was stimulating. But a year later, the love of his life left him. She liked the income he was bringing in, she didn't mind seeing a lot less of him, she was quite a catch, very independent, lots of hobbies, lots of friends. One of those girls you hate because she was stunning AND searingly clever and interesting.

She left him because he was boring. Just doing his job made him a one trick pony, he ended up having nothing to talk about apart from work. Dull, dull, dull.

This is what happens with clients, and indeed agency employers. Clients like you to make them think, to look like you're one step ahead of them. Planners need the right to be in the room, creatives can do strategy, so can media buyers, even suits.... as well as their proper jobs.

A planner is there to do two things:

Make the original, new stuff safe to buy

Share interesting stuff no one has thought of (grounded in truth of course)

Like my friend, if you can't keep things interesting, or make the interesting easy to get to grips with, you are not needed.

Now let's look at that in more detail, based on the question.

First, if you're chained to your desk, and I mean you haven't time to wander around a shopping mall once a month, or chat to people you've never met on the tube, or read stuff only slightly connected to the day job and the client business, or just reading their annual report...then get out while you can, or manage your time better. Otherwise you won't be chained to your desk anyway, you'll be fired.

Second, once you create some time, and you have some proper insight from the real wold, the trick is to THEN apply it to some of the accepted tools - use TGI, touchpoints or some survey, or street interviews to make what you've discovered easily digestible. The real craft of planners isn't to simply find a strategy, or insight nugget, it's to make it easy to buy for clients who don't like taking risks.

In other words, the real craft isn't about insight, it's about how you tell the story.

Which brings me to another relationship. The one with my 5 year old, Star Wars loving daughter. She's a little headstrong, I need to make her WANT to do things. How?

I tell her its what Rey would do.