NORTHERN PLANNER

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  • The things they never teach you number one- be more like waiter and less like a rockstar

    There are some things you are formally educated on when you join an agency.  Like most clients expecting a clear role for communications, or the framework of issue/insight/thought.

    Then there are more informal and craft rules you mostly get taught. For example, make the creative briefing as inspirational and focused as you can, because creatives always have briefs they'll put everything into… and briefs they'll just get out off their desks.

    But there are things few really tell you, that you have to learn yourself, usually the hard way.

    Much of that is about the work you do, even more is about how you do it.

    Let's start with a 'how you do it' one. The best strategy types are like waiters, or like Satan.

    We do our best work when people forget we exist.

    It's a hard lesson to learn, but we rarely make anything. We create the framework for others to. The launchpad and the little nudges for the best, most effective work.

    There's nothing more annoying than a waiter, or shop assistant who marks your every move, or asks if you need any help when you clearly don't.

    Just as them not being there when you DO want them is equally frustrating.

    The best feedback I ever got from a client was when they said, "We're not quite sure what he does, but when he's involved it's all easier and the things we get are just better". 

    The worst feedback when I was a lot younger was, "Stop trying to do my job". 

    Which means a big part of how you go about your day to day is losing the ego and being really kind and generous with your thinking. 

    Because suits. creatives, media planners and whatever all get judged on the quality of their work and naturally need kudos for stuff that does well. If they get a sniff that you'll steal some credit (even if an idea is yours) they'll do everything they can to do the opposite.

    Strategy types ultimately get judged on the quality of other people's work, the creative output, the media plan, if the work get bought without too much pain and suffering.

    For example, the dark art of the imperfect creative brief (more on that another time)

    The trick is strike the balance between appearing invisible and the people who matter knowing what you contribute. 

    Of course, there are moments to own and shine. The trends presentation, the comm planning day, but still, it's amazing what happens when you approach it as time to energise others, rather than a chance to look good. 

    This also applies to clients. Don't let anyone tell you you're the 'brains of the operation'. Especially clients – clients are the brains of the operation. Our natural response to smart arses is either to ignore them, or compete with them. Another time we'll go into the sneaky ways of making people feel it was their thinking all along.

  • How you see the world is irrelevant. How your target sees the world is critical

    I did some research with British young folks a while back.

    I went in wanting to find out how miserable they all were with older generations messing things up, leaving them with zero hours contracts, university fees, uncertainty and whatnot.

    Of course they obliterated my misconceptions, by communicating how sorry they felt for people my age. How rubbish it all must have been with no internet, four TV channels, nothing on demand and Thatcher (they didn't mention Thatcher but in my head they did). 

    Reminds of a pretty universal truth that every generation (since the 1950s anyway) thinks it's special and rejects whatever came before.

    And people look at their heyday with rose tinted spectacles. 

    You know, everything was brilliant in the 1970s when Star Wars came out and we played out on rally choppers. Despite the fact there was nothing on TV on Sunday, everything was beige and The Smiths hadn't formed yet.

    Or everything was better before the internet in agencies when it was simple and clients loved creativity and had big budgets. Except 12 hour days were the norm, everyone had to wear suits and bullying was tolerated – or in some creative quarters encouraged. 

    I was reminded by this campaign, I really like it ..

     

    ..because it embraces life as it looks for THEM, not old grumpy folks like me. 

    Yep, one of the tricks when thinking about a 'target audience' is not to look at their lives from your frame of reference.

    Look at it from their point of view. 

    It's rarely the same. 

     

  • Nobody is perfect, so why try and make marketing flawless?

    So I was given a Golden Bungle for stealing a client's phone.

    Golden bungle

    Accidentally of course, hers looked exactly like mine.

    She saw the funny side (I think). 

    This proves I'm not perfect, but this is mostly a good thing.

    Recent data shows people like brands to embrace imperfection a little bit more these days.

    I'd argue they always did, it's why Jennifer Lawrence falling over and then being so human in her speech and interviews was so powerful.

     

     

    The pratfall effect is really powerful. Tests have shown that you're more likeable if you spill coffee over yourself. I can't say if I'm likeable or not, but I can say a workshop that started with very blank  faces when I kicked off the day, instantly transformed when I spilled a whole cup of coffee on myself. By accident.

    I really does work when you put a little error into your presentation for folks to correct. 

    Of course, feckless as I am, you'd expect me to be the most popular person in the world. This clearly is not the case.

    But perfection is boring and exhausting. 

    Goop

    Emotion trumps perfection

     

     

    Humanity beats logic

     

    I really love in meetings with other London of global based agencies how easy it is to stand out by  talking like a real person. Or translating their jargon into normal language. 

