Northern Planner

Vaguely useful advice 4 - real life v textbooks and strategy v ad tweaking

More email based advice. Just a reminder, this is what I think, not everyone.

Hi Andrew, 

Sorry to bombard you with questions. I feel that 'strategy's is not embraced within the client organization at all. Strategy is about retrofitting the execution as opposed to guiding the creative. While I know real life doesn't happen in textbook fashion, I believe this should not be happening all the time. What do you think?

 

Hi

You’re too right that real life doesn’t follow the textbooks,

And most of the textbooks are wrong.

I think the trick is to insert best practise into real life and not the other way around.

Loads of clients only care about you making the best ads, and have got someone else to do the ‘grand strategy’.

And yes, lots if planning tends to be a ‘ad tweaker’ as Stephen King put it.

Now I’m not here to get bad/indulgent/plain wrong work through the client or research.

I sure, neither are you.

 

This about patient and playing the long game – and not bruising egos.

 

I don’t like testing work, it’s mostly pointless and can kill great work, especially in the hands of a bad researcher. However, if you’re client is a fan of testing, use it to your advantage. It’s immoral, but as you say, we live in the real world.

So use research defensively.

If everyone is in love with an idea, but isn’t objective about how it works, and either won’t listen, or will hate you forever for killing their baby, be the voice of the consumer and test it.

Which means moderate groups yourself (you can’t escape this and getting good at moderation gets you great at client meetings and managing workshops) or making friends with the researcher. Researchers are lonely folk who no one takes the time to befriend. Have influence on the discussion guide, tell the researcher what you’re looking for.

In other words, fix work by getting people to say what you know is wrong with it, kill bad work if it’s begging to be put out its misery – but get people to say what you know is the right alternate approach.

In other words,  people other than yourself to alter or crucify the work, but make sure you also have a clear, insightful and interesting way forward.

And because it’s endorsed by real buyers, the client will buy into it too.

 

Of course, you might not have the budget to do formal research and the client might not want to pay to test work (in most cases hallelujah!) so put the work in front of people of the doers in the agency who are not ‘comms professionals’ –accounts, PA’s etc. Get their feedback instead.  Or do cheap and cheerful street interviews. Works internally, while clients bloody love vox-pops. Just make sure the respondents match the clients ‘minds-eye’ picture of their audience, not always the real audience, then they’ll accept it far more. Play to their prejudice. I once worked on a brand who’s CEO believed all their buyers where beautiful fashionista women (preferably with great breasts). So went out to do vox pops with precisely these kind of women (it’s a hard life).  And no, my natural charm and film star looks didn’t make it easy to attract this kind of respondent, I took an account exec to man the camera who, in the looks department, did.

 

Now, as far as ‘grand strategy’ is concerned, this is really part of the same job. Folks, of course, don’t like work for surface reasons but mostly, when they talk about why the like or don’t like stuff, you can quickly root out the fact that the work is based in the wrong objective or direction. So, feeding back on work enables you to feedback on strategy and present a better approach with evidence as to why that’s the case.

 

Failing time to do this, make sure you do work to brief, but then present and alternative, just make sure you have  strong, evidence argument for why it’s better, and let the account folk help with some of those dark arts of charm and persuasion.

If you don’t have time or resources for that, this is where dirty planning really comes in. Don’t post rationalise why the wrong work is right, invent the argument for why the right work is right – convince them it’s on brief. Most ads and stuff have a specific strategy and a specific ‘way in’ – executional idea. Just make sure the execution does the job you want it to, but convince the client it does what THEY want it to.

For example, a client thinks this about proving superiority by talking about quality ingredients,

 

 

 

but it’s really about relevance and role, creating a specific feeling and context for the usage experience, and getting across a unique brand point of view without saying it (we’re for folks who like being outdoors and experiencing more low-fi, authentic stuff, bourgeois bohemians)  - a brand for ‘people like me’ that shares my values and aspirations. . It’s no good providing evidence without presenting the argument first.

