Posts tagged planningness
avin narasimhan
often rambling, but hopefully always interesting
#Planningness2011: What I Learned And Thoughts For The Next One
Back in the office after yet another incredibly inspiring Planningness, thanks to the tireless efforts of Mark and Claire, as well as the long list of fantastic and truly brilliant speakers. Though I think they learned their lesson by asking me to speak last time, and wisely chose not to this time around (kidding…I think). Anyway, lots of people with very different backgrounds and different views on the world shared their ideas with us, and the breakout sessions were again intense yet wonderfully productive at the same time. Many of these folks, in planningness tradition, were from far outside the ad world, and it made it all the more interesting and fun. And of course, there was plenty of drinks with old and new friends ( more and more and the list goes…) once the sessions let out, and I think even 3 days later I’m still feeling the effects. A few people have already written up recaps/implications worth checking out (including Ed Cottons excellent post which he seemingly posted hours after the final session while the rest of us were still knocking back a few). Given I’ve been lucky enough to go to all 3 planningness events so far, I thought I’d also try and share some things I’ve learned overall, not just this past session, and also some thoughts as we look toward the next time we all get together. The idealism from Planningness 1 has been replaced, to some degree, with practicality
You could probably read that and take it as a bad thing, that maybe we’ve become disheartened or less enthused, but I think that couldn’t be further from the truth. When I left the first Planningness, I felt like I was walking on air. It was the first conference of it’s kind I had ever been to (which I think is true for most of us), and I got back to the office determined to change the world in 7 days or less. Well, not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. And it frustrated the hell out of me. Ed and Kristina keenly pointed out this feeling of high vs low at the start of their session:
On that note, perhaps there’s some therapeutic value in the dreaded echo chamber
In a few of the sessions, we aired out in our groups some of the major problems planners face today, from our roles not being fully understood by clients, to our value in helping actually come up with creative ideas not being understood internally, to resource and time constraints on the brief/briefing process, and everything in between. And I guess to some that could be seen as a bit of an echo chamber, planners running in circles talking to each other. While I agree there are many detrimental aspects of the ‘echo chamber’ as it’s often referred to— particularly that it can perpetuate the stereotype of talkers vs doers— maybe the therapeutic side is one unspoken benefit. It helps for me to know there are others out there struggling through the same things, beyond these walls. Dealing with the same challenges, having the same fights, losing the same battles. It’s not in defense of an echo chamber, but just a point to say maybe there’s one helpful aspect to it after all. 
Frankly, there are too many brilliant people in this industry for agencies to fail
Just a few lines after I said idealism has been replaced with practicality, I realize maybe this is an idealistic thought. But working with all of the people in attendance this year, witnessing brilliance and energy in action, and seeing how determined (and perhaps even a little desperate) we all are to bring about meaningful change to this industry convinces me that for all the talk of the death of agencies, there’s simply too much talent for us all to fail. This isn’t limited to planners, of course, and I don’t think anyone else in attendance would believe that it is. We all know there are people across our own offices of a similar mind, determined to push things forward, whether you work at a large network agency or a small boutique. My hope is the more we’re able to learn from each other, gain fresh ideas and approaches, we can continue to make progress. It might be slower than most of us would like, but as someone once said, “change doesn’t happen over night”.
On that note, I might submit this humbly to our amazing organizers- what if we all looked around at our respective agencies to get some creatives out to the next Planningness? They may not be interested or may not care, but I bet there are a few that would. And I wonder if it would impact their views on what planning is perhaps seen as today vs what it can and should be, to see first hand how determined and excited we all are about the possibilities for the future, particularly when you put so many in one room and get outside the day-to-day challenges of work. Not that we want to fundamentally change the spirit and culture of Planningness, but just as Adrian sought to bring together the worlds of production and strategy in his session, maybe we can continue to blend other worlds into our little family.
All that said…
What did I miss, and what did you learn? What sticks in other people’s minds? I realize I didn’t get too far into details about specific sessions, would love to hear further thoughts. And I’ll try and post a bit more about things in the coming days. Either way, can’t wait for the next Planningness. Thanks again to Mark and Claire (and everyone else who spoke and attended). See you all soon I hope.
The ongoing search for a new brand model(s)
I’ve been working on a few projects recently where the inevitable questions around brand architectures and ‘brand houses’ are starting to come up in order to funnel all of the thinking and research into the right framework. Perfectly fine questions and expectations, but I think like many people, I’m dissatisfied with brand architecture models many of us are used to (and unfortunately often still use due to the lack of readily implementable solutions that could work across clients). Further adding to the current situation is that people (like Adrian among others) have been talking about this for years, and yet it seems to me that we still haven’t collectively found a model or even a set of models/tools that we all feel is the right leap forward (and that have proven to be effective in bringing internal and external parties along for the ride).
