Archive for February, 2010
If it’s Elle, it must be Tuesday
It’s been a real week of hanging around for me – on trains to and from London, in GP’s waiting rooms, in the MOT garage’s reception and so on. Which means I’ve been reading a lot of women’s magazines to pass the time. By the third or fourth glossy mag (I’m a fast reader) I was getting a real sense of déjà vu:
- New Season! New Fashion! New Trends! Since nude (bloke translation: pinky, peachy, beigey coloured) tops make me look like I recently died, I’m too old for jumpsuits, I haven’t got the legs for short shorts, leather won’t go in the washing machine and I remember head to toe denim from the first time round, I’m not holding my breath for any ohmygod-must-buy-that moments.
- Vampires Are Sexy. Really? Hold the front page.
- You Are Eating Rubbish – a disciplinarian dietician criticising some poor soul’s food diary because they eat crisps once a week or drink diet coke. God knows what they’d make of my ‘a little of what you fancy’ approach to food then.
- Women Will Decide This Election. Or, perhaps more accurately, women are mostly undecided who to vote for, are sick of spin and would prefer not to vote for any of them if a better alternative existed.
Baz Luhrmann and Mary Schmich had a point: do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. And cross.
Well, at least my carpet’s fashionably nude coloured…
Is Planning for Digital all about fast or gardening?
Russell Davies is all post-digital these days, but that’s probably because he ‘got’ planning for digital years before the rest of us had cottoned on. In 2006 he posted on his blog about how planning was changing and would become ‘always in beta’:
I suspect many planners will end up more like brand gardeners than master strategists. There may be occasional moments of grand strategy but the more meaningful interventions will be in shaping and pruning the day to day activity; bending a retail piece this way, nudging a product design that way. This is the only way to respond to a world where brands have to respond to, and embrace, the winds of chance and the interventions of their customers.
By 2007 he’d extended his beta theory to the future of brand communications:
The old model of a big launch of a big idea followed by cut-downs of said big idea to deliver mind-numbing levels of repetition simply won’t survive contact with the contemporary media landscape. And a key characteristic of a brand that’s likely to survive the modern world will be creative fecundity, the ability to just keep having new ideas and to keep putting them out in the world.
One of the other interesting characteristics about always being in beta is accepting that mistakes are going to happen. And preparing for them. And thinking about, maybe, trying to turn them into opportunities.
Planning in a beta based environment means being reactive. And proactive. And flexible. And good at firefighting. Which also means being fast.
The old idea that you could have it fast, good or cheap – pick two is going to be a bit of a problem if fast becomes a prerequisite.
On the other hand, my kind of planning (what I think might fit with Russell’s idea of ‘gardening’), where you are around more on a nuts and bolts, day to day level, ‘tending’ the brand and it’s communications, summarising and simplifying, seems to be more-or-less in line with how digital generally works.
But since everything is now somehow entangled with digital and it looks like even defining digital as a channel is heading out of the window, perhaps we’re all going to be forced towards Fast Planning in order to accommodate the digital element.
We just need to figure out how to mow the lawn at a jog.
pic by GeorgeHerrin
What makes a great Account Planner?
In the February issue of Admap (thanks to the APG for sending me a copy), Jon Steel writes about how great planning is not about being a member of the coolerati, an expert on Japanese animation, a fan of post-modernism or being smarter than everyone else.
He says that ‘great planning is about creating an environment in which other people are more likely to come up with good ideas, and in which clients will be more favourably disposed to running the best of them’.
He also suggests that the most reliable indicator of doing a good job as a planner is the number of people – creatives and clients alike – who seek your opinion. Because if they do seek your opinion, then you know that you are helping.
Halleluiah. Just add account handlers to the list of seekers-of-opinions and Jon and I are in total agreement.
The only thing is…this does sit slightly at odds with Jon’s speech at the JWT ‘Planning begins at 40’ event 18 months ago about how Planning had lost its place, was suffering from an erosion of rigour and had got too keen on hanging out with the creative department.
