Weblog Consulting Register Login Subscribe to Free Influx Emails Join our Facebook Group Follow us on Twitter Branding Street Cred Technology Lifestyle Style Entertainment Interviews Art InfluxTV Map Widgets RSS — All Subjects RSS — More Feeds

Search

Advanced Search

Contact Privacy Policy

"The most important thing to remember is that creating a beautifully simple experience is incredibly complex. To succeed planners needs to reach a level of breath and depth as never before. Breath because not are only briefing creative but also designer, technologist and user experience architect. Depth because by the nature of the experience, if you want to make every interaction counts, a single thought is not enough. You need to get into the details. In the end, it is a bit like if you had to design a new Volkswagen. And that’s actually the concept we used to launch the site."

Vincent- a planner@Tribal DDB (On developing VW UK's website)

Case study can be seen here. (thanks Gareth Kay and Adrian Ho)


Posted by Ed Cotton Most people try to explain away the role of planners as brief writers or insights people. Folks at the agency charged with bringing heaps of fresh insight by the pound into the agency, freshly minted and ready to inspire creative work.

Sometimes it works just like this, most of the time it doesn't. The process isn't perfectly linear, nor should it be. In an ideal world, it should be about continuous conversations, with planners regularly thinking of new ways to add something.

Years back I remember a planner at Mullen telling me how they came up with the Monster.com campaign. In a discussion about the brand, some planners mentioned having done groups with kids for Disney where questions about future career choices were a part of the discussion. The creatives mentioned they would like to see the tapes and from that viewing, this idea was born.



Anyway that's the folklore behind it, if anyone one knows anything different, please let me know.

The point here is that planners have to do the research, write great briefs, but they also need to remain part of and contribute to the creative conversation, knowing all along just what it takes to get to an interesting idea.


Posted by Ed Cotton Last Friday in San Francisco Alex Frankel held a launch for his new book Punching In.

An Influx interview with can be found here.

There were drinks, Alex read some passages from the book and on a wall in the gallery there was this board full of stuff.



Since Alex's book "Punching In" is all about the world of a brand from an employees perspective. For the book, Alex worked at The Gap, Apple, Starbucks, Enterprise and UPS over a two year period to learn their secrets and internal brandwashing techniques. 

In the process, he collected a number of artifacts from his experience including; uniforms, badges, rule books, guides and pay slips, some of which were dispayed on the board.

It was a nice example of cultural curation (idea by Grant McCracken) where the physical elements and artifacts that define a culture are collected and understood.

It's something planners could be doing more of. We tend to do a lot of talking to people and not a great deal of looking and observing. If we looked deeper and picked up and documented more fragments it might lead to some richer insight.


Posted by Ed Cotton It's clear that the next big change for ad agencies will be the shift to place digital at the center of the shop.

Euro RSCG has already made the leap and others will doubtless follow.

This move has implications for planners, as demands on them will change considerably.

R/GA has been leading the field in digital development, so it makes sense to take a look at the role of planners at the shop.

Thankfully, Admap covered the topic in May of this year when Anne Benvenuto, Vice President of Strategic Services at R/GA explained the agency's planning system and approach.

The shift is driven by the variety of client needs that R/GA deals with, these range from campaigns to programs and experiences. Each of these had different demands from the perspective of channels and insights.

Beyond the client needs, R/GA is set up differently from a conventional ad agency, with an extended creative team (a "Creative Hydra), which includes both an interaction designer and a tech head, in addition to the "traditional" copywriter and art director team.

The planner's role is to deliver insights to help the team in the creation of brand interfaces and experiences.



The UI and tech heads have critical roles to play, in respectively crafting the experience and defining and developing the technology to make that happen.

This enlarged team places greater demands on the planner, who needs to ensure they equip each member of the team with specific and relevant insights, as well as an overarching cohesive thought.

R/GA looks for its planners deliver insights on four dimensions (perceptions, culture, behavior, technology) and a singular idea that links all of them all together. It's clear, that unlike most ad agencies, at R/GA, media and channel behaviors are also included in the line-up.



This leads to briefs that are both simple and complex; allowing the team to see both the single-minded 30,000 ft idea and drill down into the detaled and specific insights that drives the idea.

R/GA's model marks a significant departure from "planning as usual" approach and reflects the dramatic change that adding a tech head and a UI person to the conventional creative team makes.

However, much more than these personnel changes, it's all about agencies thinking about client’s long-time needs, rather than just short-term campaign requirements.

Quite simply, it's all about ad agencies helping brands to continuously connect with their customer base, by adding programs and experiences to the mix and this big shift presents a brave new world for ad agencies and their planners.



Posted by Ed Cotton The Planning for Good group on Facebook was created less than 12 hours ago and already 45 people have signed up.

We've had a great responses from planners in the US and UK.

We need more people to join us, but we also need help in the following areas:

1. Suggestions for good people to add to the advisory board- ideally people working for non-profits.

2. We need problems to solve- non-profits who could use 45 brains on a problem.

Any suggestions and ideas please add to the group page.

Thanks to all of you who have already stepped forward, amazing stuff. 

Posted by Ed Cotton Reuters recently wrote an interesting story about the rise of quantitative analysis on Wall Street, analysis based on lots and lost of data, that’s gaining preference over the more conventional and qualitative analysis.

“Now complex computerized programs can do all that and more, including employing vast reservoirs of data on historic prices to project how stock, currency or other prices may move. Overlay that security-specific information with macro-economic data, forecasts, demographics, industry statistics and other information, and you get a more efficient trading model, proponents say.”

Shift focus to the marketing world and the movement towards the quantitative is already happening.

As marketing dollars shift towards directly responsive media, the data starts becoming more freely available and complex sets of analysis can be made. Up until recently, we’ve seen a bifurcation of disciples; the direct sell side guys and the brand builders. The two worlds were separated and unique.

However, the rise of web video is changing all that. We now have web- based media chasing after dollars that have previously been bound for television.  This isn’t about pre or post roll, but the brand impact of rich video content designed for interactive consumption.

The coming together of the brand building and direct selling worlds creates new demands on planners. No longer can they be content with being the qualitative insights gurus, if they want to survive, they are going to have get to grips with the emerging quantitative world.

Interestingly, this world isn’t complete, it’s half built at best. No one knows quite what it should look like or how we should measure it. There are some buzz measurement tools, there are cross media optimization tools and other things, but nothing optimal.

It’s a good time to get started.

The Reuters article suggests that equity analysts will still have a job, but it's now recognized there are alternative sources of great insight.

It’s possible that the same development could happen in planning