NORTHERN PLANNER

I’ve been meaning o post about Sainsburys for ages. I don’t usually do reviews of other people’s work since others do it so much better, but this one’s worth it. It’s great thinking that starts framing a brilliant strategic objective that fed right back  into the commercial hardline. Don’t get me wrong, I really admire stuff like Cadburys but I get a little perturbed at the industry masturbating over stuff like that and overlooking great thinking like this. It deservedly won the APG Grand Prix, but is dismissed by many as it’s not creatively ground breaking. And quite right – it’s there to work bloody hard.

Before I explain a bit more, cast your mind back to the time Sainsburys was on its knees. It was in danger of not just falling behind Tesco and Asda, but the bastard love child of the Morrisons/Safeway merger too. I was doing APG courses at the same, and a couple of tasks were to do with ‘How would you turn around Sainsburys’?

Now lots of wise planners shook their fists at AMV and berated them for not going back to it’s core ‘food hero’ role. That’s what the brand meant to people didn’t it? That’s all you have to do surely?

No! Sainsburys was in a bad way. There was no point pushing shiny foodie ads when they couldn’t even get the right things on the shelves. Sainsburys customers are fiercely low – they WANT Sainsburys to be good. They were being very patient, but any sign that the retailer was taking its eye off getting the fundamentals right would have resulted in them leaving. No one is that forgiving.

Once they has their house in order, it was time to start again. NOW. Once their was a good product to talk about. But just reinforcing the ‘food hero’ positioning wouldn’t be enough. The city was demanding a steep rise in profits. The work would have to be commercial like nothing else.

And so we get to the best piece of thinking I’ve seen in an age. They needed to jumpstart a process that would increase profits by about two and half billion over two years. That’s huge. It’s bigger than the value of most brands you will ever work on. And this is what they did.

They started working out what that really meant. And they found that they didn’t need to attract new customers, they needed to get more out of the ones they had. About £1.50 per visit. That’s not that much, that’s not too scary, that feels do-able. And you know what, they just about did it. The next piece of thinking is really nice, but this piece of pure commercial reasoning takes my breath away. It’s a brilliant re-framing of the objective. It’s a credible goal everyone can work to. Creatives, the Sainsbury board, every member of staff.

Then came the blindingly brilliant statement of the obvious. People sleep shop in supermarkets. They walk around in a bit of a trance. A trance they had to break. And here comes the foodie bit. Back in the 80’s those menu ads were fine – people needed to be taught how to cook good food. Now we have a more more advanced culture. Foodies are always on the lookout for new ideas. They need to feel like they’re constantly moving forward and trying new things. That’s a lot of pressure.

Look at the mountains of un-opened cookbooks in friend’s houses for evidence. Sainsburys, the mid-market food mecca could encourage people spending a little more by giving them failsafe tips. It’s right at the heart of the emotional logic of the brand, it’s so coldly commercial it makes your eyes bleed, and it lends itself to whatever media and promotions you want. And it’s a role the newly acceptable Jamie Oliver could lead with real credibility.

So there you have it. Hat’s off to AMV. Well played for knowing when to unleash the brand, for knowing that brilliant advertising can be brilliant by being useful rather than entertaining, it should be inextricably linked with a commercial objective – and doesn’t need to be a gold to be something we should all admire through gritted, envious teeth.

Okay, after looking things to work on BEFORE the presentation, time to consider what might happen DURING.

It does get a bit mixed up though, since most of how it will go on the day depends on what happens before it.

To start with, it’s paid off when I’ve found out as much about the people I’ll be front of as possible. If it’s a pitch, do everything you can to meet them prior to the big meeting. Like we said, you need to tailor your agenda to that of the people you’ll be talking to. That goes for the style of the slides you’ll put together, the props you might use, the way you dress and even the way you think you might behave in the meeting. You can’t change who you are, but you naturally show different bits of yourself to different groups of people all the time.

Like the way I speak in virtual code with my oldest friends, who will never take me seriously since they know me best….but for some reason the odd person at work thinks I’m grown up sometimes, and even listens to some of the things I say.

I made a fatal error around a year ago in a pitch. We ‘d only seen the marketing director, not her board who would be there. She was bursting with ideas, full of oomph. So I put together something that was set at that frequency. Only to find it totally rubbed up her starched collar bosses who took in nothing we say since we hadn’t done any ‘powerpoint’ – lots of words on lots of slides.

