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Most of your have made or are currently making your resolutions for 2008.

So here's a commercial, if one of your resolutions includes doing more good- please join Planning for Good.

To remind those that don't already know. Planning for Good is a group of 1400+ media, advertising, design strategists, their friends and a growing band of creatives who give their time and thinking to non-profits. A new brief is sent out to the network roughly every six weeks, brainstorm sessions are hosted, ideas developed and these are all collected for a presentation to the decision makers at the non-profit.

There are currently PFG groups in 40 cities around the world

Here are 7 reasons to join us...

1. You are joining a group of likeminds

2. It challenges your mind

3. Your ideas are likely to inspire a non-profit that needs you ideas

4. You will meet new people

5. You will get thoughts and ideas to bring back into your place of work

6. You will feel good about doing it because you are doing good

7. It will allow you to tick a box on your list of resolutions

If you are on Facebook, you can find the main group here.

If you are or aren't on Facebook and need contact information for our city leaders, please email me at ecotton@bssp.com and I will direct you to the right people.

If you work for a non-profit and could use some help, please email me as well.

Of course, we also have a blog.

Our plan for early 2008 is to have two months where the network is free to work on local projects and take a break from the  centrally driven briefs. 

Since our foundation in August, we've worked with fantastic people; Alisa Aydin at UNICEF, Lauren Baum and Tim Wilkinson at the Idea Village in New Orleans and Nikki Streifler at Live Earth.

None of these projects would have been possible without the help and introductions from Robbie Vitano and Michael Karnjanaprakorn at Trumpet in New Orleans (who also gave us a pulpit to speak from at their conference), Frank Streifler at MAL and Brian Reich at Cone in Boston.
Thanks are owed to many for what's been achieved this year to- the folks at BSSP- especially Greg Stern, John Butler and Mike Shine, Gareth Kay and the gang at Modernista for design help and support etc. Mark Earls for his bursts of brilliant thinking and his massive efforts in building PFG in London and to Jason Oke and Aki Spicer for their support and for building our bases in Toronto and Minneapolis.

To our fantastic group of city leaders around the world who are the true pioneers and frontline workers, to everyone who attended a brainstorm or contributed an idea and supported us in some way.

A last shout out to Max Schorr at Good Magazine for getting behind the idea and for Domenico Vitale at Lowe for his support and picking up the tab for our NYC pizza party.




Posted by Ed Cotton Here are some of the top-line thoughts that I took away from Trumpet’s Polygamous Wedding Conference in New Orleans. They are taken from my scratchy notes, so they are can’t be turned into quotes, they are approximations and interpretations of what the speakers may have said!

Connections Planning

1.Name confusion- Connections Planners have 25 different titles- we need to find one. (Demian Brink)

2.Ideally it should be a team of Account Planner and Media Planner.(Demian Brink)

3.We need to shift thinking from the world of Connections Planning and define it as the “New Creative”.(Lisa Seward)

4.This new world is non-linear, relentless and requires seamless collaboration.(Lisa Seward)

5. Need to start with the target, understand what’s wrong, discover actionable insights, have brave leaders who can force the issue and have no rules, just guidelines.(Lisa Seward)

6.Shift the core skill set from curiosity to collaborative creativity. (Lisa Seward)

7.Connections Planning doesn’t need to be a person, it can be be a protocol to ensure different creative output,.(Lisa Seward)

8.Build toolsets to better understand why people consume media, not just what the media is, but what drives the consumer’s connection to it. (Jim Elms and Scott Lucas)

9.Turn media numbers into sexy pictures and charts.(Jim Elms)

Brands and Branding

10.Consumers are smart, don’t give away the story, allow them discover it. (Michael Jaeger)

11. Create real personalization- Burton snowboards scratch graphics- each on is an orginal.(Michael Jaeger)

12.Mainsteam is just another word for the “stupid masses” (Michael Jaeger)

13.Brand momentum and brand energy, rule.(Gareth Kay)

14.Brands must now be: entertaining, socially responsible, interesting, useful, doers, sweat the small stuff (little things count for a lot) (Gareth Kay)

15.We are in a world of transformation- generations don’t argue about music, but their values are different- culture is now “cut and paste”, communication is now about “digitalists and designers”, which means planners need to be designing interactions (Adrian Ho)

16.It’s all about the interaction, not the message. (Adrian Ho)

17.Brands need to have multiple meanings, not one message for everyone. (Adrian Ho)

18.We need idea-based metrics. (John King)

19.“Brands are candidates.” (John King)

20.Experts were talking about a powerful, empowered consumer in 1939. (Rob Walker)

21.Brands aren’t in crisis, corporate America achieved record earnings in 2006. (Rob Walker)

22.Ipod success can be put down to its multitude of meanings. (Rob Walker)

23. Red Bull doesn’t tell you who its for, what it is and it makes the consumer find out. (Rob Walker)

24. People must still love brands if they are willing to pay $10 for a Live Strong bracelet on E-Bay(Rob Walker)

25. Hello Kitty succeeds because its an entirely blank canvas, there’s nothing there- users project their own meaning(Rob Walker)






Posted by Ed Cotton