Northern Planner

Culture and stuff. Two ways to think about it

So I'm working in a new place with a heritage in PR. I know what you're thinking, probably this:

 

That's mostly my experience too. But not all PR folk are like that, and they're not here. 

It's funny really, you can't move for all sorts of integrated agencies banging on about influencing culture, mind you, it is fair to say that some of them are pretty good at it. 

But the good PR spend their entire career understanding what people are really talking about and what people will give a monkeys about. They instinctively get what's going in the lives of normal people. 

That's a great starting point for any client who gets that the biggest challenge for any client is that people don't care that much about brands and understands the best way to overcome that is by looking popular and tapping into something actually do care about.

Not parroting stuff people are talking about, adding to it. 

So I'm quite liking this. 

By the way, if you want to do the influencing culture thing thing, there are two ways:

1. Tap into something that's in popular culture to make the execution better. Which is fine, it build cut through if you've done your core competence and not done anything dumb.

This for example taps this Australian beer brand taps into a deep memory we all have of movie police chases

 

This shamelessly mashes up provenance credentials with the X Factor

 

1. Something more potent, but harder. Getting into issues, tensions, passions and challenges in actual life. 

While this from Axe taps into the very current confusion young men have on what they're supposed to be in modern society. It's not made up, and you could have got this from messing around in Google trends, where men are asking the internet if it's OK to cry. You just need the instincts to look for the right things

 

 

Why the fact my kids love Led Zeppelin and ELO demonstrates that going shopping isn't just for shopper strategists.

You can't  beat going out an meeting the people who you want your advertising stuff to influence.

I don't know if mirror neurons actually exist, but you must be aware of playing a song you love to someone and hearing it through their ears.

It's why I have a renewed love for Star Wars now I watch the films through my children's eyes, not to mention a fresh perspective on music as some of their favourite music come from ELO, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and The Jacksons (thanks to the Marvel Universe, God help me if the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 soundtrack has Queen in it). I love Led Zeppelin and have always has a soft spot for ELO, it's amazing to listen to them without the historical and cultural baggage that comes with both. 

So two pieces of advice to stop yourself getting carried away with some trend or semiotic study when you're working on a project - not to mention a piece of content everyone thinks is funny, touching or thought provoking.

The first and most important is this. Before you start a project, go shopping for the thing you're selling (yes selling, all advertising is selling, it's the brand babbler that pretend otherwise, if a 'brand ad' isn't crafted to removing a barrier to sales, long or short term, it's an act of vanity and commercial vandalism), I mean go out into the real world, make the journey to the shops or wherever people can make a purchase in the real world and through the entire journey and experience, put down your bloody smartphone and soak up what's happening around you. Look at the people on the way, the folks in the actual store, listen to what they're talking about, take in what they are wearing and imagine what they're thinking and how they're feeling. 

Then go to wherever people use the product of service. Go into Pizza Hut and decide for yourself how much people are 'Tasting Freedom'.

 

Go into the bar of an exclusive five star hotel (if they'll let you in) watch the people with more money than sense displaying the labels and decide for yourself how discrete modern luxury really is (that's what the trend spotters will try and tell you), imagine this target audience for a Bentley reacting to this...

 

Consider how much anyone really cares about a 'brand purpose'.

I guarantee you when you start building audience insight and helping shape some sort of communications, you'll have a better feel for what to do as you remember seeing the world through their eyes. Even better, take some creatives or whoever makes your agency's output with you.

Second piece of advice....do it again when you're a good way into development. Trust me, a campaign that will 're-cast the man of action archetype for young males' might seem as capable of re-writing the advertising lexicon when you leave a creative review and go straight to a gym, or watch a football match in the pub. You see the ideas through the eyes of your audience and automatically feel if it's any good.

If you get the chance, talk it through with someone roughly in the audience, it will be more beneficial than 'creative development research'.

If you want the science bit, the biggest brands get thought of in the most category entry points, be that around when the brand is used or when the brand is bought. The more you get a feel for what is really happening in both, the better. 

Oh, and if you're clever and work on a brand that sells stuff you quite like, you claim your shopping or visit to a restaurant on expenses. Of course, if you're selling luxury cars or a lapdancing chain you might have some explaining to do, not just to your FD, but your partner. 

Being fast and good

 I remember going to John Steele presentation and laughing my head off (silently). It was fantastic, as you can well imagine, but bits of it were far removed from my life as planner and, I suspect, yours.

 

What I found mirthful,  was his story about the three month run up to pitch. That's right, three months. That's probably common if you're WPP pitching for Samsung global or something, but not the day job of most planners. Certainly not mine.

 

My reality is 'yesterday', I bet it's yours. Ever faster lead times by ever more demanding clients. Pitches with four, three, even two week turn arounds. Which means being great fast, and that's not easy.

Perversely, though, I find something quite liberating about a looming deadline. No time for egos, 'best practise' posturing or mooning over one word in a proposition for days. It forces people to work to together, the siege mentality builds relationships and cameraderie like nothing else. It also forces a bit of chaos into proceedings and messes up the 'proprietary process' we're increasingly expected to follow, job functions are blurred.

You're well out if the comfort zone, where you need to be if you're going to do anything remarkable. By all means, pretend to the client the work got here through clinical professonalism, just don't believe the hype. Agencies function best through just about managing rampant chaos, not by pretending to be laywers. .

However, removing the temptation of procrastination and tearing up the rule book isn't enough. It is hard thinking fast, you still need to time to make connections and piece the puzzle together. Here's what's worked for me, based on two simple truths:

a. Your subconsious is cleverer than you. Fill your brain with as much info, issues and fodder as you can and it will work on your behalf while you do something else.

b. Your first instincts tend to be right, trust them

1. Be ruthless selecting your team. Put together a core team of one lead planner, one lead creative team and one suit. That's it. You haven't time for management meddling, or massigning the ego of anyone else 'who'd really love to be involved'. And make sure it's a team who enjoy working together, or you are sure will gel quickly. You'll need a supporting cast, but's that exactly what they are. Bring them is as and when they're needed.

2. Each member spends one day cramming as much info about the brief as they can into their heads, collecting fodder and basically absorbing so much their brains beg for mercy. Then spend a long evening enjoying something that has nothing whatsoever to do with work, letting your subconscious do its work.

3. The next day, lock them in a room. No phones, no interruptions, just caffiene, water and food (and toilet breaks). Don't mess about with workshop techniques or formal brainstorm stuctures. Just talk, kick things around, share what you've learned. Just don't leave until you have a direction and the beginnings of a creative brief. It will just emerge out of conversation.

Then stop and agree this is what you will be working on. Trust your insticts. The rest of the procees is bringing these instincts to life and proving they don't have shit for brains, As long as you've done the hard work before and genuinely thought long and hard about the issues and got as much fodder as you can, it should be fine.

4. The planner writes up the strategy for the next day and it's shared to your wider team. As with all briefings, listen, treat it as a springboard to a conversation,  be open minded, invite debate, let people tear into it and build a better version of what you've already written emerging. Perhaps a completely new version.

5. Then go your seperate ways and let chaos reign for a while. Creatives turn the strategy into pant wetting gold. The planner goes out and bashes, rips and generally beats up the strategy until it's genuinely water tight. If any development gems come out of that for creative stimulus, throw them in. Do not change the strategy unless you come back with something genuinely better and with more creative potential. The planner should explain the strategy to as many people as possible, anyone. Mirror neurons means you actually put yourself in the position of your audience and quickly show you what to improve, while the rigour of explaining it succinctly and defending against inevitable questions shows you where it's leaky.