 

Hope this helps

  

 

 

Sort of useful advice 3 - building relationships with account people

More email advice stuff. About these folks:

Hi Andrew, 

How are you? 

One of the things I'm really struggling with at my current workplace is shaping my role. My role is a newly created role. I feel the client is execution focused and there is an enormous opportunity for strategic thinking to guide the brand. The thing is I haven't got a clue on how to do it, what I should be doing on a daily basis. I used to be a part of all meetings so I have a better sense of what's going on to identify opportunities where I can insert myself. That continued for a bit until we got an account director on the account. I felt a sense of relief as I thought this person might help pull me in at the right times instead of sitting through mindless meetings. What I'm starting to realize is I'm letting him dictate what my role and involvement should be as I don't have the confidence to tell him or figure out where and how I should be involved. In a nutshell, I just don't know what to do besides trial and error. How would you handle this situation? 

Do you always attend client creative reviews? 

By the way, I really like what you said about think about thinking about your audience as a protagonist in your story - it really helped when I was organizing my thoughts! 

 

 

Hi

Yes, shaping your role is a double edged sword- it’s great to have the flexibility, but others can shape it for you.

In general, you should be following this job description.

But when it comes to reality, the world isn't full of purists.

Acccount directors can be tricky in particular because:

1. They need to feel they are in control and need to get stuff done on time
2. They want to own the client relationship
3. In some cases they think they can do the strategy

Ive written about working with suits before- here. But here's some other thoughts.

I attend most client meetings and most creative reviews because I’ve worked hard to win a level of respect from everyone.

More than that, people expect I’ll add something that won’t come from anyone else. Creatives, suits and clients can get along fine without planners, you have to make them WANT you in the room.

With any account director, make them feel your making their job easier.

That doesn’t mean you make them feel you’re cleverer than them, but that you respect what they do (I do I was failed suit) and want to earn theirs.

So:

Don’t do cleverer strategy, do more generative strategy. Average briefs, briefings and overall thinking tends to frame business objectives, stays within the ‘category’ and doesn’t really help creatives that much with having good ideas. A useful trick is not to ‘own the strategy’ but add to it, contribute that extra 10% of thinking that turns it into a creative rocket fuel, rather than instruction….by pushing into something that people will care about, that make them respond, that will provoke creative response. Because, ultimately, suits like less creative reviews and less time on a job, so the better the start and the more creatives can allocate to solving a creative task rather than a ‘business one’ the better. For example – one thing I worked on recently turned ‘We need increase usage occasions and increase the emotional relationship ’ (don’t get me going on the double task) into “Inspire women across the nation to get more creative”.

Add more and more to the stuff you get invited to and you’ll see you’ll get included into more and more and more. Build a relationship with creatives – be a genuine bridge between them an suits. When suits see creatives want you around, they’ll want you too – creative are harder for suits to manage than clients.

 

So you then need to make sure you can PROVE that people will be interested in this – data, insights, examples from real culture. Which brings me to point about relationships with clients. You’re not there for clients to like you more than the account director (take this from a painfully shy person who can never ‘own the room’ with force of personality) you’re there for clients to want to maintain an strengthen the relationship. By removing risk for them – with evidence that the work is the right thing to do. By  continually adding value with observations and nuggets into every meeting and by getting better work more smoothly out of the agency. The suits will get it right in terms of what they think the client will buy, you’ll get it right by proving it’s what the target will respond to, and how that response will help solve the BUSINESS problem.

 

In other words, by being a source of ideas and then helping get those ideas through, you’ll make both creatives AND suits want you around more.

 

In turn, that means surrendering your ego, be generous with all your thinking and ideas, let both creatives and suits take credit and they’ll want you around, because you make them look good (I even bury my best stuff within a creative brief, creatives’ natural response to a brief is to question it, let them discover the best stuff themselves. You need to know you’d thought of that, they don’t). But the moment you try and take credit for stuff, they’ll shut you out.

 

So that’s the approach.

