NORTHERN PLANNER

I can’t get home. The cursed weather has blocked off all my driving routes home. Good excuse to stay late and do some work, but first I’m going to tidy my disgusting desk.

I’ve already posted in Lets See what Happens for the first time in months.

There’s a fascinating debate over at Adliterate asking if blogging is killing planning or not. It’s developing into a facts/logic V ideas and intuition debate.

From my point of view, I like planning blogs because:

a) Most good planning blogs don’t just talk about planning, which makes it a great source for finding thoughts to store for a rainy day.

b) Even better, l like the way good ideas get better and bad ideas get smoked out, a kind of blog Darwinism I suppose. Lots of new thinking is put out there, good ideas get talked about, commented on, developed and improved. The not so good either gets ignored or crumbles under the sheer weight of ananysis is gets. I think this helps us all to experiment, try new stuff and learn from each other. I for one get very lonely in a one man department.

Apart from calling me cool, in her comments on the John Steel post Carol wondered if John Steel began to explain what planning really is, and if it’s at odds with the realities of where some of us work:

"Do YOU think he explained what ‘account planning’ is? With all this talk of not being stuck in a professional evironment, well, wouldn’t that make an employer (and a client) a bit nervous? I’ve got friends who are actually clocking on.

Can you imagine it? "From 10:45 to 12:30 I did some account planning". I think we do it 24/7, funnest job in the world."

For what it’s worth, I think he did. He showed planning as stimulating the best ideas that will solve the business challenge. Information is crucial, but that’s nothing without the intuituion that helps start looking in the right place, and using what you find correctly. That needs freedom to look and think in the first place.

Carole took this picture last time we met in London. She thinks I look cool in it. Assume she means not hot since no one has ever said I look cool in the groovy sense before (including Her Indoors come to think of it). At least the forehead isn’t too shiny in this one. 

This evening’s Northern Planning get together has been cancelled thanks to the stormy weather buggering up all forms of transport. We’ll do it in a couple of weeks or so and let everyone know. I’d polished my bald head specially too.

Beeker’s done a far better representation of last night than I. I’ll go back to nonsense about tea and swimming.

Another reason all that training was worth it. Did all 195 steps, not even out of breath.

Only thing I had time for last night, I just wanted to feel that overwhelming rush of humanity you only get in London (if you live in England).

By the way, it’s so much milder down there. People drinking coffee outside, it’s freezing up here.

So I did a flying visit to London to see John Steel’s talk on pitching. While I didn’t have time to catch up with some people while I was down there, I was hoping to bump into some familiar faces at the event. Carol was one, but she couldn’t make it. So for her and anyone else that couldn’t be there, here’s what happened. Sorry if it’s been post rationalised into my blinkered view of the world – I’ll be interested to see what others think. Incidentally, I wonder who was there that I ‘know’ as a blogger?

First of all, I was expecting more on actual pitches and less on working practices, although much of what he said was useful and made sense. He talked a lot about good powerpoint, which most people would know (wouldn’t they) – specifically, less slides, more visual, use as props, not script.

By the way, he’s a terrible name dropper, but maybe if you’re working peers are Martin Sorrel, Andy Berlin and Jeff Goodbye, I suppose hat’s unavoidable.

He recycled much of what was in ‘Truth Lies and Advertising’, but it was great hearing. Like the way the Porsche work would never have happened with normal work practices, or creative ways of doing research. He also used blinding good anecdotes.

Anyway:

Working environment:

1. A professional working environment gets in the way of good ideas. If you spend too much time in the same rooms, following fixed process, you do not allow yourself the intuition needed to generate really good ideas.
2. Being forced to follow straight, logical process can lead you to miss stuff. You spend more time justifying what you’re doing and less time allowing the brain time to breathe.
3. Keep an agency scrapbook. Departments should get into the habit of collecting stuff – and the more stuff that isn’t directly related to the business they’re in the better.  Images, experiences, thoughts, they’ll all come in handy one day. All it needs is the right problem and someone to make the connection.
4. Agencies suffer from ‘attention deficit trait’. If you constantly expect to be interrupted, it affects the brain’s performance as much as smoking two joints. People work better in environments where they know they’ll be getting on without disturbance.
5. Involve everyone at the start of a project – if our work is about ideas, get ideas people involved at the beginning.

Pitching

1. Remember to say no! If you don’t think you have a chance of winning, don’t pitch forget pride. If you don’t think their culture and yours match, don’t pitch – you will lose because they don’t like you, or you’ll get fired when they realise what you’re like.
2. Try and avoid pitching in the first place. Try and work on small project at cost to see if you get on and show your skills in action.
3. The best new business tool is great work on existing clients. The best way to get on pitch lists isn’t professional adultery’ as he called new biz people, you only need that if you haven’t got any good work from existing clients that people are talking about.
4. Allocate small groups to pitches. Make sure they will have the time and give them responsibility – and what the boundaries are. Meet as often as you can. Not only can you help each other, you’ll form a siege mentality, which will show as a close knit team come presentation time.
5. Work hard at getting an idea first. Don’t flit around doing any presentation stuff, or creative or applications until you’re all happy with a direction. Doing the work for it is easy if you’ve all bought into the thoughts. As you then develop it and see it work, you believe it that much more –and that conviction rubs off.
6. Look like you all get on! The above should ensure this, but handpick team members for what they can do, and how they add to the dynamics of the team.
7. Rehearse! Some will say they like to look spontaneous, but you just look disorganised. If you rehearse enough, it looks that much more natural – you’ve time to talk instead of reading from a script. It becomes a two way conversation, not talking at people.
8. Present what you think is right – if you show what you think people want to see, they’ll sense you don’t believe in it and you’ll lose anyway.
9. Powerpoint slides should always be props for what you are saying. Write as little as possible – detail can be in the leave behind.
10. Be yourselves, but find a way to get to know the people you’ll be pitching to. There will be different way to emphasise something that will connect better.
11. If you haven’t much time, lock yourselves in room, agree what you think is the right thing to do and get on with it. Your first thoughts are usually pretty good, it’s up to the planner to prove them wrong, or find something better. It’s up to everyone to improve them as they go along.

This article from The Independent discusses the UK’s increasing love for fine foods and throws up some interesting stuff:

The growth of  retailer premium private label food ALONGSIDE organic and fairtrade maybe shows how much ethical buying is status as much as morality.

Intersting to see that M&S may well lose out on two fronts – from competition from the supermarkest AND cooking from scratch (largely thanks to celebrity chefs).

By the way, I love Sainsbury’s ‘Try something new today’. Rousing customers out of ‘sleepshopping’ uses a great insight, but it’s the way the idea can be executed down a mundane product and price ad that I you see how well it works.

Of course Sainsbury’s returning to a ‘real food hero’ positioning was obvious, but few appreciate that doing it any earlier would have been a mistake. They had to sort out distribution first. I used to work on another supermarket and we all knew that Sainsbury’s shoppers WANT Sainsnburys to do well. They love it there and feel closer to it than customers of any other supermarket. Simply making sure the shelves were stacked properly would win old customers back – not sorting this would just piss them off again.

The genius of the current strategy is that encourages current customers to to buy more, and possibly upgrade, while giving new customers a reason to visit, forage and explore. Very, very clever.