NORTHERN PLANNER

CONFUSED AS YOU ARE

recent posts

about

  • Facing genius

    Since I get impatient with something when it’s not right it’s no wonder I’ve always been interested in John Mcenroe. He was a relentless perfectionist and incredibly hard on himself.

    Mcenroe_john4

    If someone hit a forehand past him, you wouldn’t see him acknowledging the good shot, immediately he’d be berating himself for some mistake that ALLOWED the other player to make that shot. However, if he hit his very best swinging serve shooting wide of the ad court, and Bjorn Borg smacked a backhand winner off it, you wouldn’t see the same reaction. He’d given his best, someone was just better. He’d work out how to stop it happening again.

    That’s what happened after that tumultuous 1980 Wimbledon final. He gave everything and still lost. In the end, Borg was just too much. So he went away to work on his game. And the US Open final that year was the real pivotal moment in that great rivalry. Borg was in the lead, serving to go up 2 sets to 0, looking very comfortable. Then it all changed.

    The first two points saw Mcenroe hit two quite wonderful shots. He won the first with a pinpoint topspin lob. The second with a perfect backhand pass. Then he did exactly the same for the the final two; topspin lob, backhand pass. Like some sort of real life instant replay.It was a quite outrageous flash of genius. Borg peered at his young antagonist from across the court in stunned disbelief. And the whole match changed right there.

    It takes a rare streak of unstoppable genius to pull off something like that. Borg had it, and to see it replayed back to him was too much to take. He froze. And never recovered. He lost the match, and retired a year later. He just didn’t have the will to face genius like that.

    It’s terrifying being up against something like that. You’re at your very best, you simply cannot do any better, yet someone is taking everything you’ve got and push back even harder. Some people just have a gear that shouldn’t exist.

    It’s also amazing when you’re the one doing the pushing, when you reach inside yourself and find a bit more.

    What do you do when you’re faced with that? Do you shrug your shoulders, content with second? Do you let is dismantle your confidence and give up like Borg? Or do you relish the chance to get even better, and work harder than ever before to make sure that next time, it’s you who has that little bit extra?

  • Using research and information to write a great creative brief

    Next up in the planning basics stuff in this element of using research. The first bit of the so called Planning Cycle is developing the strategy the brief will summarise. This isn’t a post about brief writing, just how to use information to help you go about it.

    It’s the most research and information intensive part ………and what you should be aiming to do is STIMULATE. Not to mention start well. If you start badly, it’s hard to pull it back.

    100_2518

    There are two clear bits to this:

    Understand the task. Assuming you have a client brief, make sure your brief will address the business objectives they’ve given you.

    Define WHO are you looking to influence. And in what way you seek to influence them. That means using the hard information you’ve acquired to define exactly what the creative work needs to achieve. What’s the REAL problem you’re solving? Like Skoda saying to you their cars are considered, but never actually bought enough……..and you finding that people need to know more about why the cars are good, rather than just respecting the badge.

    Now this isn’t enough for great work. It will ensure it’s appropriate, but it may be predictable, uninteresting and simply not engaging. That’s why you need to do the second bit:

    Identify an imaginative strategy to meet the the task you’ve defined.

    What I really mean is using whatever information you’ve uncovered and turning them into useful insights or perspectives that will enable a creative team to develop some great ideas. Some great thinking that you can prove will achieve your goals. This is the magic bit where you turn pure information into usable insight. Like Sainsburys knowing that people see them as food heroes, and knowing that people walk around their store buying the same stuff every week……and making the leap that they can help their foodie customers ‘try something new today’.

    Key bits will include:

    • news and info on trends.
    • What’s happening in the market
    • Specific, relevant stuff on competitors
    • What you know about the audience (including who they are) that will help you solve the problem – what behavior, opinions or lack of knowledge you want to address.
    • Specific behavioral objectives……gain new category entrants, steal customers, increase loyalty, increase frequency of purchase, stop losses, new type of customer, more of the same, short term v long term.
    • Sector values, brand imagery.
    • The overall attitudinal task…..raise awareness (who with?) salience (with who?), stimulate consideration, change opinions.
    • Use previous tracking to show how the audience has responded to work that ran previously – what’s worked, what hasn’t.
    • What are consumer expectations………you may want to CONFOUND them, not just meet them by the way.