 

Here’s some pointers to help you know what’s going on, which have always helped me:

1. Traffic is the heart of the agency. They know everything going on. Make friends with traffic. They are the centre of the eternal creative v account person war, help smooth that and they’ll love you too.
2. Account directors might rule, but it’s the account managers and execs that manage the day to day. Make friends with the junior suits. This will also pay back for tomorrow, since suits tend to rise very quickly and will become account directors and even CEO’s before you become board planner/planning director or whatever.
3. If you’re the only planner, add value to the entire agency. Do a monthly trends meetings, innovation updates, case studies of great work from other places or whatever. Where I last worked, we put little nuggets of insight at eye level in the staff toilets and updated them weekly (Our insight us urinsight) – become visible go to source for great insight and new thinking.

 

I hope I’ve answered the question and you find it helpful

More semi-useful advice. It all boils down to four simple questions

...and here's the second chunk of vaguely useful advice. Four basic questions. Whatever the agency, the 'specialism', the client. the category or territory.

Hi Andrew,

I came across your previous post  and the way you found your voice as a planner is inspirational. It brought tears to my eyes. It gave me a lot of courage as I find myself in a similar situation. I've always wanted to be a planner. It took me several years until I landed that symbolic title. I'm without boss and I'm the only planner on my team. I feel lost and confused most of the time and feel foolish for feeling that way. I've been reading blogs to figure out how I should do my job but I'm still struggling to find my voice. 

 

Glad it helped.

By the way, EVERYTHING boils down to:

Where are we now?

Why are we here?

Where could we be?

How do we get there?

 

Structure everything you do around this and you won’t go far wrong.

 

Follow your instincts, just find a way to PROVE you’re doing the right thing

Vaguely useful advice (or The Planning Agony Uncle)

It amazes me 4 or so people who read this blog bother. I get even more incredulous that after reading it, some actually ask for advice. Please remember, I'm just a tea drinking swimmer who works in one of the most god-forsaken planning outposts in the world.

Not even my little boy listens to anything I say, unless it's our weekly swimming lessons, or sharing deep knowledge about Star Wars (and yes, this is shameless excuse to publish my favourite picture of the two of us, but for balance, I'd better publish one of both kids, but if Evie ever wants to know about Star Wars remains to be seen)

Anyway, I still swelled with pride when an former APSOTW student let me know he has his first planning job. Brilliant, brilliant - and I'm sure, nothing to do with the blatherings on here.

But he let me know that his first job is about shaping his own role without mentoring. At once great, since you can write your own future, but also tough - we all need guidance from time to time.

So I was glad to share some thoughts on this and that through email and, on reflection, thought it might be of use to the other three readers.

Probably not, but you never know.

Just be mindful, what I share won't be what everyone thinks, it certainly won't be 100% right.

Because we're all different and so are different organisations. How you fit and develop is a reflections of amplifying the best parts of both. So you have to find your own voice and mould that to wherever you are, or wherever you want to be if they end up mutually exclusive. . 

This is just what I think and the kind things I try and do do get through the day to day.

(and these were stream of consciousness emails, I will apologise for typos and grammar mistakes even less than usual)

Anyway, here's the first email chain. Names and clues to identity have, of course, been removed.

 

Hi Andrew, 

As part of your job, do you create storytelling platforms? If not, who's job would that normally be? 

 

Hi

That depends on the objective- if it requires overt storytelling then yes because it's as much about comms planning as creative therefore it needs to be collaborated on

If you are a great writer it's something you can own a bit more than traditional creatives 

Just a watch out try and develop stories  that include customers as fellow protagonists 

 

Thank you, Andrew. 

What do you mean by overt storytelling? Can you please give me an example. 

I'll go about creating one with your advice about the customers. 

 

 

Hi

Actually telling a story that develops in your communication rather than just making all your channels consistent 

Also, think about the role of different channels they shouldn't have identical executions but should play their own part in the narrative ...they should make sense on their own and add to the wider whole