NORTHERN PLANNER

Once upon a time, a rare species known as ‘planner in a Northern agency’ began to meet to shoot the breeze and have a couple of drinks. It grew a bit more and thankfully, some non-planning types began to turn up and it simply became a chance to have drinks with some nice people who loosely work in the same game.

It’s been ridiculously long since the last one, but we’ve finally got out act together. Next Northern Planning night is October 2nd, The Northern in Manchester (in the Northern Quarter), from 6.30pm onwards.

I’ll be there.

Rob will.

Gemma will.

Ian will.

Simon will.

I’ll make sure David is.

Andrea better be.

But the more the merrier, come one, come all.

I was reading Campaign Magazine’s ten commandments for graduates last week and two things stood out.

Firstly, don’t try and switch to planning after two weeks- account handling will become much more than contact reports and competitor reviews. They’re right, it is more than that, but there are two things to add to this. First; don’t even think about planning if you think it’s less work. It’s not – it’s as least as hard.

Harder to get into meeting rooms (they can manage perfectly well without planners if they want), harder to squeeze everything in – too few planners, too many clients means you’ll always be running uphill, harder to multi-task – one minute you’re writing a brief, next you’re swimming data, next you’re running a workshop.

Also, life as junior planner means you’re doing lots of so-called mundane tasks too. Endless TGI runs, preparing stimulus for workshops, swimming in Nielson…. and if you’ve got into this business thinking it’s all long lunches, glamorous shoots, blogging and coffee you’re in for shock. It’s more colourful, but a doddle it is not.

Second was about keeping doing what you love. The first point makes this hard – where is the time? But as a planner, and person, you really have to find a way to do it.

By default, a planner needs to be interesting. If all you can talk about is advertising, you’ll become quite the opposite. And there’s lots of pressure in this business – you need an outlet.

And most ideas, most good thinking comes out of the office, when you least expect it. You need to give yourself that chance. Planners are never not working really.

Put another way, planning is about understanding humans, so you need to be one, not an advertising robot. One way or another, you need to find the time. I couldn’t function without sport – I need to swim, cycle and stuff like I need to breath. I need to cook, it’s relaxing, it’s creative, it’s making something.

That’s my love. What’s yours? If you haven’t got one, get one (or two!) quick.

Righto, it’s back.

Looks like the faculty is Rob, Gareth and Northern. I’m doing this round, then Gareth (his last one was a doozy, look forward to it).

Anyway, this task is about tone of voice.

Creatives find planning types useful for two things; getting the work through the client/research and providing useful stimulus.

Getting the work through starts with a good brief that as many people have inputed into as possible – if someone feels they’ve had a part in developing the work, they’re far more likely to support it..but that’s not what the task is about.

It’s about stimulus. There’s all the critical, non-official conversations around the diarised meetings that help you and the creative teams shape the work – as long they’ll let you in that back door, which requires them to think you’ll be interesting. But the briefing matters too, even more than the brief.

No matter how short, how well written a creative brief is, it is still words. That’s not too great for creatives who think in pictures, associations and metaphor. It’s even worse for tone and manner, which is the part of the briefing (and brief) that usually gets the least attention, yet it’s the most important.

About 95% if human communication is non-verbal, body language, appearance, facial expressions, these are what people react to and subconsciously remember. It’s no different with creative work. The core message that arises from the proposition still matters, but it’s the delivery that really matters – the brand’s body language.

Take Honda. Great ads, built around a brand based on optimism. But that’s just a word, the stimulus that informed the creative process was this:

(Sorry to WK from nicking it from your creds). Imagery, associations and sentiments that brought to life what the brand was about.

I work on ghd, where the brand behaviour is everything – words cannot do it justice – but it’s critical a creative team know what it is – it produces work like this, this and this.

Great brands tend to be built on a consistent view on the world, culture at large – some sort of long term, core organising vision, something that pulls together any objective you may have, put is flexible enough for virtually anything.

Your task is to develop a vision for Yorkshire Tea, perhaps my favourite brand in the whole wide world – and make it real for a creative team. The only mandatory is that it should be done in powerpoint – as guide…analogy metaphor, pictures, video (pasted in or linked to youtube) are what works with creatives, so try and use them as much as you can. Something you would use in  a creative briefing, but also a reference for development.

Don’t worry too much about core Yorkshire Tea short term objectives, or international v UK. Just have a go at creating something interesting, something meaty, something inspiring, something that feels right.

All you need to know for now is that Yorkshire Tea is a premium tea brand sold mainly in the UK. It’s priced well above own label, and more than most tea brands. It does well in most taste tests, it’s a deeper, richer taste than most tea. As with most premium brands, they have to justify their price point, not least in defence against own label. They are proud of their Yorkshire heritage, owned by Taylors of Harrogate, who also own Betty’s probably the best tea shop in the world (based in Harrogate, a quintessential middel class Yorshire town).

This is a hard one, and it’s very open, but I think it’s worth having a go- increasingly, as consumers segment, brands are going to have to be interesting enough to earn attention, rather than forcing things the other way. Developing the voice will be core planning skill amongst the billions of others.

Deadline for entries is October 15th 11.59pm (GMT). Good luck, Any questions, put it in the comments and I’ll answer as we go along.

And while the judges haven’t been appointed yet, it won’t just be me.

Now and again people offer me free stuff to trial, in the hope I’ll blog about it. I usually say no because I don’t want to be under pressure to write something, and I’d feel bad about cutting something to ribbons if it wasn’t any good. Also, I’m sort of bemused that anyone would think I have some sort of influence.

But I did accept trialling Papershow for a few weeks. Basically, you can connect a pen to your computer by USB and turn it into a whiteboard. I thought I might find it useful in workshops to scribble notes, and I did, but the real value was creating powerpoint slides that were a little more interesting. And it worked a treat.

Like this slide. And in fact, while we’re here, lets talk about this slide a bit.

 

Think about Just Do It – built around self motivation, empowerment and hero worship, this single call to arms, to get off your arse and make things happen has informed twenty years of advertising. I know I’ve got my order of events wrong, but that’s not the point. At some point they needed to crack tennis, re-engage with athletes who thought they’d lost their sporting edge,engage with women etc. The big brand voice enabled them to address their challenges and keep that all important consistent voice.

I’m not going to have a go at Brand Onions and stuff, it should be self explanatory by now, but look those charts again. See that big arrow in the middle? The thing that holds all those little ideas together?

It has an intent, a direction, a goal, and endgame. Nike didn’t know what they would have to do in the next twenty years, just like I don’t know what I’ll be doing in my fifties, I bet you don’t know what you’ll be up to in twenty years time either. That’s the thing about plans, they rarely work out.

In the 80’s the US army used to plan everything to death. Every single eventually was planned for, nothing was left to chance. Problem was, they found that every single engagement has one thing in common – nothing went to plan. And the rigidity of orders and planning meant that no one could use their initiative, adapt to the situation and make it work.

The general even had a saying for it, "No plan survives contact with the enemy". So over a number of years, they adapted their planning, with more emphasis on the end result. Everything is about the intent now, that’s the guide, the thing everyone works to. And being enables to adapt, gets them their.

I think brands are like that – the vision, manifesto is critical, but it shouldn’t handcuff what you need to do for right now, it should enrich it and hold all those ‘right now’ into a much bigger ‘one day’.

Hope that makes sense. Just wanted to share.