Good place to start would be with a couple models that have gotten me pretty excited in the last year or a bit more. In mid 2008 when The Open Brand (written by the very smart Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins) came out, I thought that it might be a framework I could start using with even the more conservative clients and brands, but it hasn’t quite caught broader recognition and attention that I expected (though I still find the experience framework overall to be quite useful).
Specifically, putting shared passion at the center of more familiar elements I think is a no-brainer today
More recently, have been spending some time thinking about The Molecular Brand laid out by the also smart folks at Nouve, which I think is spot on for the times and pushes brands to think beyond the traditional notions of ‘the big idea’ and more about how brands can mean different things to different people, with different approaches, and many moving parts. (In fact, just in case you haven’t read up on their thinking, definitely worth your time)
final episode of spur: the future of planning
A smart agency can be in competition with the client, sooner rather than later.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while as well, and it calls into question the fundamental starting point for many agencies: seems that it can no longer (solely) be about “how do we create value for our clients” and rather needs to be more about “what value can we help create for people”, regardless of the brand name on the wrapper. Whether it’s advertising, new products or even new categories, new business models. To take a risk on ourselves and our own ideas. To think about who we are and what we mean in the world outside of our client roster. I’m sure many people out there can share an experience where they presented what everyone in the room thought was a fantastic idea, but for one reason or another, it doesn’t work out, and that idea becomes little more than a slide in your powerpoint deck. But if we changed up the process, and took a chance on those ideas we know we want to make regardless of whether we have the backing of a specific client, it leads to a wholly different outcome, and puts agencies themselves in an entirely different light than that which we are viewed today. I’m not saying it’s one or the other. Obviously, the work we do for our clients can and should be a key focus of who we are and what we do (and it’s often incredibly gratifying). But just as BBHs Zag has been doing for the past couple years, the more we can start to branch out on our own and develop our own ideas, products, services, businesses that are not always tethered to an external company but rather belong to us, I think the better we’ll be suited for the future. Or, as Robin and others pointed out here, we may continue to see talent flowing out to the places where all of these ideas can come to fruition.
Implementing the lessons from planning-ness
I wanted to walk in on my first day back in the office after Planning-ness and start implementing some of the things we spent the weekend talking about.
One month later, and I’ve gotten little chance to do that (my guess is, some of my fellow planners share this pain). Sad as it may be to make this excuse, the craziness of daily business got in the way. Firedrills to be attended to, POVs that need to be written, new business decks that need to be prepared in the 24 hours before the prospective client arrives. It’s easy to make excuses. But it’s exactly the thing I don’t want to do. I think all of us that were a part of Planning-ness would agree that daily work craziness aside, we don’t want that to get in the way of the changes we all spent so much time talking about and working on that weekend. Somehow, someway, we need to find a way to bring it to fruition. Not just for us, but for the future of the industry and for the betterment of our client relationships.
So how do we best do this? How do we balance the insanity of the daily needs of our industry while still trying to implement new tools, new processes, new ideals, new ideas, and new thinking? By no means easy, but necessary. And as I started thinking about it more, I wonder if the best way isn’t to bring (force) clients into the early process as well. Not easy, and sometimes not pleasant. But after all, no one benefits if we spend 3 weeks coming up with an evolved model for brand frameworks or a new way of thinking about the archaic ‘purchase funnel’ only to have clients shoot it down in a 1 hour meeting. Why not put some of the accountability and responsibility back on them? We’re partners, right? I know it’s naive to think every client will come along for the ride with us, but let’s imagine that this is the moment we try to convince them. Here are a few ways I think that we could do that:Invite smart clients into the discovery phase- early.
Perhaps this is blasphemy for some. Inviting clients into the creative process? But at Planning-ness I got to participate in a fantastic session put on by the smart folks at (aptly named) SmartDesign, during which they talked to us about the fact that every research project and every discovery phase incorporates every party involved- including client, strategist, designer, etc. Bringing everyone in, and letting everyone feel some sense of ownership over the process, in my opinion, could make our whole industry process feel more collaborative, more informal, and in general just help it to work better.Create the new brand framework (which doesn’t need to be just one model) with your clients, arm in arm.
I know agency folks get incredibly protective and territorial (even internally) when it comes to our precious creations, but it feels like it may be time to rid ourselves of that nonsense. We don’t create priceless pieces of art— we are trying to build our clients’ business. Whether that’s through sparking talk value or direct calls to action, the end is the same. If we don’t move the business needle, we failed ourselves, and we failed our clients. So it only makes sense we’re all in agreement on and working towards the same goal. If we can build the new brand model together, it can only make for a better and more collaborative relationship and experience.
Find the one client representative who will champion the idea of failing hard- then learning.
