I spent an interesting few hours judging APG award entries today at Modernista! (thanks to Gareth Kay for hosting and Scott Karambis - heady with excitement from his trade rag-covered leap from the safety of IPG's Mullen to the thrill of independent Mechanica - for inviting me to help out). While I signed an NDA which prohibits me from saying anything specific about any one entry, client or agency, I'd like to offer a few observations and words of wisdom to all the award entrants as well as the planning population at large. These are my own thoughts - but I wasn't the only judge in the room thinking this way, let me assure you. And I don't think I'm alone in the industry (Piers Fawkes made a great comment comment about a post I did last week - pointing out that everyone hates the advertising industry - basically because we're always assaulting them with crap). My prayer is that our craft has a bright future (please follow the suggestions below to realize this vision!), but today's entries made me question this. Weigh in with a comment if you have a POV.
- Where is the craft? First off, there was a surprising lack of account planning craft skills in many of the entries. And these were entries from credible agencies with well established planning capabilities. This is a craft, people. With proven techniques, discipline and process. Not to mention a whole slew of new insight generation techniques (e.g., Communispace) being brought to market every day, none of which I saw referenced. Listening to the consumer remains the strongest driver of actionable, inspiring customer insight for great creative. This is the core of our craft. The entries that impressed us included significant "listening" grunt work - not the sexy "big idea" work they teach you in account planning school you'll be working on - which paid great dividends when it came to important things like copy choice and channel recommendations. If you want a successful planning career, learn every way of listening you can, and continue to evolve your listening toolkit as the world evolves.
- It's not just the platform idea, it's how the big idea serves executional ideas which constitute the campaign So many entries covered off on the so-called "big idea" but neglected to explain how (if?) the big idea informed, shaped and inspired the individual campaign details through which consumers actually experience the idea. Campaigns live and die through execution, and planning at its best has a tremendous influence over how individual programs and pieces bring the idea to a given segment, channel or marketing task. Knowing how to apply your planning skills to the nuts and bolts of marketing programs (and explaining this in your entry) is a smart idea.
- It's time for a return to rigor It's not enough to be targeting "all women," even if you're marketing a mass product. How will the launch pulse through the mass population - are there early adopters? likely brand evangelists? It's important to think of a target audience in more granular terms that are actionable as well as inspiring, as well to apply some old fashioned rigor to thinking about what the communication goal is, along with how we use channels to accomplish the goal. A strong dose of the thinking and process traditionally resident in media can help a lot with this. Planners need to be able to take a step back from the lofty (and sometimes unproductive, irrelevant) big idea "stuff" to think about the mechanics of the marketing problem they are solving, so that planning dovetails with the marketing challenge the client has asked us to solve. This brings credibility to planning, while making sure its contributions are relevant. Understand business and think how planning fits into it (both the agency's business and the client's business).
- Hello, INTERACTIVE So many entries included no interactive applications (even a cursory a banner ad pull-down of the brand TV). Virtually no entry utilized interactive's potential to enable or extend a big idea, much less inspire it. No entry I can recall utilized online "listening" techniques. Dissappointing and sorely out of touch with reality. People, interactive isn't in the back of the bus any more, it's DRIVING the bus. Learn to use it to inspire and execute big ideas. Or find yourself unmarketable. Planners absolutely must learn the ropes with interactive and make it the centerpiece of their craft.
- Don't try to back into a planning rationale for a great creative idea if the story didn't happen that way It's apparent within a few moments of reading a submission whether or not there is a real connection between the (sometimes alleged) planning contribution and the creative output. If your agency came up with a great campaign, mazeltov for you, since that's what we're all solving for. But if the planning wasn't key to this output, please don't submit an entry claiming it was. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be imaginative about HOW planning helped. There are many ways planning can help creative with executional nuances once the big idea is nailed down. These contributions are valuable and legitimate.
- Act like you are applying for an award for excellence in communications Communicate clearly. Make sure your argument is well articulated. Excise industry jargon and marketing-speak from your entry (here's a good rule of thumb: if you're looking at a word or phrase and wondering if it's marketing-speak, it probably is). Remove all spelling errors. Planners must be exceptional communicators. Period.
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