Posts tagged ‘Account Planning’
never thought I’d write this, but I think I disagree with Jon Steel
Watching the videos from JWT’s ‘Planning Begins at 40’ event, I was particularly struck by Jon Steel’s speech – and crucially his delivery – which made it clear that he fears that Planning has lost its place, is suffering from an erosion of rigour and unless we spend all our time ‘wading through Nielsen reports and talking to beer drinkers in Leeds’ (his words, not mine), we have missed the mark.
I’m all for Planning ‘to help clients once more to set the right objectives…not just for communications, but for brands and for businesses’ as he puts it, but I think there’s also a role for us at a more basic day to day level in helping to clarify, consolidate and communicate great ideas and great work in a way which our clients are comfortable with and with which they can present onwards and upwards. Our ability to summarise and simplify campaign thinking (sometimes into just one chart) adds instant value. It might a be a quick fix and is not exactly top level strategic advice, but no-one in an agency has a more appropriate skill set and overview to do it than the Planner(s).
Just like there are lots of different kinds of Creatives and lots of different ways in which they contribute to building brands (the POS specialist vs. the ‘we only work on TV’ teams, juniors vs. heavyweights, in agencies large and small), I believe that there are roles for all kinds of Planners and within their very varied roles there is the opportunity to contribute to both the most fundamental top level strategic decisions and to add real value to day to day work by virtue of having both an overview of the client/market/consumer and crucially, thinking time. Maybe the second way is what John Grant would call ‘Fast Strategy’, but with X number of clients and Y number of Planners in an agency, the sums do sometimes add up.
Jon Steel also seemed to be very dismissive of the interest among blogging Planner’s in being ‘Interesting’, which I think is one of the most valuable things a Planner can offer as part of their toolkit. He’s written some brilliant books and his track record in Planning speaks for itself, but on this occasion I have to politely disagree with at least some of what he said.
nothing should get in the way of a good idea
By way of light relief (although perhaps a tad poignant given the soundtrack), I found this little gem in ex-Poulters creative team Mick and Gaz’s portfolio. It’s a call for entries for the 2008 Chip Shop Awards, which is a bit like Cannes, except that the awards categories are more honest, including ‘Best Work for a Client You Have but Haven’t a Hope of Running’…
rather liking this
Apart from the (obviously pleasing to me) horsey connections, this viral from Land Rover supporting their sponsorship of British Eventing is just nicely understated and a cheeky companion to 2006′s press ads. There’s also a rugby version and you can view both on Land Rover’s microsite here.
Interesting things from Interesting2008
- World of Warcraft is roughly the same size as the Death Star
- There are 28 billion UK coins in circulation, worth £3 ½ billion
- Boring audiobooks don’t help you get to sleep. They have to be a bit thrilling – although its OK if the writing is terrible
- ‘dongle’ and ‘waggle’ are funny words
- Rhopography is the study of the overlooked and everyday
- Hiraeth is a Welsh word that sort of means the sense of knowing you’re always in a place
and
- horses are scared of rustling crisp packets because an unevolved part of their brain tells them that the rustling sounds like a lion about to attack them
Speaking at Interesting has to rank in my Top Ten Scariest Moments, but I’m really glad I did it.
My pics from Interesting are here and the Interesting2008 flickr pool is here
We’re going to Lon-don, to Interesting2008
So I’m off to London for Interesting 2008 tomorrow, held again at the lovely Conway Hall. If you’re going too, please come over and say Hello.
I’m really looking forward to it – last year’s Interesting was brilliant and yes, very very Interesting too. I’m also slightly nervous as I’m taking one of the mini speaker slots to talk abut why horses are scared of crisp packets.
To give you a little preview, I popped the general gist of my talk into the lovely wordle and it came up with this:
greetings Zara Phillips fans
A big Hello to the 75% of traffic to the blog this week that apparently found its way here via an image search for Zara Phillips…
soggy sarnie design
I’ve been charging up and down the M1 a lot recently and have therefore been sampling the delights of Moto’s service station network.
They’re in the process of rebranding their cafeteria offering to EDC – The Eat and Drink Co.
Looks great, huh? Well, it looks great in isolation and probably looked fab presented on boards in the design agency’s meeting room too.
On the other hand, in situ it looks dated, down market and tired. Actually the cropped pic above from flickr (and by Mr Flickr himself apparently) is very kind to it. All the values that service stations are trying to move away from seem to be covered off by this design. Its more 4 hour old fried eggs and soggy sarnies than fresh muffins and ciabatta.
So our lesson for today is – get your design in situ and let it breathe for a bit, as you can’t design in a vacuum.
Did anyone reading this actually plan a career in Planning?
This week I’ve been roped into helping out a little bit more with the development of the new 14-19 Diploma in Creative & Media.
I was doing a ‘What do Planners and Researchers Do?’ vox pop as part of their new fangled t’interweb online study resource thingy and I hit a bit of a brick wall when I was asked what was the best way to get into a career in Planning.
To be honest, if you’re 14 and hell-bent on being a Planner, it should automatically disqualify you from the job. Whether new Planners arrive via an agency graduate scheme, Miami Ad School, a move across from Research or just sort of fall into it, they should have already had a bit of an Interesting life.
I’m not talking about only considering potential planners who are over 30, just that they should have done something (anything!) apart from education with their life first. A desire to enter Planning founded in your teens is hardly going to encourage the kind of life experiences that make you more insightful Planner. Its also not going to result in the lightbulb moment in your mid 20s when you realise that there’s this career out there that suits your skill set, the way your brain works AND could be a lot of fun.
Any aspiring Planners out there – go write a book, start a movement, launch a business or dip your toe in an entirely different career. You’ll either realise that there’s thousands of other cool jobs out there (and considering how few entry-level Planning jobs there are, that can only be A Good Thing), or come back a better Planner-to-be.
photo by Russell ‘Interesting’ Davies, creative commons applies
experience at the expense of creativity?
My Dad has always claimed that the older and more experienced you get, the less truly original and creative ideas you are likely to come up with.
It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. As you enter “we tried that in 1994 and it didn’t work” and “well, it went perfectly well last time round” territory, truly green light type thinking starts to fade away…
the lack of Lady Bloggers
Amelia over at Life Moves Pretty Fast as been writing about the lack of Lady Bloggers out there (not to mention Lady Conference Speakers and Lady Awards Judges), especially in the digital/tech arena.
Amelia’s question is: are women just less good at managing and promoting their own “brand” so to speak so that they are less high profile and known generally than their male counterparts? Is it that men are better at public speaking stuff like this? Do people just get onto the circuit and then stay on it and these are more likely to be men?
I guess that since there seem to be less women generally in the creative/digital industries, less will end up with the kind of high profile roles that lead to speaking and judging opportunities (and vice versa). And we women do have this habit of having babies which tends to put at least a temporary damper on any ladder climbing/profile building ambitions. Priorities change.
Since I don’t have any kids and am footloose and fancy free, I’ve got the luxury of time to blog. Neil at Only Dead Fish posted recently that he found time to blog because he believed it was important to do so. I think blogging (among other things) makes me a better Planner. Lets be honest, blogging and public speaking and stuff makes me more employable too. So (at least for now) I blog.
