Digital Hive

Planning at 40: what's next for us?

JWT London recently hosted a conference about the future of planning - to commemorate our craft's 40th anniversary. Luminaries including Jon Steel, Guy Murphy (JWT's global planning head), John Grant, Jeremy Bullmore, and Alison Burns (JWT's fantastic London office leader) offer inspiring thoughts about where planning is and should be headed in its next 40 years.

Jon Steel's video is posted below, visit the conference site to see others and read speech transcripts or visit the conference blog.

I wholeheartedly agree with Jon Steel's point that planning has become too soft, inadequately informed by strategic inputs - and join with him in encouraging us all to strive for the goal of inspiring "grounded creative."

Jon Steel: Planning at 40: Solving the wrong problems from JWT on Vimeo.

An interesting POV about planning's role in digital

Guys, check out this interesting article from AdMap by RGA's head of strategy, Anne Benevuto. 2 big takeaways from me: planning in digital is a different kettle of fish - more challenging, while offering new opportunities to flex the intellectual and creative muscles; and 2. I found particularly interesting Anne's description of the "creative hydra" (yes that's a photo of a hydra) - the multi-headed creature that makes the agency magic. I feel great about the multi-capability approach we've taken to deploying planning, including technology/UI, etc. One build we've made - media and connection planning.

Let me know what you think.....

Download RGAandinteractiveplanning.pdf

Welcome to Plannersphere

View my page on Plannersphere
I just discovered a Ning social network for account planners called Plannersphere. I haven't explored it fully yet but so far so good - reasonably robust membership, interesting posts and commentary.

The Polygamous Marriage- Connection Planning

This past week I had the chance to attend the inaugural Connection Planning conference in New Orleans.  Many others have blogged about it, so I won't repeat them here, but of course I echo the many thanks to the ringleaders at Trumpet.  (see http://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/2007/10/the-wedding-day.html, http://www.polygamousweddings.com/blog/)  But, I do want to share how inspiring it was to see and hear that we at Digitas really "get it".  Jeff Flemings and I ventured to establish what "connection planning" meant in the digital space and for Digitas nearly 12 months ago.  After listening to some inspiring thoughts by real innovators like Lisa Seward and John King, I was thrilled to walk away from the conference thinking Connection Planning at Digitas is right on track.

While many agencies are using Connection Planning as a means to advanced, creative media planning, at Digitas, we've brought Connection Planning upstream as a means to inspire big creative marketing ideas.  We mine for insights about reaching our consumers, integrating into their lives, leveraging influencers and creating brand evangelism and combine them with traditional Account Planning insights.  In doing so we're fueling creative marketing ideas from the beginning with insights around both context and content.  In the digital space this is a key distinction, since every client deliverable could come to life in infinite ways based on the unique context of the space.

The conference appeared to be a big success, so I'm looking forward to the second annual event next year! 

Kellogg's Works Blue

Kellogg's has gone funny in a recent All-Bran television spot. The commercial is at various times funny, gross, wildly inappropriate and surprising. So I found the All-Bran website a shocking bore that in no way matched the bold television.

The commercial is not a "drive to web" spot, but I believe there was a lesson learned with the Smirnoff Raw Tea "Tea Partay" spot, which didn't drive to web - but drove scores of people to the Smirnoff site anyway, only to be disappointed by a dead-end experience (since rectified with a richer website and "rapping war" brewing a new Green Tea spot.)

My question is - did one of the agency people miss the integration meeting? Someone forget to include the planners? Did a product manager decide to "go bold" believing that television operates in a void? Hello people - if you make a funny (slightly, possibly offensive) commercial and consumers want more than fluff, where are they getting "the fiber"?

Judging for the APG Jay Chiat awards - a prayer for planners everywhere

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.

Blogging bad for planning? Are you kidding?

I came across a fantastic blog stream about whether blogging is undermining planning, "killing the discipline" as it were. And I immediately agreed with AdLiterate (where the stream is posted/hosted), that in fact blogging is the best thing that's ever happened to planning.

I agree wholeheartedly with the key benefits of blogging: community/networking, beta testing ideas, collective intelligence, etc. My favorite thing about blogging is how it allows planners to fuel and view debate on any topic, almost effortlessly.

I do feel the pain of planners like Grey's John Lowery who bemoan the fact that relying on blogosphere babble keeps planning newbies from learning core planning tools and skills - giving them a "pass" on the craft, as it were. I think it's critical to remind ourselves that blogging is a nice new skill to add - but not a replacement for more classic skills.

As a planning head I have 2 takeaways on that topic, one good and one bad: 1. people like me who have those skills are increasingly valuable; and 2. finding those people is getting more and more difficult.

What do you think? Add a comment to the stream referenced above if you are so inclined.

TV watching online-- promising?

New numbers are out from TNS and the Conference Board regarding the number of consumers who watch TV content online.  This article couches the numbers as "only 1 in 10" web users are watching shows online.  I actually would argue that it hasn't been that long that a plethoria of programs have been available online.  Given the newness of the trend, 1 in 10 ain't that bad...

In another year, the numbers could be significantly higher. That's why these outlets are called "emerging" media.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=50166&Nid=24558&p=375266

DO THE (RED) THING.

Can a tank top change the world? 

So asks the October 9^th issue of The New Yorker, or more specifically, the thirty (30!) Gap print ads featured within.  These ads are part of Product Red (styled: (PRODUCT) ^RED), an initiative started by Bono and Bobby Shriver in order to raise money for the Global Fund to Fights AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  The Product Red brand is licensed by iconic companies such as American Express, Motorola and Giorgio Armani, in order to create a product with the (RED) logo, and ultimately give a percentage of sales profits to the Global Fund. 

The Gap ads have the same look and feel as your generic Gap ads and feature Jennifer Gardner, Steven Spielberg, Chris Rock and a bra-less Christy Turlington.  Though I wish the ads were a bit more provocative (after all, we ARE talking about AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria), (RED) wants to be clear that they are not a charity.  They are a business model.  And a simple one at that:  “We believe that if consumers are offered this choice, and the products meet their needs, they will choose (RED). And if they choose (RED) over non-(RED), then more brands will choose to become (RED) because it will make good business sense to do so. And more lives will be saved.”

http://www.joinred.com/

www.gap.com/red

Dogs are the new kids?

According to an article in the Sunday Globe dogs are the new kids - at least for some upscale urban residents who don't have kids (yet).

"With more professionals opting to wait longer before having children or getting married, dog specialists say urbanites are redirecting their attention and disposable income to their dogs, dropping hundreds of dollars to ensure their four-legged friends get the best in food, grooming, and care."

The "dog mom" from one couple who doesn't have kids says "she does not feel as though her family is missing anything. Gershwin (her lab mix) receives glowing report cards from Dog Day Afternoons (where he goes for day care) and gets shampooed weekly at a grooming salon."

What does this tell us about the essential motivation of humans? An obvious point - perhaps this behavior suggests that for some at least the need to care for "offspring" is genetic - and that if we don't have our own offspring (yet) we look for substitutes.

Other thoughts?

Here's the link to the Boston Globe article (reg. req'd): http://www.boston.com/ae/food/restaurants/articles/2006/06/11/lapping_up_luxuries/