6.  Likewise, if creative development throws up a blinding idea that's off brief but is much better strategically, ditch the original thinking without a flicker of ego and work double quick to make it water tight.

7. The suit pushes things along, makes sure everything happens loosely on time, sources costs, keeps everyone in check and provides that invaluable sounding board. There are daily updates with the core team. But in between, there are many conversations. Everyone needs an open door policy, have coffee, go to the pub share, bat stuff around and generally shoot the breeze. This is where the real work is done.

8. At some point,earlier than is 'normal' you'll have an agreed strategic idea, creative interpretation, comms plan and budget timings.  It will be all be chaotic. Now it's time to ruthless to knock into shape and getting presentation ready. Wirite it all as work is still being finalised, it not only saves you time, the act of precis, distillation etc acts as a final sense check on all the work and brings them much closer together.

Never forget, 70% of a pitch is how clients respond to you. That means loking enthusiastic (trumps slick every time), like you enjoy being around each (original selection should have taken care of this) and you are open and care what clients think. Much of that last point  is knowing the presentation inside out, not only so you can actually talk to them, not read from a script, but also to allow for questions, interruptions and your audience wanting to get involved.

Hope this helps

How do you get into planning if you're already doing some other agency job?

I had another one of those emails asking for advice. Once again, it's humbling that anyone cares what I think. Once again, I think it's worth sharing my response. This is fast becoming a new approach to blogging, just cut and paste emails.

 
(picture from Russell)

Anyway, this time someone wants to move into planning from another department and isn't sure how much craft skills matter v characteristics, what happens in inteviews and how to make the move happen.

Not much then.

Here's what I replied. Natarally, this is based on my own experience. Yours will be different. If it is, if you have anything to add or want to pull me up on giving wildly bad advice, please do in the comments. Open source etc. This is meant to be as helpful to the individual and anyone else out there as it can be.

 

Hi there

My first response is that if you’re already doing and enjoying the ‘creative work before the creative work’ you’re probably a planner already, you just don’t call yourself one. I can only speak from my own experience of course– but before the symbolic new job title, I was already working with research agencies, writing briefs, doing briefings and ‘shaping’ the process at each stage to make sure the work would work. Everything I’ve gained since is simply experience, apart from getting better at organizing and doing my own research – from moderating my own groups (something I do less of now because I think they’re largely a waste of time) to becoming something of a professional observer, talking to and watching the specimen in their own environment, the Mum at the playground with kids, the tired commuter on the train etc..and seriously getting to grips with quant. There was much to learn about structuring a questionnaire and making the most of out of omnibus surveys like TGI.

But yes, it’s true that you need the right characteristics AND craft skills but most planning directors you’d want to work for will know that craft skills can be taught while characteristics largely cannot. Those characteristics in my book are:

• Insatiable curiosity
• Ability the think in the abstract and think conceptually
• You can’t escape some sort of skill with numbers – I don’t mean a geeky mathematician but I do mean able to spot patterns and look for the story in data
• A genuine interest in creative work – not just ads by the way – and specifically how they work
• Great presentation skills, able to persuade people with logic rather than dogma or charm
• No ego since people have to invite you to things
• A love for writing and a half decent skill for it
• And above all a genuine interest in people, culture and an ability to get interested in any subject and make it interesting to anyone else  - you want people to want you in the room, which means knowing lots of stuff about lots of things. If people think you’ll have something fresh and interesting to say, they’ll want you around, be they creatives, suits or clients.

If you don’t have these qualities, or don’t want to develop them, don’t bother. Some you can’t learn, some you can, but that’s the difference with the craft stuff, you can learn that and a decent planning director will appreciate your qualities and want to teach you the things you don’t know yet.

Those craft skills are, broadly and debatably:

• You know how market research works, you have an opinion on it and can organize and carry out (the qual side at least) yourself.
• You’re in touch with popular culture and know the kind of stuff your audience(s) are interested in and what issues, wants desires and needs happen in their real lives – and where and how they consumer it
• You have an understanding of how brands work and what they can/can’t deliver for a business
• You can marry all this to  recommend THE best use of the budget and communications tools available – what to say/do, who to/with where/when and, critically HOW
• The HOW is of course the creative work, so you need to be great at:
• Creative briefs that are both clear and inspiring
• You can do briefings that are both clear and inspiring…apart from presenting stuff to the client, the brief and briefing  is your core output, apart core bits of client presentations, like the killer ‘strategy in one page’
• And unfortunately, you must be  good at moderating workshops. Don’t get me wrong, I hate them, but you’ll be asked to do them at some point, you just won’t be able to avoid it
• Finally, you’re continually finding out interesting things, thinking laterally about them and helping others, usually creatives, apply them. This is becoming more important as the media explosion we’re going through makes it all so complex. How used to be more important than what – tone of voice etc, these days, WHAT is more important than how – you’re more likely to make something or start something off and THEN advertise it than just ‘do advertising’ in fact, if you wanted me to describe so called 360/integrated thinking, it would be what I’ve just said.

So, what do you do about ‘becoming a planner’? There are three routes available (I think).

1. Migrate departments at the place you work now. This is good because you don’t have to adjust to a new culture, you know the planners already (I hope) and their boss. This is not good because you’ll always have more to prove than anyone else. It depends on how much you like where you are now and how porous your departments are, or could be.
2. If you’re in a place without planners, the suits and/or creatives will still be ‘doing strategy’ there just isn’t a formal role. Find out what scope there is for a standalone role and show you can do it. It will be cheaper than bringing in an established planner and they might send you on some courses. This was my route, I was able to learn on the job, work with some good research companies and got sent on some GREAT APG courses, But basically, I just did more of what I was good at – thinking, and less of what I wasn’t – doing. It was hard though, I had to establish an appreciation for planning in a culture that wasn’t used to it. It took time to get suits to relinquish some control and appreciate that taking your time and taking the tougher option – namely great work BEFORE the great work. It paid dividends as I was able to do it my way, since I didn’t really know ‘a way’. The downside is if and when you want to move somewhere else that has a planning culture. I struggled sometimes to perform some of the bollocks some planners in some places are expected to. Waste of time workshops, stupid flowcharts that means nothing, process that doesn’t make any sense. Agencies are conservative, long established agencies even more so.
3. Get a job as a planner at an established place. This might be the hardest of the lot to achieve, since many, not all, but many planning directors and the like want ‘good agency planning experience’ whatever that means. That’s at least as much about ‘fitting in to how we do things around here’ as it is actually being any good. There is no doubt that getting a big name and big clients on your CV pays dividends for future opportunities. It’s great to get grounded in some basics and to some meaty stuff with guidance, there’s no question though, just never stop questioning and striving to find your own voice. If I had to do it all again, I’d still have gone to somewhere established a lot earlier as a planner and got the ‘rules’ and stuff out of the way. I wasted too much time as a suit before making the transition . There are not many good planners around unless you live and work in somewhere like London or New York, and even then, there are not multitudes, they just think the postcode automatically makes them better, so good bosses are always looking for people with the right potential- there are lots of ads for planners where they say, “You might be and experiences planner or a strategically talented suit”. It can be done – it all come backs to your experience and what you have already been up to.

