Well, I’ll first make my little plug for the upcoming planningness conference in Boulder and NYC Sept 30-Oct 1. It’s a can’t miss. I won’t get into everyone who is speaking, but it’s all the awesome folks. Will be amazing. Hard part will be to decide where to go.

So the premise of planningness is to focus us on MAKING stuff and DOING. These are two massively important things to those who work in the strategy/planning arena. We don’t typically “make” stuff that lives in the world. We make (important) documents that build, support and tell you how it will live in the world however, but not necessarily contributing to the tangible endgame in every situation. While this is groovy and a very important step to grounding and reasoning “the work”, it’s critical to be a part (or even BE) the work. Thereby rises the importance of making.

For me, the great example of a shop that’s “doing” is BBH. They’ve taken the “do stuff” model to a new level. They’ve had ZAG for awhile (with awesome by-products like the wildly successful Mrs.O.org blog/book/phenomenon). Planning is still taking on the same strategic problem solving tasks, but additionally are playing in the world of creation. Anomoly has done this as well as many others, experimenting with new models and things within the agency walls. Brilliant! You have smart, creative entities, DO something with them!

Heidi Hackemer over at BBH is a dynamo–the six items or less project was featured in the NYTimes today. Super amazing. Super inspiring. So fabulous. And finds time to speak at Hyper Island. If that doesn’t inspire you to DO something, I don’t know what will. For me, she’s become one of the people to really look up to and learn from in this industry.

OK love fest aside. This social world connects us. We know each other (loosely) enough. If you have a great idea, you have a community who is ready and willing to help/support you. I even saw it in my own little creation this week with my 3six5 post. Now I don’t claim to be a professional writer. I kept a diary as a kid, I blog casually, I write decently well for my job, but not a”writer” by any means. Nor do I have the most expansive “number” of followers. However, I am lucky enough to have a wonderfully supportive, generous and influential group of friends in the space (thank you friends!). It’s hard to believe that little ol’ me got well over 3000 views of that little post as a part of an amazing project with over a million views. The gracious support of people I truly call my friends, anything can happen. An even better example is Bud Caddell who has raised over $14K for his book project from his network of supporters/backers. It’s amazing.

My challenge (to myself and you!) is to DO something in the next couple weeks. Get that personal project/life project started. It’s not just painting the fence or finishing the “honey do” list. It’s making something tangible and throwing it out in the world. If it sticks, great (you may just be a millionaire). If it doesn’t, learn from it and try again in a couple weeks. The important thing is what you’re doing is something that makes your heart a little happier. Having these awesome outlets of creativity can spawn great work/career things as well, but don’t go into it with that intent. Make something that you love just because you love it.

Image via: http://nemoorange.com/newmoon/

OK, everyone and their mother has probably used this as a title in a post.

The new Old Spice work has inevitably all of us chatting about in our agency walls. Good, bad or overhyped, the experiment is advertising gold (or Titanium, whatever). In my mind, there is absolutely no disputing the genius of the original advert (I’m on a horse), but this expression has really taken on a life of it’s own. Within my own “twitter land” it was hard to find a tweet that wasn’t about Old Spice the past two days. Yes. Old Spice. Amongst jaded, angry advertising/marketing professionals. We too are mesmerized by the man in a towel.

What Ian Tait and his brilliant team at W+K have done so beautifully (as described on copious news sites: Fast Company, Read Write Web and many many more) is orchestrate (da-dah-dahhh) an incredible social idea. Take something funny–an incredible television asset (with some one very funny) and make his voice come to life and truly interact with the audience-empower them to step into the proverbial shower with this guy. Giving an idea legs. And a towel. I think it’s left many, many of us wishing we thought of it first.

And the understated smarts of the piece is there is no “microsite” or “hub”  being used. It’s using existing spheres- youtube and twitter– and creating an incredibly agile piece of communication art. I think this is what makes this so awesome. Using the tools at hand–people (user generated content), a very smart influence strategy–answering Ms. Milano and Mrs. Kutcher is a marketing trick, a damn good one.–existing mediums and a great character to make something just a little magical. Sorry cynics, these guys got me.