    First of all, don’t just put everything in! Put in what’s relevant and useful……..and in creative’s language, not yours! But in any case, you should be getting towards a clear creative task. You may be unsure, which means you may want to brainstorm with some creatives…..if so, use a bullet hard understanding of both the business and creative objectives as a start for developing strategic ideas. But you may well want to do some strategy development research.

    This will usually be because you can see a number of potential directions, and you need help to choose. Or it may just be that you need to prove to someone…client, creativesm suits, that this is clearly the way to go.

    But by the time you write the brief, you should have confidence that:

    1. The brief addresses the real needs of your brand in the context of the market place.
    2. You really know WHO you’re trying to reach.
    3. That you’re seeking to tell them something you know is relevant and motivating.
    4. You know what will deliver it in way they’ll engage with….that’s true to the brand.

    It’s hard. But the start of it is great information. Most find that starting with qual to play delve into the issues first, and then proving it with quant works in most cases. But treat each project on it’s merit. And strategy development research needs to be quick and probing, so that really lends itself to qual.

    Next up, using research to help, not hinder creative development.

  • Another recipe

    There’s nothing wrong with bolognese – or should I say, GOOD bolognese. It’s popular because it’s simple, cheap and very tasty. What’s not to like?

    Now this recipe is quick version that tastes utterly slow. Another time, we’ll do a brilliant, slow cooked meat sauce that’s the basis for chilli, mousakka and even a left – field version meatballs (meatballs,must do them). Anyway…….

    You need:

    450 – 500g good, lean beef mince

    A packet of powdered minestrone soup (one of the few times you’ll EVER see a packet on these pages

    Decent sized punnet of mushrooms, chopped

    1 clove of fresh garlic finely chopped

    tube tomato puree

    1 medium sized onion finely chopped

    1 beef stock cube (Oxo is fine)

    Sherry

    Gently fry the onion’s and garlic in a decent sized pan. When the onion has gone translucent, put in the mince. Break it up as much as you can and fold it into the onion. Turn the heat up a bit and keep stirring until the mince has all browned. Crumble the stock cube in and stir it in.

    Then pour in a wine glass of sherry, bring it to the boil. Then pour in the packet of soup. Add just enough water to NEARLY cover the meat, squeeze in the puree and quickly bring to to the boil.

    That’s it. Just bring the heat right down a bit and simmer for 2 minutes. You’ll get a thick, sweet, herby sauce with a flavour that tastes like you’ve spent hours over it. You may want to add some fresh oregano, but it will have plenty of herbs in already.

    Now you don’t need me to tell you how to do pasta, but whatever you choose – spaghetti, penne etc, once you’ve drained the pasta, put in back into the pan, put just a small spoonful of sauce into it and put on the hob on high heat with a knob of butter. Stir it all like a madman. These means the pasta is infused with the sauce, not merely coated. In fact that goes for any pasta dish.

  • The Planning Cycle – where research fits in

    Righto, first part of keeping my promises on the basics stuff.

    Planning_cycle

    This lovely little chart is the planning cycle. You may have seen it before, you may have not, but it’s useful to have a reminder of the basic process.Notice it’s a continuous one. That’s what I both love and hate about this job, your work is quite literally never done.

    While it’s continual, it’s useful to think of it as four distinct phases. Depending on your agency culture, client culture, budgets and indeed, the type of planner you want to be, you may use research in all of these, but you need to carry out these in some form in any case. Notice that the creative briefing is by no means the end.

    It’s your responsibility to:

    1. Define the task – and identify a strategy that will meet that task
    2. Ensure the creative ideas that arise from that strategy meet that task
    3. Make sure the executions do justice for the idea – will the work do what we want it to do?
    4. Evaluate if we have succeeded in our task, and what the next move should be

    And that’s pretty much it. Those are the four basic roles. They are not easy, they are not simple, but that’s what they are.