Now this brings me to my big point. It doesn’t matter what age you are, or how long you’ve been working in your current job title, not all agencies are right for everyone. I think the average time someone stays in a job is about two years, some of that is down to a payrise, some down to boredom or the chance to work on X client, but much of that is simply down to wanting to join a different culture. Some like the politics and routine of a Leo Burnett or JWT, others like the thrill of the grinding, cut-throat pressure of a BBH or Fallon with their relentless drive for excellence, others like the oddball coolness of a Mother or Crispin Porter. You have less choice than most if you want to be a planner late in the day. You want to find a place that appreciated attitudes and potential over titles and politics for example. So here’s what I would do:

Decide what geographical area you’re prepared to work in, then have a look at the work you like done by agencies that live there. Ignore the rest.

Find out what sort of culture they have – it’s easier these days with industry blogs- and what would fit you and how you want to work.

Find out who the planning directors are and badger them until you get a meeting. Planning directors are (almost) without exception generous, kind people who will give up half an hour to have a chat over a coffee or tea. Not only can you sound out if they’re open to someone like you, they won’t be able to help themselves give you all sorts of useful advice. If there’s anyone who wants the right attitude and aptitude over ‘classical’ experience, stay in touch until there is some kind of opening you can interview for.

In the meantime, start a blog. It might be a bit old school, but start sharing thoughts, not just about planning and stuff, but what you’re interested in. Join the conversation elsewhere. My two most recent job moved were easy because I didn’t have that much to prove, beyond a few CV ticks and personality checks – they had read the blog. Make some noise. Be provocative, be interesting.

Now, what do you talk about in interviews and stuff? I don’t think it matters if it’s an informal chat or very formal interview, it’s mostly about your attitude and aptitude. First and foremost, people need to know they can work with you and you will either fit in, or add to their culture. Mostly that means being yourself, don’t pretend, or you’ll find you hate where you are and have to continue pretending. But do show you have an interest in the agency, talk about the work they’ve done you really like and why – from a strategic perspective. Think about why you want to work there, make it compelling.

You’ll be asked why you want to be a planner, Make that compelling and credible. You’ll be asked what you could add to the place, think about what a fresh perspective could mean. Be able to talk about campaigns and ideas your really admire, from  a planning perspective.

You’ll be asked what skills you have, how can you make your past experience as positive (but truthful) as you can? How can you cover a lot of those craft skills? But be honest about what you want to learn quickly and how you would go about learning it. And don’t forget, if you have experience with clients, big this up, many planning directors love people,. Think their ace but can’t see them representing the agency, big this up.

Talk up what planning you’ve already been doing, show how you think by deconstructing the work and THEIR work you admire. Practice this in your spare time. Look for great work, think what the strategy would have been and write the brief for it.

Finally, you can cover the craft bit as well as you can, but you will be hired for your characteristics more. Think about how you can talk about your experience in terms of what’s been highlighted above.

So finally, be prepared for this kind of interview process – a loose talk with the planning director, which my double as a first interview. A more formal interview with same director and maybe another planner and a senior suit. Finally, you might have to meet the chief exec and or someone else from the board. They might ask you to present something (my last job I presented what the future held for digital planning) – they’ll be looking for how you come across as much as what you say. Be memorable, be succinct, be provocative, show you want to hear their opinion.

Sorry this is quite a string of consciousness. I can’t think of anything else (lucky for you)

GOOD LUCK!

Some ways to be useful

 

I got an email from someone asking for some advice the other day, wanting a viewpoint on how to be a really useful planner in a small place, without all the data and information resources you might be used to at a big leviathan agency network, the time or budget for primary research ...and being able to add something to a department where there are already some great intuitive brains.

Two points here. First, I'm always amazed when someone asks for advice, as if I know what I'm talking about, but more pertinently, people do actually read this silly blog and take some of the things said here with a measure of seriousness. That's a responsibility that should be treated with respect.

Secondly, I like trying to give out useful advice. Not because I have delusions of grandeur I hasten to add, but because sharing some useful (?) tips forces you to think about you own working habits and how realistically you live up to what you're advising. It's rare you're completely whiter and white and it's a useful reminder to never get lazy or cut corners. There's no way you can avoid doing the work.

It struck me I might actually have some stuff of use, not if you're a fancy pants hotshot who's worked in big hubs like London or New York, for big fancy pants agencies, however, if you're finding your feet, trying to learn without any great mentoring, or trying to do your job in a placed not that used to planning and it's value, well, I really don't mind helping out. Seriously.

Anyway, this is what I wrote (edited for confidentility and general public consumption).  

Hi there

It’s a bugger when you don’t have the tools. I used to love TGI and struggled for a bit without it, until I realized that all it did, and this goes for most quant in my view, nothing more than validate what I already knew.

Now, how can you do stuff already great 'intuitive' planners don't do already without that kind of stuff?

My first point is about intuition, using your guts. Your guts have shit for brains because you will base everything on your own experiences. We all do. We’re all biased. There is a way around this, which will make you better than them though.

Do thought experiments, find a point of connection between your own experience and something you know about your audience’s experience. For example, if you want to know how to sell running shoes to men who fetishise them as pieces of design (that’s most of us) you can relate it to how a woman thinks about shoes. I did some work on women’s hair straighteners and didn’t get under the skin of how women felt about how it transformed their looks until I remembered what it was like to wear my first decent suit...helped me anyway.

You can do that sitting at your desk and, if you work hard at thinking about genuinely similar experiences you won’t go far wrong because we all behave the same - you just need to find that connective experience in the first place.

On the same note, become specialist in something they’re not….I suggest become the in house behavioural economics and social anthropoligist expert – read Dan Ariely, read Thaler Sunstein’s Nudge, read Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, read Grant McCrackens books and everything you can on ‘choice architecture’. These are universals on how people behave and can be applied to anything. It's not new, but not enough are using proper behavioural psychology well.

Now for trend suppliers. They are a waste of money. You can find trends just by reading a newspaper – spend more time absorbing as much popular culture as you can, what are the patterns? What do they mean? What could they mean? Look at the culture around the category, the conventions etc – how does that conflict or not capture the relevance of what’s going on in their real lives? Collect a scrapbook of interesting stuff that might be relevant now, but more likely will be relevant for something you’re not doing yet.  

Have a read of Douglas Holt’s two books on cultural strategy – especially the second. There’s a way of going about things, a process that’s great, unique and delivers proper commercial results. Have a go at that process.

Finally, be truly great at qual. I don’t mean focus groups and depths etc. I mean going out and meeting your audience in their own environment. There’s so much that’s wrong with groups – group think, people not being able to articulate how they feel etc they are not that reliable. Get confident and talk to people at ‘the scene of the crime’. Just observing how they behave, the atmosphere etc is more useful than groups. I understood more about the role of biscuits in a UK mum’s life when I attended one of my mother in law’s coffee mornings than masses of available data. I got under the skin of men and their motorbikes by spending a morning at two motorbike retailers and talking to a few staff and customers (they see themselves as the last wolves in world of sheep if you’re interested). This kind of research is quick, cheap and more useful than more formal ‘primary’ research.

Finally, read all the academic, pop cultural books you can around the category, and wierder stuff around that, you’ll quickly get to the stuff that’s really driving it. I got some good stuff for a UK frozen burger brand through an quick look at the category conventions – on a product level, it was all about health, on a brand level, it was all about making Mum’s feel guilty about not playing with their kids enough…but we remembered that our own experiences of burgers as kids was as the food our Mum’s gave us when we had our friend’s around – fuel for good old fashioned playing. This was getting us somewhere, but it was only when I read a relativeley heavy weight book on parenting and the state of kids in the UK that we found one of the biggest issues for a UK Mum these days - culture forces her overprotect her little darlings, which is actually harming kids happiness by stopping making the firm friendships kids need, that only come when parents leave them alone to play together.  On a product level, the burgers were something you could leave kids to eat without worry – all kids love burgers, on a brand level, we encourage them to lighten up, get some ‘me time’ and let their kids play without interferance , which flew in the face of the category culture that, to be honest makes them feel guilty and bad and has the same kind of cultural codes - the have it all Mum and the close knit middle class family. Kids need to be left alone to make proper friends, let them.

