NORTHERN PLANNER

I'm not the biggest fan of brand consultancies. Of course, some brand agencies are amazing, but they tend to be the exceptions.

When it's good,  they make stuff. Rather than charge £1000,000 for changing one word in the positioning statement and then churning out a stream of powerpoint to justify it, the good brand consultancy stuff is usually based on developing a product.

I'm convinced it's because they have no choice but to dig into how people will buy and use whatever they're developing, rather getting caught up with what it means for their identity.

You wouldn't believe the stuff I've 'borrowed' from product development research for comms planning. Loads of primary research on need states, buying behaviour, context and semiotics.

I find it much more useful to think about the connection between what people are doing and what they're motivations, mind-set and general flow is at various points – and what the brand is doing.

Now I don't buy all that talk about using data and stuff to precisely show up at the right place and the right time. That's the route to looking great in terms of cost per impression, but not actually changing much behaviour, or even worse, using a few clicks t look like you've people buy what they were going to do anyway.

New products fill gaps in people's lives, they ad something…functionally and emotionally.

Media, content etc should be doing the same. It might be a traditional message, but increasingly we need to ask what we're doing, not just what we're saying at this point. 

Think of some of the great ads (yes ads) people talk about. I find it easier to think about them in terms of a task based proposition rather than a 'message proposition'

For Old Spice -  create conversations between men and women about what a real man is.

The Famous Economist Ads sought to  celebrate the intelligence of their readers in front of everyone else.

Get the Lego Movie out of child's play and into the adult entertainment world (which ended up as a total ad break made of Lego..brand owners had their ads remade in Lego)

I think task based propositions are more useful these days that 'message propositions'. They unite creative media and 'content'. They make a brand not just say things, they make them do things.

Anyway.