Well done w+k. Well done.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Surrounded by boxes in mid-relocation– I have to write a few words to support Bud Caddell and his quest to write the book on the changing world of strategy. Bud has a phenomenal blog which I’ve followed for quite some time and admire his thinking tremendously. He decided to start a project and see how the “network” could help guide and shape the writing of a book. Awesome idea. I’m thrilled to say that he’s reached his first goal of $5K, but that’s just the beginning. I’ll get to the point–support him here to contribute whatever you can to his kickstarter project. You won’t be sorry.

So why am I supporting his project?

1)  I truly respect what Bud has been doing for ALL of us. He asks provocative questions. Invites us (the readers) to become involved, then allows us into his world and way of thinking. I loved the Web Video THUNDERDROME from sxsw he did with Mike Arauz (well, the presentation. I was lame and not at sxsw this year…). He’s given a lot of himself and for that I’m truly grateful. I know how much time, passion and heart this job takes, Bud’s doing this to the nth degree. It’s driving me to be better and want more from my own work. He’s “gifted” us for a long while, it’s time to show support.

2) To put a bit of my money where my mouth (and heart) is. This whole social world we live in has REAL, inherit value. There are still naysayers that still refuse to “get” it. This project and hundreds of projects like it, fly in the face of this. Collaborative creation is our future. Embrace it.

3) Camaraderie. This social world we live in has allowed me to connect and chat with amazing people.  Virtually meeting awesome folks (like minded and not-so like minded), chatting about the ways of the world, sharing struggles and victories in our day-to-day, there is a bit of an unspoken bond.

4) Becoming a little part of something I truly believe in to be awesome. And absolutely necessary.

Support him now. Please and thank you.

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age is Clay Shirky’s latest and greatest. As I’m sure many of you know, he is one of the most forward thinkers on the internet revolution (if not you may want to check out his very popular TED Talks). His quotes find it into copious presentations, his influence is immense. His new book does not disappoint-my underlined, dog-eared, twice read copy is physical evidence of the awesomeness.

This book is filled with insightful provocations–there would be no way I would be able to touch on all of them in this post. His examples are designed to make you think, but it won’t tell you what we necessarily need to do with the issue at hand. While so many books on social media are filled with best practices and rules, this one takes a well needed step back and looks at the sociocultural context in which the internet revolution lives in. And Shirky (rightly) postulates that there is no magical “master strategy”, rather navigating “what works” in this new space will require several smaller experiments, few of which will be marvelous and successful, most which will be deemed “failures” by many.

The questions that Shirky works to answer are the biggies:

- Why is social media as important as it is to us? The notion of a “cognitive surplus” –a consequence of the postwar boom, the surplus of energy, intellect and time which was once nearly completely consumed by television– is detailed drawing on behavioral/motivation theory to support his thesis. (the cog sci in me was thrilled!) This surplus is now being aggregated in these new mediums at a low cost (both monetary and time).

- Why is there this aversion to accepting it as a new part of communicating? He uses a lovely reoccurring reference “Gutenberg economics” likening the advent of movable type of  as similar to that of social media today. The democratization of the written word is much like the democratization of ideas and the ability to SHARE freely (changing what “publishing” means across the board). His general answer:

- “Professional” versus “amateur” (Zagat vs Yelp, Youtube vs. Studios, etc). While he believes there’s a lot of cognitive surplus that’s not necessarily going to the BEST of use (perhaps those LOLCats could be something slightly more useful), he recognizes that there is an intrinsic motivation when an “amateur” creates something (he/she is doing it for the LOVE of the craft) versus a professional who does it for a living. Additionally, without the “bad” there would be no “good”…

Thank you Mr. Shirky, for giving readers the respect to illuminate issues with your examples/insight and putting the onus back on them to move forward and make decisions that will shape (all) our collective future.

READ IT! You’ll thank me later…

Image via: Cognections Blog

I’ve been lucky enough to have a minute to breathe and let my creative juices be inspired yet again. Thank goodness for this handy dandy thing we call twitter. There’s loads of places to be inspired (real world and otherwise), but the one-stop shop for hearing disparate, interesting voices twitter is still incredibly useful.

