Posts tagged strategy
avin narasimhan
often rambling, but hopefully always interesting
#greatpresentationsof2010: Starbucks On Social Strategy
#greatpresentationsof2010: Rethinking The Creative Brief
Great presentation from Jasmin Cheng over at Twist Image. Clearly lays out some of the major issues around creative briefs many of us are dealing with today and some ideas around how to fix them. Particularly agree with point 6— I’ve always found the end result is better when briefs are created collaboratively with input from multiple sources. Sometimes far easier said than done (ok almost all of the time), but doesn’t mean we should stop striving for the best environment possible.
Well worth a read, full of quotes and ideas from smart people across the industry.
Puma + Fuseproject = Clever Little Bag
Another fantastic example of an idea that can be advertised vs an advertising idea. Perhaps Puma isn’t the first to address this issue, but I have to admire a big(ish) shoe brand taking a stand and acknowledging that there must be a better way than the status quo. (caught via @lukeiscrazyman)
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.
Spur— a discussion and video series about planning
via psfk.com
Spur is a new series out of Redscout that puts some perspective on the world of planning at agencies as it is now, and thoughts on where it needs to go. Timing is particularly good coming out of Planning-ness a couple weeks back, and hopefully will spark similar interest and dialogue about all of the things we need to change.
This teaser video is a good start to the series. Think the closing quote from Dan Cherry at Anomaly might some up the change we’re all looking for in this industry best: “if you have a point of view on the strategy and the plan, why the hell wouldn’t you be involved in the doing?”
Eager to see how the rest of the series unfolds.
A few more details:
Contributors
- Douglas Atkin, Writer; Partner & Chief Community Officer of MeetUp.com
- Devika Bulchandani, Chief Strategy Officer; McCann Erickson
- Dan Cherry, Managing Partner, Director of Brand Strategy; Anomaly
- Piers Fawkes, Founder; PSFK
- John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer; Young & Rubicam
- Heidi Hackemer, Senior Planner; BBH
- Robin Hafitz, Chief Strategic Officer; Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners
- Sally Jones, Founder; Tangerine
- Gareth Kay, Director of Digital Strategy; Goodby & Silverstein
- Hank Leber, Founder; Agency Nil and Associate Planner, McKinney
- Domenico Vitale, Founder; People, Ideas & Culture
- Freya Williams, Global Planning Director; Ogilvy Earth
- Paul Woolmington, Founding Partner; Naked Communications NY, Global Partner of Naked Communications
And upcoming topics:
- Tuesday, November 3: Is Planning Impotent? Overcoming Account Planning’s Identity Crisis
- Tuesday, November 17: What Makes a Good Planner? Talent Specs and Extra Credit
- Tuesday, December 1: Are We Just Glorified Researchers? The Myth of the “Voice of the Consumer”
- Tuesday, December 15: What is the Real Value of Planning? Agency Politics and Client Perceptions
- Tuesday, January 5: What is the Future of Planning? Thinking as Doing
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: