Is blogging killing planning? No

And paying a tribute to both our intellectual and professional dignity, I’ld end it here.

Yet this debate has been bouncing back and forth, eventually landing into the ivory tower of our office, and left us all fairly puzzled. It was worth diving a bit deeper into it, and reading through a number of different contribution: adliterate, John Grant, Marco Fossati, Luca Vergano, Valerio Franco (with the latter being fellow italian planners)

The reason why blogging won’t kill planning is fairly simple: planning (that is a bit of a crappy name, if I may) has never been about pontificating on a chosen topic, spreading bits of universal truth to the adoring audience.

It’s about moving from a given scenario, and coming up with relevant and fertile ideas, that enable to meet given objectives.

Saying that blogs could be a substitute for planners is like saying that verbatims can be a substitute for creatives: it might happen that a consumer lets out an outstanding tagline (whoever it occured to, please drop a line), but betting on that would imply building your future on random luck. Hoping that you can dig through the web dodging the many irrilevant or misleading ideas, and only reach for the good ones.

If we look back, the whole thing started with a speech by John Lowery, who warned about a different risk: young planners spending too much time wandering around blogs, blogging among themselves and becoming alienated from reality. If you put too much trust into bloggers, that only represent themselves even when they do it so wisely, you give up on your mission.

Planning (definitely a crappy name) is not a self-legitimated process: its value lies in the way it deals with society. With Reality 1.0.

So, if we follow John’s warning, we must conclude that it’s not blogging that can kill planning. Bad planners can.

Final Burp: You can tell a good journalist from his worn-out shoes. Same with a good planner.