I have a completely different relationship with the Chief Exec of my biggest client next to the marketing director – and behave accordingly.

And you cannot get out of doing the work.

Some people are lucky enough to have bags of confidence and wing it…..but they always risk looking a little ‘slick’. Most of us have to work really hard to have any hope of looking any good up there. Here’s some things to always try and do:

1. Know what you’re going to say inside out. I find writing a leave behind – or writing the actual speech forces me to know it all back to front. That gets me out of doing slides that act as prompts for me, they add to what I’m saying, dramatize it in some way.
2. That’s really important since it allows me to flexible, judge how the meeting’s going, allow for questions, leave stuff out, emphasizes different things. Working harder beforehand makes me more human in the meeting in other words. And that’s really important since no one wants to talked at, they want to interact. The more the whole thing ends up as conversation, the better. There are exceptions of course, some people will sit in silence until the end. But in most cases. the more you can allow for THEM wanting to talk too, the better.
3. Another trick to use is presenting to other people. Poor Mrs NP gets it in the neck with this. She knows more about some of my projects than the rest of the team, since she has to listen to every presentation. If she gets it, since she’s totally fresh, I know I’m on to something. AND, there’s a weird part of out psychology that makes us incredibly empathetic. You may have noticed that sometimes you force people to listen to a really great song – but they don’t like, and it sounds different to you. That’s because you’re listening to it through THEIR ears. A similar thing happens in presentation. You suddenly know if something is too long, if a picture is lame etc. best to know that before the day!!
4. And think hard about any props you might want to use. Just like the slides should complement what you say – can anything else help you drive it home? What stimulus? Film works great of course. I love the story of the Dove pitch, when they convinced the board that women wanted realistic models by showing interviews with their own daughters. When AMV convinced Sainsburys that people ‘sleepshop’ they filmed people totally oblivious to a man stalking the aisles in a gorilla suit. When I wanted to convince a bed retailer that their customers relationships with their bed was actually moments they were AWAKE in it, i showed them their customer’s own sketches of a perfect bed – in every case it was things that happened before you dropped, or after you woke up.

Now all that BEFORE stuff will help make DURING go as well as possible. When you plan that well, you know you’re ready, you naturally become more confident. But there are things you can physically do during too:

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1. Like we said, be a flexible as possible. The more open you are, the better.

2. Be yourself. While you modify your behaviour for different people, you should never be something you’re not. I’m naturally shy, which plays into my favour as I come across as quite genuine. if I fake confidence, I look pompous and stupid.

3. Be passionate. Get interested in what you’re talking about, if people see you really care about what you’re seeing, if you like you believe in it, that’s half the battle.

4. Be curious – the more you’re interested in what THEY think, the better. Always look for feedback, what their side of the story is. Sometimes people ate bursting to talk to you, rather than hear anything you say. Let them – they’ll love you for it. This works for nervous people like me, since I don’t have to say too much. Speaking last is a useful trick – you have some argument, some opinion to work against.

5. Be grateful. Sometimes arrogance works – if you’re that good, you can pull off an attitude that’s about them being lucky to have you there. I’m not, and most are not either. If you look like you’re happy for the chance to be there, you show some humility and deference, the better.

And there are some physical things you can do – largely around removing barriers between you and them. The more you form a unit with them, the better.

• Break the ice. How you do that is up to you- I’m useless at small talk, and I’m not very funny, but if you are you’re lucky. So I start taking the piss out myself as soon as possible – or show something entertaining from popular culture they’ll like that sets up what I’ll talk about.
• Use your eyes. The more eye contact you make, the more you’ll get them to trust you.

• Include everyone. Don’t just talk to people who you consider important – you don’t always get it right. And in some cases, the chief exec’s PA can be the most important person in the room.
• Mirror body language. Invaluable for pulling, so they tell me, but also for this stuff. It puts people at ease. They won’t know why they like you, but they do.
• Talk slow……you always talk faster than it sounds in your head. Slow it down. And speaking slightly slower gives an illusion of gravitas.

Now all this level of preparation should help confidence, and being nervous isn’t all that bad anyway. The rest will come with experience. So every chance you get to practice, I suggest you use it. The most unimportant thing you can find is a good start, or a little chunk of a bigger presentation. The more yo do, the better you get.

I really hope this helps. Good luck!