Relevance vs Visibility (and yet another idiotic debate on planning)

I’ve just come back from an IPA seminar that almost made me wonder why planners must get involved in at least one pointless argument every year (after last year’s planning-blogging dispute) until I realized that this one was started by Dave Trott, creative director at Chick Smith Trott.

The title was “Who makes better planners? Planners or creatives?”, and yes, it was as stupid as it sounds. (I should have known better)

Dave’s thesis was that planners are obsessed with brand-whatever (brand equity, brand image, brand icon…), at the expense of finding original and simple business solutions. Nonsense followed.

At the end everyone pretty much agreed that bad planners make for bad planning. And, to be fair, that bad creatives make for bad creative work. (No, seriously.)

Obviously, none of this was worth blogging about, but throughout the discussion Dave pointed out that, though everyone aims at relevant&visible advertising, most of the times you have to choose between the two, with planners pushing for relevant and creatives pushing for visible.

When that’s the case, I think that the planner is not doing a good job: it’s the role of the planner to come up with a proposition so relevant that it becomes visible. And it’s the creative role to push that visibility to its fullest potential.

This has always been true, and even more so today that irrelevant-but-visible pieces of communication can be found anywhere (and you find yourself competing with the McCain-Spears presidential ticket)

So, hopefully we’re done with this year’s death-of-planning meme, and we can move on to something more fun. Or visibly relevant.

 

Final Burp: I guess that visibility vs relevance is just another form for the old creative vs planning struggle. It’s curios how that struggle happens so much in debates outside the agency, and not nearly as much in real work within the agency.

Brand Ideas far and beyond advertising

(And yes, the evergreen fear of extinction for strategic planners…)

Richard Huntington shares his view on the relationship between Brand Ideas and advertising on his AdLiterate.

His view is that advertising used to be large enough to fit the simple, modest ideas of the past, but today’s potent brand thought is too big to be restrained by traditional adv. He’s suggesting to “free advertising from the need to represent the entirety of the brand idea and recognise that other disciplines are capable of doing this in a richer and more rewarding way”, and that “for many brands it is their online experience that should be delivering the big brand idea in all its technicolour glory. “

While I agree about the limits of traditional adv, I don’t think that drawing a line between adv (for sales) and web (for experience) is the right path for today’s challenges, nor that it pays full justice to the opportunities for integration that multimedia technology is offering us.

The reason why we’ve been spending a number of years trying to talk our way out of advertising and into communication, is that we should think at communication as a package, with different pieces along different media (and different purposes), but all related to the same idea, that consumers can engage with. Think at a tv commercial introducing a product that can be better explained and personalized on a website. Or a print teaser and tv trailer redirecting to a website where you can be entertained on a given Brand Idea, and then download discount coupons to be redeemed at your neighbourhood store. How can we separate tv from web? Or why should we?

Think at Axe’s “Gamekillers“. Or BK’s “Have it your way”, a brand idea that paves the way for most of the brand’s communication.

Or we can change our point of view and look at brand communication with consumers just like your relationship with your friends. If you want them to come to your party (ie. sell your product), maybe you text them/twitter them/email them first in advance; you’ll have spent time with them already so they know if you’re fun/friendly/smart/sexy, and how welcome your invitation is; you then call them and tell them something more about the party to engage them; you might post pictures of the club where you throw it on the web to get them excited; you might even arrange for a ride for them to get to the place; while at the party, you make sure that they’re enjoying themselves, and that you spend some time with each one of them.

Are you doing each of this to strengthen your bond with them, or just to get them to come to your party? How can you draw a line?

On the other hand I think that what Richard is saying is that the web offers better opportunities for engagement and intercation, and that’s true, of course. Just like tv is probably still the best place to say “Limited edition – 99 cents – Expires next Sunday”.

Now the sad part: as with litterally anything that is happening in advertising (or communication, ok…) this sounds a good enough excuse for someone to announce the upcoming death of planning. And judge it “,these days at least, an utterly futile activity (and a very dull career).” Apparently that’s because the really cool brands (Apple, Starbuck’s, Nike) “do not and have never needed Planners to tell them what they’re about”.

I don’t get it.

First, saying that no (adv agency) Planners worked on that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been planned at all. They have been planned by their founder (and their mates). I believe it’s due to the usual mistake of thinking at strategic planning as if it was a position on a business card, rather than an activity.