So what makes a great planner? A rigorous, data centric approach? A common sense ideas facilitator and simplifier? Or perhaps a bit of both?
The naming of things is a googlable matter
Time was, when Susy Simpkins married Mr Smith she became Mrs Smith.
Except that the right ‘Susy Smith’ (9,750 results) is a lot harder to track down on google than ‘Susy Simpkins’ (3 results).
And if you thought it was a hassle changing the name on your bank account, passport and driving licence, try adding your work and personal email, twitter, LinkedIn and facebook to the list.
I’ve started to notice that some of my friends are keeping their maiden name for work – and online too. In the unlikely event that I managed to persuade someone to marry me, I’d be tempted to keep my surname as I’m unique on google and enjoy dream search results (page one includes my blog, twitter, LinkedIn and flickr). On the other hand, perhaps I’m a bit too findable…
There’s a similar dilemma for businesses too – and I’m not just talking about consumer brands. Its all very well planning a lovely re-brand, but what about all the online brand equity you (should have) invested in and built up across social media? You won’t just need new business cards, you’ll need a new twitter handle, blog URL and so on as well.
With the naming of new brands becoming increasingly defined by which URLs are still available, I can foresee a serious fall in enthusiasm for rebrandings as they become a technological nightmare.
Glee – so much more than a High School Musical
I’m loving the first series of Glee (currently on E4 and Channel4 in the UK). If you haven’t seen it, it’s perhaps best described as High School Musical for grownups, a dark-ishly comic look at life inside a fictional all-American high school, centred around performances from the school’s Glee Club ( a kind of Broadway-style choir).
But Glee is more than just an uplifting bit of musical fun, it’s a multi-platform entertainment brand.
Every week, selected songs from the previous episode are released on itunes. ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ is currently at number 5, enjoying it’s 9th week in the UK charts, while the Glee cast has another three tracks in the top 40. With over two million tracks sold worldwide to date, it would seem that the show essentially pays for itself before any advertising or syndication revenue is taken into account.
With Glee season 2 already on the way, a Golden Globe for Best TV series in the bag, an upcoming Joss ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Whedon directed episode plus rumours of a stadium tour and Christmas single, you’ve gotta believe that this one will run and run.
You owe it to your country to treat yourself
I’ve just had some feedback from an attendee at yesterday’s IGD/Asda Trade Briefing. It seems that premium food is back in growth in the UK.
People want affordable treats. Preferably edible ones.
With continuing economic uncertainty and an accompanying general unwillingness to engage in full-on luxury consumption, the ‘little treat’ might turn out to be the saviour of retail.
I suppose you could classify the explosion in the ‘dine in’ occasion (a la M&S’s Dine in for £10) as a ‘little treat’, which is certainly still popular and sits happily alongside premium food generally.
And cupcakes are apparently taking over the world.
But the lipstick index (which suggests that in an economic downturn women boost their mood with small indulgences like lipsticks rather than bigger ticket items) certainly isn’t edible (at least I hope not) yet still counts as a ‘treat’.
Go on, treat yourself. The economy is counting on you.
by Zen Cupcake on flickr, CC applies and you can buy the poster from here
back to basics on the phone front
Via trendwatching’s February briefing comes ‘functionall’ – ‘the phenomenon of simple, small and/or cheap products and services designed for low(er)-income consumers in emerging markets, with cross-over appeal to consumers in mature consumer societies’.
Trendwatching recon that goods and services especially designed for emerging markets often incorporate one or more of the following characteristics:
- Smaller and/or limited number of features, to keep prices low.
- Simpler, or easier to use, for inexperienced consumers.
- Energy efficient (or not using any traditional energies at all) and/or easy to repair and/or waste-reducing.
- Robust, as some of them are used in rugged conditions.
- Well-designed (the democratization of design is a global phenomenon).