Hope this helps

Take care and good luck

 

APG 'Head, Heart or Herd' conference

I went to the APG event last week, which was rather good, so maybe it's worth doing a bit of a report type thing.

If you can't be arsed to read my long spiel try this.

It was called 'Head, Heart or Herd' and in a nutshell:

 

Picture from Andy Smith

Science and consumer thinking evolve. New models emerge explaining how and why consumers do the things they do, and new techniques arise to better understand them. But there's still no real consensus: if anything, there are more views than ever as to what makes us all tick. 

Each panelist stood and gave us our point of view before a bit of questions and answers from the floor

Panelists were:

John Kearon of Brainjuicer

Mark Earls: Former Head of Planning at St Lukes and Ogilvy, author of ‘Herd’

Rory Sutherland: President of IPA, Chairman of Ogilvy

Nick Southgate: Former head of planning at Grey and IPA Behavioural Economics Consultant

Gemma Calvert – founder or Neurosense (they scan actual brains in the name of research)

 The premise of the night was that most traditional research isn't much good beyond a comfort blanket for clients -  – most research is a waste of time. Quant research just proves a point you hope to make and focus groups, no matter how good the moderator, are really lots of people agreeing with the a minority say.

What follows is a summary of what each panelist said, with running commentary and paraphrasing from me.

First up was John Kieron:

His first premise was that quantitative research is basically arse covering. It doesn’t really tell you anything, but can be useful to give clients the numbers they need to feel confident in what they’re doing.

It’s an imperfect science though, where the answers direct questions depend as much on the phrasing and order of the questions as much as the mind of the consumer.

Qualitative techniques are much better than that, they can get to depths of emotional knowledge, and this is essential since it is ‘emotions that drive us’ – according to most behavioral scientists (this a direct quote from Paul Ekman who is worth Googling)

We make decisions based on how we feel far more than any, so called rational basis – although we might ‘post rationalize’ this after.

Essentially feelings boil down to the following:

Contempt

Sadness

Fear

Disgust

Anger

Happiness

Surprise

And if you really want to understand how a brand, idea, creative concept etc is REALLY working, you need to uncover how people feel about it.

There’s even a way to apply this to quantitative studies…

A new technique is to show people facial expressions with the above emotions and ask people to pick the one that most represents how they feel at the time (it has to be at the time, people don’t remember correctly and are useless at predicting how they’ll feel- for more relevance see Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness) - incidentally HSBC use this technique (using Brainjuicer I presume).

Now here’s some evidence that this is a good approach. The Gorilla ad is claimed by Cadbury to be their most successful campaign ever (now I could rant that since it was aimed at impulse where the hell was the instore?) contributing to 9% market share, but it failed Millward Brown’s pre-testing, which is unfortunately, the gold standard for many brands. It’s based on rational responses like ‘persuasion’ ‘brand consideration’ and ‘brand preference’. Perfectly rational, reasonable things to ask people of course, if you’ve done any pre-testing or ongoing tracking, these are the usual measures.

You can understand why – most people would SAY, I can’t understand any message; it won’t make me buy Cadburys etc. But when it was tested for emotional response – basically feelings of joy - it was off the chart .

The IPA has built up a Databank of Effectiveness Award winners over the last 20 years and found, consistently, that campaigns that that provoke a strong emotional response are the most commercially efficient (I might add that THE most efficient are the ones that have ‘fame’ at the heart of their strategy – quite literally getting talked about, it creates quality perceptions, increases frequency, encourages trial etc really well – and is usually created by created a strong emotions around what the brand stands for and what it’s point of view is).

Focusing on rational persuasions messages actually gets in the way of feeling – and emotions are actually what makes consumers act according to science – and action is what we really want, we’re here to make people change their behavior, it’s just perverse that the most commercial sense is the fluffy stuff the bean counters hate the most.

So….work out what you want people to feel and then makes sure you devise the appropriate method to find that out.

In other words, whatever tactic, medium or idea you’re working on or in, know how it needs to make people feel and make it sure it delivers that.

 

Gemma Calvert was up next:

She cited the split brain research done by Roger Sperry which (correct me if I’m wrong) isolated the right brain hemisphere as the intuitive emotional spontaneous side and the left brain as the rational ‘planner’ (no pun intended).

Humans have two thought points of view at the same time – these two sides usually in some form of conflict. In many ways, we’re not really conscious of our deepest desires and how they influence how we make decisions and how really act; as opposed to how we believe we do. We believe we’ve listened to our rational side but don’t notice (or refuse to accept) how much it was based on how we feel…our intuitive, instinctive side.

Lots of stuff happens below our awareness, like the way someone else must have driven the car for us when we arrive at work and realize we haven’t paid attention for the last ten miles, or when ideas pop into our head when we have stopped thinking about a problem.

Our rational conscious thought evolved hundreds of thousands of years after our emotional instinctive side – which is good of course, it deals with lots of stuff below our attention, like responding to the opposite sex’s pheromones or scouring motorway for hazards (Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink explains how our intuitive side is much cleverer than our rational side – which is why first impressions are usually right).

So her suggestion is to use brain imaging to find what is going on because it happens below people’s awareness. But of course this costs a fortune. In my view, she’s only proving the point for measuring feelings as in the first point and focusing on techniques that expose how people really behave rather than how they claim – i.e. researching with people as they go through the process and more observing and forensic methods which brings us neatly to:

Rory Sutherland and Behavioral Economics:

He started with the argument that marketing people and agencies base their processes on a model of crafting messages and basing decisions on brand persuasion – basically become someone’s preferred brand and sales will go up.

This IS important but it isn’t the only game in tow. For example I’ve researched orange squash and found that while most Mum’s prefer Robinsons, many will shop from a repertoire and make decision based on what’s on offer.

As an analogy, gravity is massively important and the main reason we’re all here as we are (according to Stephen Hawking anyway) but there’s also the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism.

In fact, gravity is pretty weak – think about it, you can beat gravity just by a half hearted jump in the air. We just notice it more because it acts on very big stuff. The strong nuclear force is actually much stronger, but we don’t think about it since it only words on tiny distances - inside an atom basically. To beat gravity, just lift your hand, to break an atom in your arm and beat the strong nuclear force you need to heat it to 10,000 degrees.

Anyway, our basic job as marketing people is turning human understanding into business advantage – and that means both the ‘long range’ measures like brand preference and the short range stuff like what happened at the actual decision to make a purchase.

Humans don’t make decisions rationally; they’re affected by all sorts of irrational influences – that are actually quite consistent. We need to bake more of this thinking into long range comms as well as what we do online and instore.

For example, all decision making is relative. We will choose something of there is something similar to compare it against over something without anything to compare.

A neat trick is understand the basis of comparison and even redefine it; for example, the AA made people compare it with police and stuff by calling itself the 4^th emergency service for exactly this reason.

Offer a choice and people will choose something – red or white wine, coffee or tea.

Decisions are also sequential; strengthening brand preference can be a waste of time if there are more pressing decisions. A bed retailer needs to deal with brand preference of course, since most people who enter the market have no idea where to start and a default choice would be commercially helpful since people just want to get it over with – but most people actually put changing a bed off since it’s a pain in the neck to get rid of the bastard old bed you have. Dealing with the most pressing problem first would actually bring more people into the market and straight into your door or home page.