Second, there’s loads of other cool brands that have been planned by, guess who?, strategic planners. (Take Axe).

I’m always amazed at how often I stumble upon mournings for strategic (or account, or brand) planners. My opinion is that our work is so detached by any kind of specialization, or structure, or execution, that it will always be relevant, in one way or another. We can change employer, workmates, routines, tools, but we’re probably going to be around for longer than lots of the people we meet everyday, who face a more serious threat than us (journalists, anchormen, tv-focused creatives, some researchers…)

Final Burp: in the same article someone is pointing out how today’s powerful brand ideas are not only outer brand messages, but they can also be relevantly applied within the company, thus getting closer to a brand vision. (Take Dirt is good, or Power of Dreams). This makes much sense now that the boundaries between the brand, the company, the corporation and the society are falling apart.

APG Italia

(Disclaimer: This post is in Italian. You could easily translate it over the web, but you’ld seriously regret it: it’s planners talking about planners. Brrr.) 

Dopo alcuni mesi di rimpallo e riflessioni, l’APG Italia ha compiuto il primo passo semi-ufficiale.

Valerio, Luca, Pietro ed io abbiamo compiuto un pò di riflessioni sul senso e le forme di un eventuale Account Planning Group nel nostro paese, ed abbiamo deciso di tenere un atteggiamento molto pragmatico: pensarlo come uno strumento di scambio e formazione, e farlo vivere in prima battuta sul web.

Ha quindi ripreso vita il blog di APG Italia, in cui invitiamo tutti a partecipare ad un confronto su come portare avanti il progetto.

 Ci siamo dati un tempo di un paio di settimane per aprire un confronto online con tutti, dopodichè pensiamo di riunire tutti gli interessati e tirare le fila dal vivo.

Final Burp: Conoscendoci un pò, chissà se dovremo assumere un account per far sopravvivere il blog oltre la terza settimana…

What kind of account planner is under threat?

An AdAge article (yes, same old source) by Alice Cuneo provides a revealing opportunity to spend a few thoughts on what we all mean by “account planners”.

The article opens up with “pity the poor account planner” because these supposedly former rock stars of the ad business are now faced with sharing the spotlight with other kind of planners: media planners, connection planners, channel planners and the likes…

If the point of all this is to state that sharing the spotlights sucks, and we’ld all want to be the unique superstars of the amazing ad world, well… that’s a discussion that would appeal to our ego: which is clearly too big to fit into this blog’s layout, so let’s dismiss the whole issue.

If instead we’re talking real work, then it’s a whole different story, one that forces us to take a clearer look at what ultimately is our job.

Edward Cotton, director-strategy for Influx Insights, says ”A big challenge is being up to date with what’s going on [...] Six months ago, it’s MySpace. Now it’s Facebook.”

 I say: Who cares?

The beef of account planning has always been the content of the message, not the place where this message is delivered. Ok, MySpace is a different place than Facebook, but what really matters to us are the insights behind social network.

The needs, aspirations and behaviour of people are what will enable us to produce insightful ideas: let channel planners tell both us and the creatives if those ideas would be better off on MySpace or Facebook, and what kind of shape they’ld have to take.

Now, I’m obviously being a bit radical here, and we do have to know that MySpace and Facebook are around, and how they work, but that’s because their presence gives us insights into people, and not much because of the opportunities for communication they provide.

On the other hand, we know that in order to deal with the changes that are taking place, more professionals will sit around the table. Edward Cotton again asks:  “How do you [prepare a] brief if there’s 10 on a team?”

My first answer would be: you make 10 copies instead of 2.

My second answer is of course a bit more thoughtful, but it’s not far from that. The whole building and managing of communication will be more complicated, but everything will keep steaming from one relevant piece of idea. And luckily that first relevant piece of idea is most of our job.

Of course we’ll have to work with more people and keep an eye on more activities, but the core of what we do (and what defines our value) will stay the same.

As for me, I’ve been working with a channel planner based in London and our roles were pretty clear: I was in charge of the “what”, he was in charge of the “where”. Of course the “where” influences the “what”, but that only happens at a later stage (ie. creative execution)

On the other hand, it’s amazing how many different views people have on strategic planners, to the point that they should be endangered by pretty much anything: blogging, channel planners, and maybe global warming will come up as our next big threat.