    We will cover these in more detail in subsequent posts. But basically, you can see the roles that research will have at each stage.

    That’s it. But sometimes it’s good to just begin at the beginning. More detail on each stage to follow….

  • To do list

    On a more constructive note than the last post, it’s time to think about getting back to more planning basics. I’m promising this on the blog to make sure I actually have to do it….

    In the next few weeks, I’m  going to get through as much about research as I can, then we’ll move on to other stuff.  It will go something like this…………

    100_1974

    Using research:

    1. The planning cycle -and where research and information fit in.
    2. Using research and info to help you write effective creative briefs.
    3. Using research to to HELP, not hinder creative development.
    4. Monitoring advertising effect

    Then we’ll go into specific tips on methodology:

    1. Using research already in existence -desk research, TGI, retail and consumer audits.
    2. Thoughts on quant sampling.
    3. Qual or quant? How to decide.
    4. Finding and choosing research agencies.
    5. How research agencies work – and your respective roles.
    6. Some pointers on making sense of quant research results.
    7. Moderating focus groups
    8. Using qual in creative development
    9. Depths and ethnographic work

    Then, after all that:

    1. How to brief for integrated campaigns.
    2. Writing great creative briefs
    3. Your role in the creative process
    4. Writing presentations
    5. Brainstorming

    That’s a lot to get through, but I think it’s valuable for poor buggers like me that either went on an APG course (and don’t forget much of this is gleanings from that stuff) or had to use the force. It’s designed to be basic starts, do not expect much else.

  • I get no better

    Yes, clumsy-itis strikes again. I’ve just spilt hot tea all over my desk. What an idiot.

    100_1739

  • More economic geekery

    As I’ve mentioned before that I have more than a passing interest in economics it won’t come as a surprise that I’ve enjoyed ‘Why most things fail’ by Steve Ormerod.

    Amongst other things he extends the idea that most of the theory you get in economic, and dare I say, marketing books, bears little relation to reality. A big theme is how most ventures are doomed to failure thanks to the impossibility if making good decisions in the face of bewildering variables. Life is just too complex.

    This where I want to pick up on ‘Game theory’, but first I need to begin at the beginning. Most books will tell you that markets are perfect mechanisms for setting prices thanks to demand and supply. If something is scarce, if lots of people want it, the price will be high. But while it’s true to a point, it’s just too flawed for proper business decisions. Don’t believe me? Take a look at Ebay.

    Ebay

    Pick a popular item, something that sells every day. Look at the selling price. How come it’s never the same? All those variables – most acutely irrational human behaviour. We still do not know exactly how markets work. Seriously.

    Tesco

    Take supermarkets. They play an elaborate game on two fronts. First, they’re facing off against consumers ina daily game of balancing what people want to pay and what the supermarket wants to charge. Setting the price for own brand baked beans isn’t as simple as how much of it is about, it’s also about fluctuating disposable income, food fashion, culture in general, weather, debt and bills.

    Then there’s the other game with competitors. How each prices their stuff affects the other. They don’t KNOW how much the other will charge, they have to assume. It’s a constant jostling for position, making you’re move while subject to imperfect knowledge of what the opponent will do. This is ‘Game theory’ – the discipline of multiple players making decisions to maximise their own returns, in the face of imperfect knowledge of what the opponents can, or will do next. There’s a price war starting right now between Tesco and Asda in the UK. Despite what they may say, neither of them really know how it will end.

    It’s a truism of human bahaviour. The Bay of Pigs was a classic example of brinkmanship, as was the whole Cold War.

    Kennedy2506flag

    It’s a game of chess, where a good deal of your strategy has to take into account what the other will do. Mathematicians, economists and other great thinkers have spent decades trying to figure out solututions to the simplest scanarios. And they just can’t do it. Even the biggest computers in the world can only work out all possible moves for the first few moves in chess, after that it just get’s too complex.

