NORTHERN PLANNER

So I was at the IPA Fast Strategy conference last week. Like others, I had and have my doubts on  the merits of this. The best ideas tend to emerge over time, you need space to not think about something etc.

BUT we, and most certainly I, live in a world where out time is always being squeezed. Like or not, we’re all under pressure to work quick more often than we would like.

Anyway, it’s always good to go to a do that’s going to be attended by planners and here people you admire talk about what they do.

So it’s no wonder that possibly the biggest highlight of my day was talking to other attendees. Planners are great.

The plan for the day was a series of speakers talking about how they think quickly.

Adam Morgan, Founder, Eat Big Fish

Rita Clifton, Chairman, Interbrand

Orlando Hooper-Greenhill, Director of Global Planning, JWT

Richard Storey, Chief Strategy Officer, M&C Saatchi

Sarah Bussey, Strategic Planning Consultant, IPA

Jeremy Griffin, Head of News, TimesOnline

And a series of teams were given a Honda brief and three hours to do some thinking before presenting to the delegates.

I’ll spare you a blow by blow account and stick to the main points:

1. Don’t be too clever by half. The teams that presented the Honda work back hadn’t resisted overcomplicating their ideas. Each had a strong core that seemed to be muddied by thinking too much. Except the team that was creative only.
2. Presenting with passion is at least as important as being right. Kate Stanners could convince you anything (and not just because she’s fit).
3. Most of the points about being quick seemed to really be about being good. You cannot avoud doing things properly, and cutting corners just makes things longer and harder when the house of cards falls down.
4. Be generous – don’t lock yourself in a room mind mapping and worrying, get the team together, make sure it’s a team that has both strategists and executors in, and hopefully media too and facilitate conversation. You may have a great thought, but the ability to spot when someone else has is even more precious. And the more conversation, the better chance of someone hitting on something.
5. Be sure you know you’re doing strategy and not tactics. Both are valid, but are you really doing strategy?
6. You must develop a natural curiosity – collect as much stimulus as you can, always be looking for interesting stuff, the more stuff you have on the shelf, the easier it is to pick something off it when the time comes.
7. Know when to move. Don’t waste time making something shinily perfect, but don’t go off half cocked either.
8. Conflict tends to drive brands forward, a brand narrative usually has a brand v something; Honda V Complacency, Lurpak v needless complexity, ghd v what God gave you. Creating a monster for your brand to be St George against can be a great focus. It doesn’t, and maybe shouldn’t be, something within the category – but find something that will turn your brand enemies into monsters, something big, cultural and compelling. This is a neat trick to turn potentially bloated number one into a challenging brand of the people. Dove has made the beauty industry into a compelling monster, Apple made conformity into a 1984 scale monster, Levis is all youthful rebellion against hyocritical grown up values (I think), The Coke Side of Life makes a monster out of avarice and owning stuff (supposedly).
9. Brand consultatcies talk a good game. That said, Rita Clifton did make a good point about brand strategy – look at the spectrum of what to be about – what you do, how you do it, what what we do does for people, or a big cause and choose which one, and only that one to be about.
10. Don’t lose sleep about being brilliant, be right and enable creatives to be brilliant.
11. Find the real blockage, the real barrier and don’t believe the excuses people make in research. People claim to have no time for example,  when they actually are greedy about trying to do too much.
12. Admire your audience. If you’re target is Sun readers, it’s easy for a spoilt agency type to patronise them. Even if you’re target is an investment banker, make yourself like them – it’s really hard to get under the skin of someone if you can’t respect them first.
13. Plan from within – find something you know that’s utterly true, but kind of didn’t know it, or it just hasn’t been talked about it this category. Look at comedy, most things are funny because they’re true. Peep Show reminds me that the the things we say and do are rarely the same as the the things we’re thinking. Male friends constantly bicker etc.
14. Be careful of ‘fat words’ that mean everything and nothing at the same time. Quality, trust, care are useless strategic words.
15. Pretend you were in another category – what would you do?
16. Something written down on  pad might not look that goodm write it up, tidy up and you’ll be amazed at how much better it can look.
17. Keep your arse on the seat. Don’t take lots of coffee breaks, break of to do something else for a bit. Get into a ‘flow’ state of mind – that wierd trance like state where you ‘re lost in what you’re doing. Most athletes don’t remember the game or the race, most artists find it hard to describe how they fo about making art – I suspect most planners find it hard to describe how they ‘plan’. I bet it’s for this reason.
18. Talk to anyone. I talk too much, I waffle,  I have about three people that let me talk at them and then tell me what I’ve just said. And somehow it all comes together.
19. Think about removing the enemy’s centre of gravity. What is their strength, how will you disarm it? That might be a competitor, it might be a cultural thing.
20. Turn an objective into a challenge. Selling  10,000 hybrid cars is an objective, reducing UK emissions by 5% is challenge, convincing credit crunched family car drivers that a Hybrid is more reliable is a challenge.

Hope all that helps. It was a good day. 

I’ve bashed this out quick, don’t have a go at spelling and stuff.