Planning: The Next Frontier

Inspired by a recent conversation with the most awesome Edward Boches, I wanted to take a minute or two and talk about the evolving role of planning in agencies. Granted there are countless posts on “what is planning”  from people far wiser than I, but I will make my little attempt here to talk about some actions we can start really implementing.

First of all awesome folks like Mr. Boches, John Winsor, Ben Malbon, Gareth Kay, Faris Yakob, Mel Exon but to name a few are leading the charge to a smarter way to approach the strategic process. All of these folks inspire me everyday to push forward and continue to try to be that “catalyst for change” (urgh, gross marketing language. Apologies). Now it’s time to start taking what we’re learning and making the change happen.

As planners, we started understanding our profession as the “voice of the consumer”, which is still relevant in some respects. However, that has changed because the consumer has their OWN voice now (gasp, I know). So what to do? Well, we’ve evolved to embody a business consultant/strategist all in the neat little package of creative thinker/inspiration. Throw in some savvy research abilities in there and you have the role of a planner in many of agencies. Whoa.

At the nifty little planning conference back in October, the rally cry began for us to really start to CREATE more and bring more to the process. Adrian Ho and Rob White from Zeus Jones challenged us to think about Modern Brands.  How do we integrate all the “new” mediums, technologies and ways people are connecting into our work? Jason Oke and Gareth Kay redefined how we think about “Connections Planning”, Frank Striefler (with myself in a supporting role) reminded us that advertising doesn’t matter as much as we like to think and challenged us to create value by investing in people/ideas and breeding advocates. And if you were like me you started with SO much enthusiasm and excitement to “make stuff”. And then reality hit. And now it’s 6 months later…

I pose a few ideas that I feel have helped changed my perspective of what I do. I don’t want to sound preachy (but inevitably will), because I’m far from perfect. But I do feel that if we start thinking about things we can start doing we will unearth something really quite neat. I encourage you to chime in with your thoughts, it’s only the start of the list. And I hate the sound of my own voice…

Experiment, play and understand. Be a voyeur, better yet, be a participant…there are so many interesting experiments and fun things going on the interweb. Chatroulette terrified me, so I made friends try it for me and report back (some things scary, some things insightful) or participate in web experiments like the wildly awesome the3six5 project or little scraps of paper, (great explorations in lifestreaming and creative processes) or set up a Kickstarter project for your community. There’s so much to do, but you must be willing to  try. Inspiration for a great connections insight could very well lie in this kind of experimentation. And if not, it’s just fun. And no one can take this knowledge away from you.

Be social. Talk to your friends in the industry and almost more importantly, far outside of it (hello lovely people!). Engage in social media. Start talking, eventually people will listen. Or die trying. There are so many incredible people in the Tweetverse to learn from. Some are stateside, many from outside. I discovered Made by Many through Twitter, and find them hugely insightful and inspirational. Learn from new folks with divergent perspectives, it makes you better. Listen from within as well (media, PR, creative, digital, search…), insights are everywhere if you’re open to them.

Think content strategy. Now. Yes, it’s one more thing that we need to get a (fast) handle on. The essence is that we have a whole “changing world” of communications and social media is a massive part of it (duh). And if you’re anything like me, scrambling to figure out how to integrate it into your “normal” strategic processes. It’s building models to shape our thinking around creating a cohesive content strategy. Models that will likely need to change within the time you “start” the deck and finish it. Accept it. Breathe. Iteration.

Note, not talking about a “social media” strategy, but a content strategy. It’s less about the medium itself- it’s not *just* about having a mere “presence” in social, but doing something worthwhile in the space. Of course you have to understand where it goes to make something truly relevant and engaging (with the “right” people), but helping to shape those inherently ’social ideas’ (thank you Gareth Kay) that turns into content is hugely important part of what we can do.

Re-think the brief. It is what we do, I’ve come to accept it. Changing what a brief means can be a great means of starting to change the paradigm. Realizing that the “piece of paper” isn’t going anywhere (except for perhaps an iPad brief, which would rock my world), we’ve got to think about ways to express and inspire in fun new ways. A video montage?  An offsite? Perhaps dressing up and rapping a brief? OK, perhaps not the last one. But that would be awful entertaining… Also realize that there is no “passing of the baton” anymore–the brief is just the beginning for us. It is the era of the iterative brief. Evolve, be flexible, and know when to stand up for what you believe in when you have to. I know this is redundant, but it’s really about creating ideas/stuff, not just the set up or “the deck”.

Be genuine, treat your teams with the utmost respect. There was a disturbing article in AdAge recently that talked about  the brief writing process and it actually made my stomach turn. “Talk to the Creatives on Your Shop’s Team Like They’re in Kindergarten” Needless to say it was riddled with self-righteousness and ridiculous claims that things need to be dumbed down for briefing/development. There’s a difference between making things understandable and digestable and being childishly simplistic. We lose key ideas if we make things too simple–sometimes three words just won’t cut it.

Don’t be afraid to consider yourself “creative” You are by trade, in a creative profession. Some of you will think this goes without saying, but there are some who are afraid of tiptoeing over into creative strategy. While this is just my opinion, creative thinking should come from every orifice of an agency. Don’t limit yourself. If it’s an authentic part of who you are, don’t hide from creativity. Be fearless (you’re gonna get shot down a few times), be open to conversation and take the time to learn from your creative department.

Put some madness back into method. Wise words from Devika Bulchandani when talking about how planners are often seen as putting method into madness, the reverse is really what is true. Take a bunch of disparate pieces of information (consumer insights, connections insights, digital technologies) and try your hardest to pull together. It’s not easy and I can’t say that I’ve done it perfectly myself quite yet, but it is our constant challenge.

Again, I welcome more ideas, recognize that this list is HARDLY exhaustive, so let’s start creating together.

Recommended watching: RedScout’s series on the future of planning.  http://vimeo.com/redscout

(image via Behance Anna Rusakova)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 5:08 pm and is filed under BRANDS, CULTURE, DESIGN and tagged with advertising, planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.