    No one truly knows a perfect way to set price in market, not just because of complexity, it’s also down to the fact that humans are simply not rational. You have the best ideas and people just won’t behave.

    For planners and marketers………if you can’t even fix a price perfectly –  since you can’t predict what people will do next –  imagine trying to map a market, or doing research or, gulp, pre-testing. You need to have a good idea that brand communication will work, but you cannot know for sure, and the more you rely on people rationally doing what the data predicts they’ll do, the more likely things will go horribly wrong.

    Positioning can never be an exact science, nor can developing work for a specific, quantifiable objective……. it’s too complex and people are, well, people. That may sound like bad news but I find it quite liberating.

    Trying to appeal to rational beings is doomed, information doesn’t work by itself, but all the economic geekery suggests to that relying on data to predict the future is very, very dangerous.

    Of course you should sort out empirically what others in the market are, but that should be no more than a guide, as should or telling people what the data thinks they want to hear. You simply cannot predict how people will behave to that level of perfection.

    Never forget what the market seems to be telling you, but in the end, it’s the ideas that transcend TGI’s and mapping stuff that matter don’t you think?

  • Progress report

    It’s less than a month until the ‘swim a mile in the sea while not looking too stupid next to your nephews’ challenge and it’s going sort of OK, despite the fact it’s distance swimming, which is not something my body likes doing.

    Goggle

    The first few weeks were not easy. My body loves doing a hard pace for a medium-ish distance, it’s not used to going for stupidly long distances. So it’s being asked to go well out of it’s comfort zone four or five times a week.

    At first I kept hitting a wall (metaphorically). The pain gave way to numbness and I lost rhythm, leaving me thrashing around for a third of each session. Some of that was muscles crying, "Stop". Some was the need for more ‘feel’, but most of it was technique.

    For years I’ve been used to quick breathing, meaning my head doesn’t stay long out the water to gulp down oxygen. But longer distances mean you have to take in a lot more air, and taking longer to breathe unbalanced my stroke. You can get away with little imperfections when you’re feeling strong, but when you get tired, they start to magnify into real problems. An adjustment to the head position and coming through with the right arm a bit deeper seems to have sorted it out. It’s coming together.

    Then yesterday I did 60 lengths in about 20 minutes. That’s about the distance of the race and the target time. The pool is not the same as the sea, but it’s encouraging. And it felt good, really good. The stroke was silky smooth, it was nice sort of pain that tells you the body’s working, but there’s more to come. A lot more.

    That’s the thing about training for something. You need to get a certain level first before you can start to REALLY train. That’s where I seem to be now. I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer to stay in bed on the odd morning, I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt still, but that’s the fun. It’s not really worth it if you don’t have to try.

    On another note, it’s interesting watching the body adjust. I’m getting noticeably lankier and leaner, the shoulders are growing out of proportion with the rest of my body. No webbed feet yet, but give it time.

  • Ten things I can do without at the moment

    Every silver lining has a cloud…..

    Ten

    1. Insomnia
    2. Cursed Big Brother
    3. The constant rain
    4. The annoying music you get on the Sky TV guide
    5. HGV’s overtaking each other
    6. Spam emails offering to make me thin or hard
    7. Badly made tea. In the pot I tell you!
    8. IT people who think it’s MY job to support THEM
    9. Worrying nosebleeds
    10. Slow swimmers in my lane

  • 10 things I can’t do without at the moment

    1. Why Most Things Fail by Paul Ormerod.
    2. The daily re-runs of the X-Files on UK Living (or the big conspiracy episodes at least). God it was good.
    3. Mozzarella in salad.
    4. Heroes coming to BBC2 (missed the start on Sci Fi channel and had to wait).
    5. Poached eggs on toast at weekends.
    6. Jenny Yeardley. Old friend I’m working with for the first time in about 5 years.
    7. Howies ‘slouch’ trousers that have just reached that lovely ‘worn in’ point.
    8. Tea made in the pot (of course).
    9. My mobile phone (I didn’t have it for 5 days, it was chaos).
    10. Mrs NP (ever).