Archive for February, 2008
What not to say if you’re a promotional field marketing type lady:
Promotional Totty:
“Can I talk to you?”
Me:
“Erm…no.”
WARC renewal made me squawk
Did anyone else get a nasty shock when the time came to renew their WARC (World Advertising Research Centre) subscription? Mine after negotiation had still nearly doubled in price for no apparent reason. I know of two other Planning chums whose renewal has also been eye watering to say the least.
I know its good, but its not that good…
Let’s stick together
Great post from The Adlads suggesting that the old art director / copywriter team should be replaced by creative / planner teams.
Its a really interesting idea, I’m just not sure where AdLand is going to find an extra few thousand Planners from, or what all the left over Creatives are supposed to do (retrain as Planners?).
Teeing up Howies
We quickly got round to talking about Howies at last night’s Northern Planners in Manchester. First off Andrew confessed to buying the majority of his wardrobe from them. Then there were lots of positive comments about how the strength of the brand hadn’t really been diluted by Timberland buying them. The overall consensus was that Howies was a very cool and credible brand.
But I had to butt in with the observation that I know several 30something blokes in Howies’ target audience that consider the brand to be worn by “poncy left wing tree huggers” and wouldn’t be seen dead in it.
Now you could argue that the whole point of a cool brand is that it only appeals to a certain niche audience, but my overnight view is that its all very well appealing to the Coolerati, but if the affluent mainstream doesn’t understand your brand, you’re precluding growth.
Quant is dead, long live Insight?
Interesting client feedback via a Research buddy today – one of their clients had apologised for not putting quantitative work their way recently. He explained that his role was now more about analysing his own customer data and buying in qualitaitive insight than farming out huge ‘how many and how much’ surveys.
If we accept that the world has fragmented in every long-tailed possible way (consumers, media channels, product and service distribution channels etc) and speeded up at the same time, then perhaps he has a point.
What’s the point of knowing how many potential customers there are out there if you don’t prioritise how to effectively communicate with them?
Trust me, I’m a Planner
I’ve been thinking a lot about Trust recently.
In an planning/agency context, there’s a lot of Trust needed, between Planners and their Account Directors (please involve me but don’t try and micro manage my relationship with your client) and between Planners and their key client contacts (I really do have the best interests of your brand and business at heart).
And that’s important, because what we’re trying to achieve as an agency/client team, is to get consumers/retailers/employees/stakeholders to trust (and therefore engage with) their brands.
I’ve been revisiting Jeremy Bullmore’s great 1972 speech ‘the consumer has a mind as well as a stomach’, where he talks about brands needing to demonstrate what they are saying – in his example, telling a funny joke rather than simply saying “I am funny” and expecting consumers to believe it. Which (I think) all comes down to having to earn trust.
Which seems to bring me back to a thought that as Planners we have to demonstrate our trust-worthiness (both agency and client wise) in order to be given the free rein we need to do our best work. Which is where carefully selected dropped-into-conversation/ credentials APG and IPA Awards mentions and case studies came in.
But I’m wondering if in just a few months there will be such a lot of Planning ‘thinking’ out there on the internet that it will only take a quick google for a client or colleague to establish whether a Planner is ‘trustworthy’, in the same way that you can currently google brands. Add in a quick search of (the suddenly ridiculously expensive) WARC and brandrepublic and we’ve got nowhere to hide…
Hell is officially…
…Hollywood Bowl on a Friday afternoon in the half term holidays. Screaming kids fuelled up on e numbers, bellowing Mums and Dads and the whole place looking like a rubbish lorry exploded, to the soundtrack of S Club 7.
Or to look at it another way, the best advert for contraception I’ve come across in a long time.
Like a Coffee Morning, only in the evening and with beer
The next Northern Planners meeting is scheduled for next Thursday (21st Feb) in Manchester. All welcome for a drink and a chat. Email Rob (rob at ad-pit dot co dot uk) or leave him a comment and he’ll add you to the email loop.
the weather is springing another one on us
I know everyone thinks we Brits are obsessed with the weather, but we do have good reason.
First there was last Summer’s wash out, when an umbrella and wellies became essential fashion accessories.
Then last weekend Spring arrived. On the 9th of February to be exact (the middle of our winter for you Antipodeans).
It was about 12 degrees (in contrast to the normal 3 or 4) and I hacked my horse out across the moors without wearing a jacket.
It was like everyone had gone to bed on Friday night and overslept by two months.
There were 30 or 40 people sat outside the pub coat-less, drinking pints and looking slightly stunned. There was even a queue at the ice cream van. Elderly couples were taking their little dogs for walks across the moors and stopping to say to each other “well its such a lovely day, it would be a pity to waste it”.
It will probably snow next week now we’ve had this tantilising glimpse of sun, but I suppose (to paraphrase Forrest Gump) the British weather is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get.
a sunny late afternoon on the moors last weekend, taken by +/-1 and found on flickr
blurring boundaries
I just read a great post from Drew McLellan on the blurring of boundaries between our home and work lives. Its not exactly a hot new trend, but an incredibly important one.
To my mind, its not just that our personal lives are being invaded by work – in return our working lives are having to budge up and accommodate more of our personal lives.
Employers are obviously adapting to this – whether its actively encouraging visits from the Sewing Lady or Cheesecake Bob to the office, taking time out to book your holiday online or a long lunch to see your child’s nativity play.
And when we do finally get some work done, hopefully it benefits from this input from the Rest Of Our Lives.
I think a lot of the positive outcomes of this blurring come back to interestingness. By mixing up our personal and professional lives we bring depth and colour to relationships and situations. Bottom line – people want to work with interesting people, not corporate drones.