Another tack: Eurostar is spending millions to upgrade the infrastructure to make the trains faster. However, that’s only because they’re comparing speed with speed. With the money they have budgeted, they could afford to have every passenger served vintage wine by a supermodel – which would probably have people begging for the trains to actually go slower!

In other words, look at the close range stuff as well as the long range and use both to influence each other.

There’s masses of psychology books to read to help, including stimulus on research techniques – start with ‘Nudge’ and ‘Predictably Irrational’ and carry on from there.

Then up came Mark Earls to talk about Herd Culture

In essence, it’s a mistake to see us all as individuals – we’re social creatures. If you want ideas to spread, don’t ask people to make an individual choice, don’t merely persuade them about product quality –work on social meaning and making it feel like you’re joining in with a group.

All the science points to the fact that we’re social beings. We learn by copying other people (that’s how infants develop – they copy Mum and Dad and why adopted kids oddly seem to resemble their adoptive parents, they take on their mannerisms). We’re advanced monkeys and have evolved to exist in a tribe.

As a mad example, think about Star Trek. The heart of it wasn’t sci fi, it was about people – the tension in the relationship between the emotional Kirk and the logical Spock.

Humans can handle all sorts of challenges and pain, but what drives us mad the most of being lonely (that’s why solitary is the worst punishment in prisons).

If you get the chance, read Connected by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis (have a lend if you like).

Here’s some scary facts – you’re 57% more likely to be obese if a friend is. A teenage girl is far more likely to be pregnant if a friend is. Our preferences, decisions and actions are profoundly affected by those around us.

So rather than just understand people, understand the social context, what happens between people in your given subject and how the in-between is structured  - so you can be in those connections and perhaps even change them.

I’d like to add here that cultural inspection is a useful tool. Find out what is REALLY going in culture, find a problem or a tension in the lives of real people, that they talk about and go through together and help them resolve it – do it with them or on their behalf.

Like Dove’s campaign for Real Beauty invited you to join a group of women who wanted to be celebrated as beautiful as they were and fought the unrealistic images of the beauty industry on their behalf.

Or Persil’s ‘Dirt is Good’ campaign that resolves tension between Mum’s wanting their kids to play but discourage them to get out there and get dirty, incidentally, it only began to really work when it targeted the interaction between parents and their kids and helped parents remember how to play with their kids

Then Nick Southgate talked about the value of basing insight on your own experiences:

A fundamental question – why don’t you know what you want to know about a particular consumer group?

The sad truth is that in most cases, you do consumer research because you can’t be bothered to go through their experiences yourself (out of interest, the CEO of Unilever regularly hires a minibus full of recruited consumers and goes shopping with them to understand them first hand)

We’re all people and it’s bollocks that we’re all different (see Herd argument above) – humans are 99.9% alike, but most western civilization pretends that the 0.1% matters more than it does. We all react to different situations in pretty much the same way.

So you can practice empathy thinking.

Imagine you want to sell £4,000 bags. I’ll never have the money to buy the wife one of them. But you can safely assume it’s a big ticket, one off special purchase for most of its target audience. It’s something tied up in status too.

We all have gone through those. Could be a designer dress, an expensive suit or a flashy flat screen telly – think about how that felt, the stages you went through and you’ll soon learn what it feels like.

Just go out and watch them or be cheeky and talk to them – your mirror neurons will fire and you’ll be in your mindset. (It works in the same way as when you play a song you love someone else and you immediately hear it through their ears).

So if you work on public transport stuff, you need to get the bus or train from time to time

If you’re selling suits to bankers, go for a drink where they do after work and watch and listen

etc

And as a quick one to one research technique – get people to talk about other people rather than themselves – the empathy kicks in quick and you get a truer picture. People find it hard to talk about themselves truthfully.

 

So there you have it.

On the day, if people had to choose one, they chose Behavioural Economics – but do what is tmost appropriate for what you’re doing, your budget and the time you have.

 Broad conclusion on everything though, would be that getting insight about feelings, how people actually behave and how a group interacts are all a blend of the same approach – build learning around the fact that we’re irrational, we don’t do what we claim and we’re most influenced by other people and want to belong to someone.

Constantly try to get under the skin of culture around the product/brand, by reading lots of stuff of course but mainly doing what you’re audience does, and that includes online experiences, actually meeting them and even just relating there experience to yours, if you have no time and no money when a project comes in, you can do a pretty good job of getting insight – all that’s missing is the proof (hello quant research).

Traditional focus groups and quant are slow and expensive, being an amateur psychologist that actually goes out and meets real people outside of rooms with one way mirrors is not, and if you’re constantly building up a bank of knowledge, it’s there, ready when you need it. That’s the beauty of all those online conversations sloshing around; you just need to tap into them.

Some quotes:

“Two thirds of paid for research Franklin’s Gambit - is proving what you’ve already decided”

“Most planning and strategy is really pre-emptive post rationalization”

“Agencies built models of brand persuasion because they were easy to sell to clients, but the problems started when they forgot it was a selling tool and started to actually believe in it”

Bake Club

I really like Lurpak's Bake Club. It's not devastatingly cool or clever, there's no killer app or amazing use of technology, it's just really useful and makes me feel nice. People are getting used to technology that we would have thought impossible ten years ago. You can't flash bastard people into engagement anymore, guess what? It's back to ideas for people.

I like the way it's designed for humans rather than ad people. I can't speak for other people, I don't know the strategy, but as a person, I like the way it brings people together, it doesn't want to turn them into Delia Smith, just do something you're proud of to share on a regular basis.

That's what I like about baking, it's something you do for other people far more than cooking. I don't really bake much, but I want to get good so Will and I can do it together. We'll get in trouble with Mum for making a mess in the kitchen of course, but that's half the fun. 

Northern Planner

Once upon a time I thought this blog would be all about what it's like being a planner in the North of England - the experiences of doing a job outside of any of the famous or common places to do any form of good brand communication, let alone proper strategy for it. It didn't really happen, it became about swimming, cooking, having kids and maybe the odd post about doing the planning basics.

Quite right too, that's what I'm interested in, even if you're not. But maybe it's worthwhile throwing out some pointers to what it's like doing this job around here.

In case you're wondering, planners have to earn their keep wherever they work. Suits and creatives can get along quite happily without planners, we have to prove our worth. If you don't like that, tough, it's really how it is. Even in corporate cultures that revere planners, you have to earn your spurs on an individual basis. That applies to big budget clients and agencies, which mostly exist in London if you work in the UK. Outside of this, you mostly get to work on second tier brands, challengers and stuff that isn't above the line...and then you really need to earn your place.

Curiously, as 'advertising' gets squeezed, it gets consolidated more and more into London - and gets far less innovative. I find this perverse, since it needs to earn attention and blur into other media more than it ever has done before - digital IS the media more and more, TV or no TV. Instinctively, agencies outside of London do the integrated thing better, they've had to do it for a lot longer. But it's true their thinking is less sophisticated, they're less at the cutting edge.

Some of that's geography- I've been spending a lot of tim at Mother recently and they make the most of living in London, breathing in culture and breathing it out, but that's not all good - London is not Britain, and certainly isn't the world, down-to earthiness can really help.

That said...my God! Regional agencies make too much of being nice and chummy and full of common sense - clients want to be excited and think their agency is cooler then they are. Read the comments in The Drum and what you'll see is a big massive chip on each shoulders and the worse kind of inverted snobbery - creatives thinking it's still 1985 being the most common theme.