I’ve been blessed enough to work with a few individual clients (I mean people, not brands) who were willing to come along with me on collective ideas and sell through things we both knew could fail despite best intentions. But through all of our work together, and desire to succeed, they put themselves out there on behalf of us and helped sell things through, and in the end we were able to make inroads into the client org that would’ve otherwise been impossible.Have the hard conversations early, and often.
It’s not exactly easy to tell your $100 million dollar client that many of the things they’ve been doing (much of which your agency may have been telling them to do, or is currently telling them to do) is broken, but it’s necessary for change. We talk often about wanting to be business partners to our clients, and not just viewed as vendors who make ads. But if that is to be the case, then I think we need to truly act as business partners, which to me means making difficult decisions, having uncomfortable conversations, and taking tough actions. To me the earlier the hard conversations happen, the earlier we can weed out the clients who are not ready to work with us (or who we’re not ready to work with). Stop trying to sell ideas that only work on old theories of needing massive $$$ to work
Fallon (my alma mater) built itself on the idea of ‘outsmart vs outspend’. And that was in the day when TV and print were the two biggest and really only options. So it is shocking to me that years later, when we have so many more options with which to provide value to people beyond spending a ton of money shouting more and more loudly, many agenices are still choosing to do the latter. Let’s actually try living the idea of doing lots of little things that build up to a bigger point of view. Let’s finally stop with the BS. I have no delusions about things changing overnight, or even next month, or even in the next 6 months. But I think we can all agree, planners or not, that things are not working in anyone’s definition as of this moment. What I do hope is that next year at this time, whether we’re all gathered again at Planning-ness or at that other planning conference, that we can all point to clear pieces of evidence that show what we did on that weekend in October 2009 planted the seeds of change for an industry. I hope that we all can look back at the year behind us and feel like we, at least in some way, were successful at making some new things happen.
Rethinking research (recap from Planning-ness work session)
For those who weren’t able to attend Planning-ness in San Francisco last weekend, Adrian has posted a great recap (complete with decks and videos of our presentations) from the session he and Rob organized around creating planning’s new tools (from the brief, to research, to awards). After Adrian and Rob tee’d things up, they broke us out into small groups to come up with one new tool. Lots of smart thinking, smart people, and overall one of the most energetic and exciting sessions of the conference.
Our group took on the task of taking the idea behind the conference— do vs talk— and applying it to the way we do research. Our thought was to create a tool or system that makes research a more active, fluid, and dynamic process, rather than the slow moving dinosaur that it is now (weeks to write questionnaires and surveys, weeks to approve, weeks to field, weeks to report, $100’s of thousands of dollars, for the same blah powerpoint decks). From conversation and sentiment tracking tools many of us are using for free online, to quantitative research, to qualitative— finding a way to take it all and create one simple dynamic, fluid, fast system that addresses the many research needs we often have could lead to a very different way of working. Perhaps most importantly, we felt that this would have major impact on how and when we brief— which lead to the idea of micro briefs, an ongoing, constantly changing and truly collaborative creative process. We were up against the clock and had just a few minutes to slap some slides together to guide the argument, but here’s where we got to:New marketing tools (recap from Planning-ness work session)
For those who weren’t able to attend Planning-ness in San Francisco last weekend, Adrian has posted a great recap (complete with decks and videos of our presentations) from the session he and Rob organized around creating planning’s new tools (from the brief, to research, to awards). After Adrian and Rob tee’d things up, they broke us out into small groups to come up with one new tool. Lots of smart thinking, smart people, and overall one of the most energetic and exciting sessions of the conference.
Our group took on the task of taking the idea behind the conference— do vs talk— and applying it to the way we do research. Our thought was to create a tool or system that makes research a more active, fluid, and dynamic process, rather than the slow moving dinosaur that it is now (weeks to write questionnaires and surveys, weeks to approve, weeks to field, weeks to report, $100’s of thousands of dollars, for the same blah powerpoint decks). From conversation and sentiment tracking tools many of us are using for free online, to quantitative research, to qualitative— finding a way to take it all and create one simple dynamic, fluid, fast system that addresses the many research needs we often have could lead to a very different way of working. Perhaps most importantly, we felt that this would have major impact on how and when we brief— which lead to the idea of micro briefs, an ongoing, constantly changing and truly collaborative creative process. We were up against the clock and had just a few minutes to slap some slides together to guide the argument, but here’s where we got to:Planning-ness: a few thoughts + reflection
And, as I’ve said a few times already, it was amazingly inspiring. As Rob and Adrian said in some of their closing thoughts, I hope that we look back at this conference as a pivotal moment for planners, and a point where we all feel like we finally started to implement the changes we’ve been talking about over the past few months and years. Thanks again to Mark and everyone who played a part in bringing Planningness together. Thanks to everyone who attended and made it the great event that it was. I hope that we get a chance to do it again soon, and rather than attend another conference where we all just get talked at for 4 days, we all choose to continue to attend the conference where we actually get to do stuff, and change the way our industry works.