If you’re not a “twittter person” there’s something called Follow Friday where you tell your followers to follow others (putting that down in words now seems trite and silly). This is inspired by a post by ed boches on his blog that helped illuminate the “why we follow” which gets a little lost in the 140 characters. What they have in common is a fascination with the world, an ability to think in ways that boggle my mind and truly cool peeps that you’d totally want to have a pint with.

So happy Friday and a genuine “thank-you” to all of you (reading and the “FF”s)

#FF

@bbhlabs: tremendously insightful, they are simply the forefront of progressive strategic thought. Something to aspire to be-their great contributors (@malbonnington and @melex are awesome) make all of us think harder. http://bbh-labs.com/

@edwardboches: while he is the master of all things social creativity/communications/the changing advertising world–there are a lot of awesome posts that reflect his broader curiosity of the world and culture. And he is an awesome conversationalist–what a blog *really* should be about. http://edwardboches.com/

@budcaddell: wonderfully cerebral, one of the strongest strategic thought leaders we have. His blog inspires awesome conversations around topics that all of us strategy folk wrestle with. http://whatconsumesme.com/

@brainpicker: freshest, creative inspired tidbits. Amazing finds and thoughtful commentary. If you don’t read her blog, you’re missing something wonderful. http://www.brainpickings.org/

@uberblond: a truly delightful creative strategist. she’s got some amazing projects on the go that are really inspiring creativity: from the wilhelmine project http://thewilhelmineproject.com/ to her new project six items or less (I’m not brave enough to partake in that one…but it fascinates me!) http://sixitemsorless.wordpress.com/

@cshirky: he doesn’t tweet often, but when he does I listen. And his book is out of this world.

@schwartzie14 adverts breaking? He’s got ‘em all on his blog metal potential. Bookmark and see what’s golden (or titanium colored) at Cannes. Reminds me that this is business can still be about being an art form… http://metalpotential.posterous.com/

@stellawongo the the first to break awesomely fresh, creatively driven tech goodies. She’s wickedly smart and finds some awesome things from around the world. Plus she likes baked goods almost as much as I do, which is a total bonus.

@malbonster he’s incredibly wise in the world of strategy/ emerging tech/social communications and creativity. And he’s freaking hilarious.

@tim_leake always has fun stuff, a positive attitude and a great sense of humor. And yesterday I discovered the toothpick sculpture of SF through him. If that isn’t enough reason, I don’t know what is.

@garethk a true strategy rockstar. If you work in advertising and you haven’t seen his presentation from BDW on the evolving brief, take the time to watch it. It will help bring you into the new world and shape your thinking.

(Image via: Polyvore Tumblr)

Are we born knowing how to play? In fact, yes. Humans are hardwired to “play” in their given environments. This was the gist of my thesis in college (I was a cog sci/child dev person–go figure, I work in advertising now…) and I remember spending copious hours in the lab (well, the sandbox) playing with kids, observing and piecing together the “whys” and “hows” of this thing called play and what it meant to their development into *awesome* adults.

Fast forward a few years to life in behavioural science as it relates to marketing and the topic still fascinates. But now I’m looking at “grown ups”–and our innate INability to play. Need proof? IKEA commissioned the world’s largest play study, PlayReport International some disturbing facts began to emerge out of the poll of 11,000 parents and kids…26% of parents are too stressed to play with their kids, 50% of parents want play to be educational, while the overwhelming majority of kids just want to have fun (big surprise, but hang onto this thought). And many parents say they’ve simply forgotten how to play.

So hold on a second. If we’re hardwired to play then why do we forget how to play by the time we’re grown up? Transactional nature of our lives. Actions require a hard outcome (hence, adults wanting kids ‘play’ to be educational), however what we’re actually wired for is the human interactions garnered through play. That’s the “reward”–learning how to play in the sandbox with others. Understanding the nuances of interaction is massively important and often overlooked, but as a creative person, we must understand each other (who else are we creating for?)  This is also why some of our very “adult” problems surface-not being able to play in that proverbial sandbox, as we’re expecting our “gains” out of every time we play. The reality is, sometimes we just require play to be a time to interact and (gasp) have fun.

As creative professionals, we can never lose that ability to play for playing’s sake. Of course we need to produce. Of course we have deadlines. But we also have to take the time to just interact with our friends, colleagues and creative teams–PLAY and see what happens, no strings attached. Chances are it’ll be something quite amazing.