Much of the sophistication and rigour comes from planners - most people don't appreciate that the Gorilla came from rock hard quant analysis PLUS amazing creativity - and was steered through proper FMCG pre-testing. Planners did that. Celebrate Juan Cabral if you want, but appreciate the planning that got it through research.

Planning outside of London is a rare thing. There are few planners, let alone departments. Some of that is shortsightedness from the agencies, who are too used to slack thinking (and slack work) but also from clients who sometimes don't have the budgets but mostly don't have the culture to appreciate what planners do.

Anyway, with that all in mind, here's ten things to think about if you want to plan in the UK, but outside of London:

1. Get good at digital. Even if you're at one of the few places that do significant and good above the line, your budgets will be squeezed and you'll need to know how to apply thinking to digital. Anyhow, regional agencies are being very canny and beginning change their business model - positioning digital at the heart of planning with other comms as channels in. To have a future, you need to know how to plan for digital. I think that's still about having ideas people want to spend time with, but you have learn how to get out of messaging planning and into experience planning. That also means you get to work with bigger clients with bigger spend. I'm lucky enough to work on global stuff with Ogilvy and national stuff with Mother because I do the digital bit. Digital is far more regional neutral than anything else.

2. So that means you'll need to free up your inner geek. Make friends with developers, read Clay Shirky, read Mashable, know what it cool. Get post digital - understand the latest thinking on how we use the internet now we've forgotten it's there. But become the bridge between geekdom and creativity - be the person that can translate and simplify the amazing choice out there into something creatively potent - don't do anything because it's cool, do it because it will surprise and delight.

3. That, in turn, means getting good at comms planning. Understand how different media will and should fit together. Know how and why people are using mobile internet, when you should build a website or just create a conversation around Facebook. Media planning out in th sticks is poor - it's really just buying. Clients either go to London, or look to their creative agency. You don't want to be out gunned by a really good London media planner and you don't want to lose the chance to add value by doing something no one else in your region can do well.

4. This means going back to the origins of true planning - being the voice of the consumer rather than a 'shrill for the work'. Clients want evidence, and lower budget clients want even more evidence if they're going to take risks. So go beyond the usual stuff about brand consideration etc, know your audience as humans. You need to create proper dialogue. Don't believe that bollocks about becoming what people are interested in, brands are not that important and you don't work on Nike, but you become part of the interesting conversation and HOUSE them. So know what REALLY makes people tick - no one does that really well out here.

5. All the above is the theme of becoming indispensable. It never stops out here, you're a luxury, you're added value. You need to become someone they can't afford to get rid of. Never stop looking for ways to be useful - be flexible, do things you think London planners would consider beneath them - do dirty qual, even better, get really good at cheap quality qual - go out and meet people involved in the subject your working on. Become an amateur behavioral economist, invent new techniques.

6. Don't get precious. Any planner anywhere needs to surrender their ego, but out here, don't got all huffy about best practice, don't expect anyone to understand what you mean by transmedia planning - and it's not their fault, it's yours. Take all that amazing stuff you know, you might have done or seen others doing and re-purpose it for your agency or your clients. Make it usable. Don't expect agency culture to fit around you.

7. That said, don't give in. Champion great thinking - don't take the easy option, don't just surrender to creatives who live in their own little bubble. Just don't be a wanker about it, don't be an elitist idiot, find a way to make people want to do it right, want to push things. Like any communication, find the right buttons to push.

8. Get to know everyone. Planning's a tiny community, you need to know as much of it as you can. Choices are not massive, but you still want to move around a bit - new challenges but also finding a culture that fits you and your life stage a little bit.It's so much easier when you can email or pick up the phone to people you know.

9. That also means don't piss people off - it's too small an industry, especially our bit of it. I wish I'd been less headstrong in the past (and not too recent past) always leave on good terms, never take the opportunity to snipe, remember everyone can see what you post on Twitter.

10. Get good and known for something unique in your locality. That may be a brilliant qualy side, it may be you as a workshop demon (oh yes, get good at workshops - always invaluable, despite the fact you might, like me, hate them - clients love them and love you for doing them - great way of making people think they thought of stuff), not just 'I'm good at digital'.

Hope that helps, might have convinced you to get a job in London or abroad, but better you know that now! Oh, and if you're under 25, go to Asia or Australia for a bit, it will be ace and you'll regret it if you don't (I do).

Account Planning School of the Web Returns

Rob's Account Planning School of the web post is up, it's genius, I suggest you have a go

Why digital is such a silly word

As part of the process of moving here, I did a small talk on why a digitally flavoured agency needs planning.

How, for a more vociferous point of view, look at this. What I said was based around two slides.

 
 While this is what I think of idiots who believe in intelligent design, I was making another point about Darwinism.

Advertising agencies got found out around 15 years ago, when clients began to look at what they were getting in return for fees that paid for Porche's, lunches at the Ivy and, even Up North, a very plush life for agency types. We've been seeing the slow decline of ad agencies ever since, amplified by the claimed decline in effectiveness of paid for, traditional above the line. If you're any good, you do okay, if you're not, you're fishfood.

A similar thing is happening with digital agencies. For a few years they had the upper hand over clients and other agencies thanks to being the only ones that 'get' the technology. A few whizzy websites, a bit of SEO and a few banner ads and yay, make lots of money!

But now they're getting found out. Clients are looking at very pretty, but very useless pieces of digital art and questioning what the return is, and unfortunately for digital, that's very easy to measure.

You wouldn't believe the amount of digital specialists I've worked with that have no clue about building ideas around people, who just want to update the website. When more people don't even bother with brand websites, they just noodle around they're own social hubs, this 'act' is wearing a little thin.

Technology is still massively important, things are moving quicker and quicker. But knowing how things work and what is possible is useless without knowing what it's for.

Then there's display advertising. Hand on heart, can you remember an ad on the web that made you sit up and really take notice? I can't, but I can still remember how I felt watching the first 'Just Do It' ads, or 'Balls'.

 

Just because the medium might have changed - and boy how things have changed, it doesn't mean the skills have. It's bloody complex now. Digital? I give you post digital, the Internet of Things, Transmedia Planning....multiple touchpoints, people, surprise surprise, doing what they want, not what you tell them and shutting out brands, and culture in general that doesn't earn their attention. e - interacting with brands across a series of touchpoints rather than one web portal.

That brought me to the second slide, thieved from Gaping Void.

Digital stuff hasn't changed people, it's simply enabled them to be more human. One way, authoritarian media and culture managed to pretend otherwise for a while, but humans are social creatures and can't help responding to others around them, wanting to belong to a group and acting social. Social networking isn't new, it's just magnified how people really behave.

In other words, it's not enough to know the technology, you have to know people. You have to build ideas around how real people behave, be relevant, interesting, know when to show up, how to fit into their lives.

And that sounds familiar doesn't it? That's what people that grew up doing brand stuff and advertising learned to do as second nature (the good ones).

Thats' what planners do - as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as a digital planner, I'd wager there won't be as many digital agencies soon, maybe on or two specialists that are especially good, but there will be agencies that don't do advertising, they don't do 'digital' or, they just have ideas that connect people with brands in the right way - the brand, but also for the people.

That's going to need planners more than ever before. So the idea of 'digital' is a little silly as far as the future is concerned. Ad agencies are going to become good at doing stuff that isn't just advertising, the good ones already are. So called digital agencies will have to get good at proper strategy and creativity.

There are pioneers of course. Balloonacy is great, wonderful use of technology, what you need people to do and built around a brand idea.

This TV commercial was designed to let people in and share and discuss online.