- Aimed at helping owners to generate income, or allow users to create self-sustaining systems
Which explains why I bought my technophobe dad a Nokia 1101.
Its really simply to use (he’s had a mobile for ten years but has yet to master text messaging), with as few features as possible and large-ish buttons. A bit of googling reveals that the phone was actually designed for the Indian market (see!) and it doubles up as a torch (handy for a place where power cuts are common, even in the cities).
I’m not alone in my appreciation of back-to-basics mobiles, Tom Cable from retrobrick.com says that interest in original retro mobiles is growing, partly because “young people want an old-style phone for a grandparent because they have bigger buttons.”
So there you have it, if you need technology for a technophobe, look at what manufacturers are producing for emerging markets.
update, 07/06/10 – new mobile phone designed for older users launched with massive buttons and a ringtone as loud as a pneumatic drill…
Dear Google Wave
Dear Google Wave,
You look great, I really want to start using you and I can see lots of ways in which you’re going to make my life simpler.
but
You won’t let me use you in Internet Explorer (not all the PCs I use have firefox or google chrome on them) unless I install the Google Chrome Frame Browser Plugin. If I do this, my financial services provider’s website won’t let me in and to be honest, its probably more important that I keep an eye on my ISA than ride your Wave.
I’d also LOVE to import my contacts from outlook and hotmail into google wave, but I’m no techie and have no idea how to go about creating a CSV file. I click a button on LinkedIn and all my contacts are imported automatically. Why can’t you do this?
Yours,
confused in beta.
Suits you, sir
I was very pleased to read today that ‘looking good in a suit’ is officially the 17th most important thing UK women find irresistible about men. Pleased but not surprised because (full disclosure time), my agency’s PR team commissioned the research (omnibus of 4,000 people I think) for a client and before I was off sick I nominated ‘looking good in a suit’ as MY irresistibility factor.
I might have been two years early in proclaiming the return of formal dressing. But as I said at the time, there are very few men who don’t look better (and sexier) in a really well cut and well fitting suit. Sadly though, very few men seem to know what a really well cut and well fitting suit is…
If you want to see what a really good suit looks like, check out these shots from Esquire of injured servicemen Lieutenant Alex Horsfall and Second Lieutenant James Amoore sporting made to measure suits, courtesy of Savile Row. (sources here and here):
sickbedside reading
I’ve been detained on Sofa Watch 2010 for the last 10 days. Fortunately I’d placed a Amazon order just before my appendix decided to withdraw cooperation so I’ve been catching up on some non-fiction:
Dr Who, The Writer’s Tale, The Final Chapter
Russell T. Davies & Benjamin Cook
A massive 700 pages, composed almost entirely of emails and text messages between the ShowRunner of DrWho and a SciFi journalist, charting 2 ½ years of the ups and downs involved in writing and exec producing Saturday night TV.
The parallels between what the original creative idea was and what actually got budget/sign off/produced sit very closely with AdLand. And if you ever thought that your ‘creative’ job was a bit stressful, demanding or pressurised, read this and be reassured that at least Russell T Davies had it much worse. But I expect fame, fortune, 12M viewers and a swanky new job in LA might make up for some of that. (accompanying website here)
Superfreakonomics
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen Dubner
What was so great about the original Freakonomics was that you could read a chapter and discover why, for example, drug dealers live with their Moms, feel like you’d learnt something new about looking at data, put the book down and go to sleep.
SuperFreakonomics does answer some great new questions, like why suicide bombers should buy life insurance, but then it wonders off for a good third of the book on a rant about global warming which doesn’t make for light bedtime reading. I wish I’d waited for the paperback and saved myself a fiver. (website here)
Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
John Lancaster
I ordered this based on India Knight’s recommendation. It’s what I wanted SuperFreakonomics to be – intriguing, simplifying, educating and an enjoyable read. I found myself learning about the ins and outs of the derivatives market and actually enjoying it. If (like me) you still don’t totally understand exactly how the global economy came to be in such a mess, this is a great place to start.