Image Via: Alex Beltechi

Usually this blogspace is reserved for my meanderings on tech, design, adverts and the communications world. Today’s post is a bit more personal. Two weeks ago I decided to make a big change and for the first time, leap before I looked. So of course, the “why”…

In essence, I simply felt the need to freely practice what I preach. I realize it’s never going to be perfect, but my passion for social ideas/innovation/behaviors drive me towards something new and different. Recently I was confronted with the question: “why are you so ‘into’ this social media thing?” After a quick chuckle, roll of the eyes and rebellious “duh?” –I realized it may not be so clear. It comes down to something I’ve said many many times before. It’s not “social media” persay–I’m interested in ideas that are social: social networks, behaviours and activities and the technologies that facilitate it.

I’m searching for the deeper insights into human behavior (which isn’t so unusual for a “planner” type). Not necessarily just the “purchase intent behavior” but connected behaviors. How we connect to each other, to what we call “media” and of course those other things we call “brands.” I stumbled on this fantastic quote from the amazing Nick Christakis’ TED blog post:

Fundamentally, I suppose this topic sits well with my perception of humanity. We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It’s very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy — where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system. That’s clearly not the case when it comes to social systems. This realization was very much to my liking, intellectually and otherwise. We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.

Well, all said, I’m out in the world determined to help make great social ideas come to life and become a part of culture. Inspired by my peers, driven to help create something awesome, I truly believe this is the most exciting time ever to be a part of this industry. There are incredible people in it, amazing ideas out there and technology to make your every whim come true if you really want it. Let’s see what we can create together…

Image: from my little camera under the gigantic “thinking tree” in Balboa park…

Image (Emily Forgot for Selfridges, London)

Image: Pentagram for Endeavor Middle School, Brooklyn NY

(Image: NYC Library, wifi hotspot)

We always say “it’s about creating experiences” yet still relatively unexplored is the idea of incorporating rich digital experiences into physical spaces/design. Not just a “well designed piece” of technology (the slick LCD screen or touch interface), but truly having digital experiences built (mindfully) into the design. Will be amazing to see how we can start to “paint” with digital.

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)

Please feel free to comment on and add in your favorites as well!

For true online (incredibly designed) experiences:

1) The GOOD 100

(http://awesome.good.is/good100/good100.html)

What isn’t GOOD about GOOD? Saving the world with good design (intelligent, functional and beautiful design has been a part of their ethos and this GOOD 100 is no exception. Simple iconography is your navigation for 100 of the most important, influential and intriguing ideas/people/things in culture.

2) digg Labs 365

(http://labs.digg.com/365/)

The extraordinary digg Labs presents a year overview, proving information and content aggregation can be quite beautiful. Pick a day and digg will help you find the top stories, images and video.

3) Forty for 2010

Wolf Ollins/Wallpaper (http://www.wallpaper.com/fortyfor2010)

In a great partnership brand consultancy and Wallpaper join forces to bring a very fresh perspective to a “trend” report. Categories ranging from money to communities to energy to computing, they do a great job of illustrating truly innovative brands/mindshifts and beyond in a very clean, well designed experience.

4) A Year in Ideas

NY TImes (http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/#a)

The consummate year in review from A-Z the freshest ideas of the year. Ad folks have plenty to play with, as well as a ton of great cultural, sociopolitical, tech and even sports innovation.  Each idea is coded with a handy icon, incredibly well organized piece of NY Times goodness. Lest we forget the ad that watches you…

As for presentations my favorites were:

1) Most Contagious Report (http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/slideshare-most-contagious-2009-pres/)

I find this to be the most comprehensive of any ad industry cutting edge case study reports. Great format, interesting writing and fabulous examples that will intrigue and inspire.

2) FEED Report from Razorfish: (http://feed.razorfish.com/)

Now that we have all (thankfully) shelved the phrase “Web 2.0″ we can all collectively sigh in relief and sit back and take in what the future TRULY holds for us in technology.

3) Top 10 Trends by David Strutts: (http://www.slideshare.net/Stutts/10-trends-to-watch-in-2010)

Some really nice tech trends from David Strutts, with a good balance of cultural trends as well. Idea of “niche user-generated humor” is a fun one to explore.