 

This idea for Oasis is based on classic planning - increase frequency by persuading young people to have a decent lunch, of which Oasis is a critical ingredient. TV is activation, reach and engagement, but there's a campaign to join in with on Facebook.

 

 

Communications planning 4

Oke Doke, as promised it's time to finish communications planning. For previous posts, go here, here and then here.

When we left it, we were at the point when we'd worked out the task for communications - what actions do you want your audience to take - the thing communications can influence people to do to best contribute to the business goal.

Grow impulse purchases by getting top of mind with young buyers...

 

 

That's more than half the battle - really defining the task is the best thing you can do, in  some agencies, planning stops there - you'll see the proposition as a task in many briefs, JWT focuses on what we want people to think and then opens up the process to everyone. I must admit, that's how I would prefer to work, but most agencies still have a wall between creative and planning and you can't shape the rest of the process as a team everywhere.

However and wherever you work, it's critical to make sure you don't stick to 'advertising's the answer, what's the question'. Knowing when and where to show up in your audiences lives is not only a must now the web enabled, marketing savvy consumer can filter ads out if they want to, it can actually form part of the actual idea.

So you need to answer the following question - when and where, and in what circumstance will our target be most receptive to our communications? You need to thinks about:

What media do they consume, why and how? What else do they interact with that isn't strictly 'media'?

What role does different possible connection points play in their lives? What do they pay attention to during the day? What are they doing at the time? Are they looking for entertainment?  Information? Companionship?

How does the competition connect to the audience? Are their opportunities to find different connection points? Should we use the same but in a very different way?

Think again about what role the category plays in their real lives? When are they most in need of what they're offering? When could we make the most difference or be of the most use?

When and where does the brand vision and personality fit the most?

Think again about the purchase process - what does that tell you about when and where to show up?

Of course, TV is still a great medium, but you're deluded if you think all you have to do is put a logical ad up there and that's it. It's harder to stand out now, so relevance is critical, and you need to think of this as part of multiple touch points in  story - in store, on-line, PR events and other media you want to invent.

Coming back to the Gorilla, they knew that the ad had to be something viral, that would get people talking and sharing on Youtube.

Axe in Japan (I think) needed to increase usage in the morning and discovered that males there use their phones as an alarm clock - so the moment became when they woke up..with sexy alarm calls from the girl of your choice.

Orange engaged with a younger audience through film - and picked a couple of moments. One was the actual film experience itself, this one was even more specific - engagement with Star Wars fans.

Another was a night of the week to share a film with a mate.

Sainsburys conceptually is about that rainy Tuesday night when you can't think of anything to cook - Try something new today.

Ghd focuses on the ritual of getting ready, and the hidden desires inside every woman.

 

But then there's TBWA London's work to make young women aware of the dangers of having your drink spiked - by actually spiking their drink with a specially made cocktail umbrella.

 

A word of caution. Be sure what you're doing will the reach the number of people you need to. Stunts etc are waste of time if they reach 100 people when you need to generate trial with 10,000.

Then consider the experience you want people to have, maybe think of it as a reward. What you're going to say, do etc to make people end up acting as you want, this ends up as the proposition in the creative brief.

Consider functional - Ariel makes whites whiter. And don't be afraid of telling people about a unique product benefit if there is one.

This ad is just telling you that a Sony Bravia has better colour, the rest is how that is delivered.

 

Just bear in mind, it's how you deliver that message that counts and thought and input on that is needed - it usually and should come from the brand vision/tone etc, but we'll come to that.

It can also come from knowing what the experience is of th medium - only an idiot produces a cinema ad that doesn't entertain, but you can interact with a small crowd here too.

 

Purified so it tasted fresher

 

 

Sensory/emotional  benefit....freedom, power, confidence.

Independence..

 

Belonging

 

 

Expressive - being to communicate to others that you are experienced..

 

Intelligent..

  

A great mother..

 

How do you choose the right focus? Think why the audience isn't doing what you want, find the blockage, judge your solution by how much it will overcome it.

You should think about support- give the reasons why the target should believe what you're saying. This should really be the actual stuff of the communication.

You can be literal - 9 out out of ten cats prefer Whiskas

British Airways brings more people together than anyone else..

 

Honda used their hatred of diesel engines to spur them to make one they could love.

 

Demonstration...

The Accord just works

 

..or dramatise it.

Women enjoy Yorkie's even thought they're masculine.

 Check your logic - how does the action, the reward and the support fit together - a useful check is to complete the following sentence from the audience point of view:

"When I (intended action), I will (reward), because (support).

Now, traditionally tone of voice etc comes last - you would hope because this is already set and agreed, everyone is clear about the brand idea, the personality etc. Other people have talked betterthan I could about why this matters (and offer alternatives to this way of comms planning, but remember, these are the basics, know the rules, do them well before you break them).

Anyway, you must say, behave etc in a way that people will FEEL it. Just telling people will mean they won't listen. Nothing will happen.

Every piece of comms says something about the brand, like it or not. It needs to be appropriate for the brand and the audience. You need to be clear about this, and agree it with client especially creatives.

Too often, a creative is briefed really well, but tone is left out. Or even worse, it's not and they ignore it, because they believe it's up to them to decide how communication is delivered. It is up to a point. But it was Boddingtons - it MUST have been delivered creamily with  a Mancunian twist.

 

If it's Apple, it must be simple and human.

You might want to be consistent with how you're perceived already, you might want to play up an element of what the brand's about, you might want to shift perceptions a little of what the brand's about.

In the end, it's got to be appropriate for the objective, brand and audience - but creatives don't own tone and manner and the sooner you talk about it and the more work is put into getting it right, the better.

I've only shown TV here because it's easy to get hold of Youtub video, more and more that will be less of what we do...but TV's real long term benefit is building up how people feel about the brand. You need to make sure they feel the right things.

And that, as they say, is that, hope it's useful.

Stupid complexity

I'm not the first to notice the importance of simplicity of course, but anyway...

Just in case you thought talking or writing in big words and complex language makes you look clever, think again.

Talk like a human, take the time to write less.

Back to the grindstone - communications planning post 1

Once upon a time I wrote this post about finding a strategy and it ended up being some sort of greatest hit, in its own modest little way. It was part of an undertaking to provide access to some basics and processes. I thought it was important then and I still do.

It's all well and good if you have a planning director and stuff, that's not always the case. Plenty of people use blogs and stuff to help them get an idea of what life is like as a planner, and it's not all blogging and coffee. Most of it isn't existential thinking, it's rigour and process (or it should be).

But that side of this blog has tailed off somewhat in favour of post about tea, swimming and babies. Time to go back to it.

I looked at that strategy post and I still like it, but it doesn't give you enough of a process, or make the distinction between brand planning and communications/campaign planning. I can imagine someone reading that, getting a little excited about their next project and realising they haven't a clue where to start.

So this post focuses on communications/campaign planning. We're going to go through a process step by step. It's not the only way, but it's the most common. If you strip away the brilliant wrapping on some of the stuff we all admire, this is what planners will have gone through to get there. So we'll pepper this with examples.

So yes, this is what most planners spend most of their time doing (apart from pointless workshops but that's another post). In my view, they want to change brands and their architecture too often, when there's no need.

Put simply, if there's no brand ideain place or guide to how the brand behaves, what it stands for etc, you need to create one. This won't happen very often, and will be covered in another post. You may find when you're doing you're comms planning that actually, there is a big problem with how the brand is positioned. Rare, but it does happen. If that's the case, you need to look at the brand.

But mostly, you're interpreting the core brand idea, or 'smudge' in my book in a new way that will help the client achieve their objectives.Like these two examples....