Perhaps the reason for such an undefined idea of what we’re supposed to do is that “planning” doesn’t mean much, and “strategy” even less so. Or maybe it’s that planners are usually schizofrenic dudes with loads of different interests. Or that our work is built upon crossroads: between creatives and account handlers, between advertisers and consumers, between visionaires and researchers…

Whatever those reasons may be, it seems that communication getting more complicated is actually providing a chance for us to stick with what we were originally meant to do. Come up with relevant ideas that can be a fertile seed for communication. Period.

Final Burp: are strategic planners confused with channel planners because they both rely on research? If that is so, what happened to generating powerful ideas as the true essence of our job?

Zeus Jones and “say vs do”

Here’s a new and quite interesting agency/company that deserves a few notes: Zeus Jones was founded a few months ago by a group of adv professionals, including the former Strategic Planning Directors at Fallon, Rob White and Adrian Ho.

The whole concept of Zeus Jones is to use ” marketing to do things for their customers instead of just saying things to them”.

My view at this mission is that it’s everything but innovative: marketing was born to provide life improvement, in the form of products, to a growing number of people, that would be defined as consumers.

Bad marketing later evolved into coming up with loads of senseless products and trying to shove it down consumers’ throats, with a number of reasons, including paying off college tuition for the many kids of the company executives, but helping consumers was definitely not one of them.

What’s really interesting about Zeus Jones is how they communicate their mission: they believe that their clients should do instead of say, and, well, they act alike. (A pretty unique example of an agency following those same advices it gives its clients)

Check out their website: http://www.zeusjones.com/

 It’s worth it.

Final Burp: of all the many things you say, what can you do?

Il blogging sta uccidendo il planning? No

E per rispetto della nostra dignità intellettuale e professionale, verrebbe la tentazione di chiuderla qui.

Ma questo dibattito sta girando tanto da essere arrivato, via email, anche nella torre d’avorio del nostro ufficio, e da averci lasciati un pò interdetti. E’ valso la pena quindi approfondirlo, e per i contributi italiani faccio riferimento sparso ai blog di Valerio Franco (che non conosco di persona, colgo l’occasione per presentarmi), di Luca Vergano (idem) e di Marco Fossati (pure)

Il motivo per cui non si pone il problema che i blog possano uccidere il planning non sta tanto nella preferenza per un approccio quantitativo o qualitativo, come suggerito da qualcuno (ma mi sono perso per strada chi): pur smazzando i soliti etti di ricerche al mese, personalmente ho sempre avuto un taglio più qualitativo, e continuerò ad averlo finchè non mi si spiegherà come cavare un insight da un foglio excel.

Il punto è che fare planning (che per inciso è un nome un pò di merda) non si è mai risolto nel pontificare su un qualche argomento, spendendo generici barlumi di visione illuminante.

Piuttosto si tratta di partire da un dato contesto, e sviluppare idee rilevanti e fertili, funzionali ad obiettivi specifici.

Pensare che i blog possano essere sostitutivi dei planner è come pensare che i verbatim possano essere sostitutivi della creatività: può capitare che un consumatore si faccia scappare un payoff meraviglioso (se a qualcuno di voi è capitato, mi faccia sapere), ma puntarci tutto significherebbe sistematizzare la casualità. Cioè, di sperare di schivare le idee fuorvianti o irrilevanti, e confidare in una botta di culo.

In realtà tutto è partito da uno stimolo di John Lowery, che evocava un altro pericolo: che i giovani planner girino troppo fra i blog, si spippino fra di loro, e finiscano con l’alienarsi dalla realtà. Se prendessero per buone e universali le considerazioni in cui ci si imbatte nei blog, che sono sicuramente legittime ma anche tragicamente individuali, abdicherebbero al proprio compito.

Il planning (decisamente un nome di merda) non trova legittimazione in sè, ma nella società. Nella realtà 1.0.

Quindi, a dar retta all’avvertimento di John, non è il blogging che corre il rischio di uccidere il planning. Sono i cattivi planner.

Ruttino Finale: un buon giornalista si riconosce dalla suola consumata delle scarpe. Anche un buon planner.