Pepsi has always been about young people and youthful energy. The latest incarnation of that is a way to get them engaged with the brand - actually doing stuff with it rather than old style messaging. Their new interpretation is based around the observation that every generation wants to change the world and reacts against what has gone before. Which became 'refresh everything' - encouraging small personal acts every day to create a bottom up movement.Pepsi is too big to much besides 'brand involvement' stuff, but the every new idea is a new expression of youthful energy - that doesn't change. Just as Levis is always anti-establishment and youthful rebellion.

 

 

Sainsburys has always been a quality food hero. Try something New Idea was the latest expression of that, built ona rock hard objective to get existing customers to spend £1 pound extra with every visit, in order to add £1 billion of revenue over a set period of time. The brand didn't change, what to do with it just moved in to help the business do what it needed to do...including galvanising staff instore.

 

 

True brand architecture rarely changes, it's just that sometime you're looking for a long term communications idea to carry lots of smaller ideas.

Does that makes sense?

Actually, this is a post in itself, so more tomorrow. Into the process

Why a brand is like an electron

As far as I'm concerned, a brand is a collection of feelings and associations built up over time. At their best, there is vision or an idea that helps the brand create the right impressions for whatever they need to do. I thought it looked a little like this..

 
This means a general direction, vision, promise or whatever you want to call it (would you believe some people I came accross recently call it a 'brand dream' (!)) and communications ideas that cover off immediate objectives, remove certain barriers and help you 'tack' along.

I presented this specific chart a while back. I still think this is mostly right, but there's something wrong I now think. That's the concept of a 'brand idea'. Let me explain.

If you're launching a brand, you need an idea of course. You need to have a strong belief about the role you want to have in people's lives, what problem you are going to help them with, which people. What will it feel like? What will you always do? What will you never do?

This stuff matters. If you took Coke's means of production away, they could still sell their company for billions based on brand value. When Sainsburys was doing badly at the start of this decade (crap distribution) what kept them going was the loyalty of customers who wanted them to do well in a way that only Waitrose could maybe match.

But you SHOULD only have to do this once. And I'm less convinced that a brand IDEA is that important. Abrand is broad church, a collection of feeling and associations, much like a person is. It's at once vague and familiar. You know it's Coke, Nike or Ikea through a vague recognition of atmosphere. Cue the self serving analagy.

They used to think an electron was a single particel orbiting around the nucleas of an atom. A simple dot...you could predict where it was and where it was going.

Nowadays, as mad as it sounds, they believe you don't where it is, it can be anywhere within a given space - so you have to assume it is in all those spaces at the same time, a fuzzy cloud.

Really brands are like that, they occupy a fuzzy space, more a smudge than a bullet hard object (or sentence). Sainsburys may well be Try Something New Today right now, but I don't think that's a GENUINE brand idea, it's a bloody good BIG communications idea. Sainsbury's longer, bigger brand story (smudge) is about commitment to good food - a food hero, something like. Nike is something to do with self motivation and hero worship. We, of course, know that Honda is about optimism.

So what I think I'm saying is that a brand is rarely a big consistent idea. Plot the story of great brands over time and you see a series of great ideas that occupy a fuzzy area.

The only time you need a BIG brand idea is when you believe one doesn't exist in people's heads, like with Honda. Even then, the story was there, it was just that not enough people knew the truth about the company culture.

I think this means a lot more freedom for planning campaigns. Doing what is right for right now, dealing with what needs to be dealt with. Sainsburys will always be about great quality food, right now they're getting more out the customers they have and dealing with them having less budget, This will eventually change. But they found their way in the '90s with celebrity recipe ads.. and they're still doing it.

When Apple found its way again in 1997 with'Crazy Ones' and the Imac, it simply rediscovered what it was about. To be honest, the ad is another take on the premise of 1984...Disruption (you'll hate that word if you work at TBWA). And both are part of a wider story/cloud/smudge...simplicity and humanity.

Unless I'm starting from complete scratch with a launch, I'd be talking to lots and lots of people who are involved with the organisation, not looking for words as much as how they feel about the brand. What fuzzy space does it occupy? What it the atmosphere. Find that and you can have lots of ideas within it. They don't have to be the same, maybe not even the same theme, but together thet should create a smudge like and electron.

Thinking like this will help us manage what's going on right now, with the web enabled, Facebooking savvy consumer.

The rules are not that different to 20 years ago, you still have to create something interesting, just more-so now that we can't bludgeon people glued to the telly. The difference is that if you're under 25, you don't want something totally finished, you want to be involved, share and be part of it. I think unfinished areas (and when you think about it a brand is never finished, it just evolves) smudges, areas or subject matter for conversations are far more suited to that. 

Cadence and leaving things in reserve for sport (and the day job)

When you're a serious athlete you live a life of no half measures. Every training session is flat out (until you're tapering down for competition), there is no challenge, no pain or suffering that has not been addressed by the time the big day comes.

That was my life for a while, and it was appropriate for then. But that kind of approach is not sustainable when you start to live life as an ordinary mortal. I still train pretty hard..and more often than is strictly normal, but different.

And I think that difference is all about cadence and rhythm. Proper athletes build up a terrifying momentum, day in, day out, giving it all. It really hurts at first, and then you hit a groove. The pain doesn't go away, but it becomes manageable, joyful in many ways. The momentum is there, you're on your way, and once the cadence is there, on you go. That's why injury is such a problem, it's not just missing on precious training time, it's having to find your rhythm again.

There's a different rhythm to training for ordinary mortals. At least for me - I can't work to utter exhaustion day in-day out anymore. If that happens, it's so much harder the next day. What seems to work is still working extremely hard, joy in effort, in pain...all that. But now I keep something back. There's an art in going very far, but not too far. That little bit left is kept in reserve for next time, and then the time after that and so on. And a new rhythm emerges.

I think there is something in this for all sorts of things. Especially working in an agency. Let's face it, while it's not coal mining or nursing, it's not the easiest of jobs. We work long hours and we work hard. You find your own way of navigating this - mine tends to be coming in extremely early and leaving relatively reasonably. But on top that, working flat out just leaves you with burnout, and doing bad work.

So once again, push yourself, don't be happy with alright or good enough, enjoy the late night pitch buzz. We're all this because we like ideas, we like the colour, we enjoy a bit if stress. But every day, just try and leave a little bit in reserve. Build up your rhythm, know each night when you leave you have just a little bit left. It puts you in good stead when you have to pull one of those all nighters and, in the end, you'll be better at your job.

Top Tip Number 2 - always be closing

So you're a clever clogs. You sit in meeting's stir things up, make people think, get them excited over all sorts of stuff. But somehow the strategy that get's signed off, and the resulting work is never what you had in mind. How come? if people were that interested, why did we revert to type?

Here's why. People like to get exited about stuff, but when it come to actually doing it, it suddenly becomes risky, so they revert to type. You need to keep the momentum going. The more it builds up a head of steam, the more 'real' it becomes the more it's going to happen.

So keep that initiative. Next time you get people interested in something, get an agreement to make something, or do something. That might be some desk research to share for next time, an agreement to do a workshop to develop stuff together (make the stimulus amazing), could be proposition boards if you have some sort of direction to explore -anything. But get an agreement to make something or do something for next time, don't let it fizzle out, don't let doubt creep in, don't let the easy option in.

In the end of a day, we work in a factory, it may be an ideas factory, but it's a factory nevertheless, so keep that production line going, keep working to go beyond talking - to making or doing stuff.

In other words, always be closing