    Obviously the typos etc in my posts are all intentional……….

  • Here’s to the Colonel

     

    I really like all this new KFC stuff.

    Obviously it's great to watch and funny. But it's also an idea that means you talk about as much product as you like, rather than getting all sniffy about product features and benefits.

    It's an idea that works as a 2 second GIF, as ideas have to these days.

    I think the real lesson is looking at how people relate to you already. Let's be honest, everyone knows the Colonel. What they've done brilliantly, is found new ways to use him (refresh memory structures as some would say).

    Sometimes the obvious is great, as long as you use it in a way that maybe isn't. 

    Compare this to the way the Meerkat in the UK is looking so, so tired. 

     

  • This book should be interesting. Or why smartphone are sexist

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    I haven't read this yet, I've got it on pre-order but it looks interesting. 

    You can't move for female empowerment focused campaigns right now. 

    From a cultural perspective, this has to be a good thing.

    From a brand perspective, you don't want your brand to look like it's jumping on the bandwagon, however good your intentions (let's be honest, the intentions are rarely altruistic). 

    So it's essential to find a new angle. I love how this book might show how inequality is deeply hidden in the fabric of life and culture. Because it has mostly been designed by men. 

    Apparently, Google's speech recognition software is 70% more likely to respond to men.

    Smartphones are designed for the hands of a man, not the smaller hands of a woman.

    There's anecdotal evidence that fitness monitors miss steps made when pushing a pram. 

    Also, most of it is built from data, that a reviewer describes as 'being used as like a laser'.

    Why should you care? Data doesn't have to be a pain in the arse, or a barrier. If used intelligently, if you know how and where to look, it can build a new perspective even on subjects that are getting a bit crowded. 

     

     

  • What Planes and Coca Cola tell us about the dangers of data without wisdom,

    Someone reminded me today of the Abraham Wald story. 

    If you can't be bothered to click the link, he was a World War 2 statistician who helped improve the armour on planes to protect against enemy bullets. 

    His major contribution was to tell everyone they were looking at it the wrong way.

    They were putting more armour on the spots where planes, that made it home from battle, had the most bullet holes.

    The right answer was to put more armour where there were NO bullet holes – because you had to assume the planes that didn't make it home got shot somewhere else.

    There's some obvious learnings here when it comes to research about researching the whole sample.

    But it also shows us that data is a waste of time if you don't have the skill to analyse it properly, and sometimes work out what it isn't telling you.

    Sometimes we forget that planners were invented to make sense of research, because research can sometimes be very dangerous in the hands of researchers.

    Step forward New Coke. Where, decades ago, they changed the Coke recipe to be sweeter, more like Pepsi. But they tested the new recipe on one sip, when many sips, which is how people actually drink, made the sweetness too cloying.

    Or that's one side of the story. The other is that even getting the 'functional' research methodology right can be flawed, as the real reason everyone kicked off about New Coke, forcing Coca Cola to change the recipe back, costing millions, is that most of our relationship with brands isn't built on function.

    It's built on belief and not having to think about it. 

    They kicked off about New Coke because we don't like change.

    But then sometimes we do, we just don't know we do. 

    There's the cliche that Henry Ford telling us that if he asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.

    There's the way Apple made the Ipod when MP3 players weren't getting much traction, because he realised it just needed to be simple and nice to use one.

    There's the fact that the data from social media tends to contradict the data from search.

     

    Why Should you Care?

    It's easy to ignore data, or leave it to the data scientists. But there's gold in this stuff if you know how to look.

    Just as it's unfashionable to see any use in focus groups, but loads of clients still use them, and believe what people tell them, or even worse, believe the analysis of their moderators. 

    Research doesn't make intelligent decisions for you, it helps you make more intelligent decisions. 

    Planners, strategists or detectives? Maybe a bit of both. 

  • Not everyone sees what we see

    I was interested in what my better half would think about the Gillette masculinity work.

     

    This stuff hits a nerve with us, because our beloved nine year son is already trying to figure out his place in a world where the messages he's beginning to take in are at best, well, mixed.

    Her response was brutal.

    "What Gillette ad?"

    The Gillette ad everyone was getting worked up about if they worked in marketing. That most people didn't notice, or have forgotten. 

     

  • Read Rob’s post on employers that take you apart one put down at a time

    Rob has something to say about organisations and managers that systematically knock people down rather than build them up.

    You should read it. 

    Many of us have been there and survived to tell the tale, but the scars can run deep.

     

  • The power of context

    The media folks will tell you that planning media to show up in context can be up to 30% more effective.

    As with most insight shared my media agencies, this shouldn't come as a surprise. 

    Ice cream sales go up when it's hot.

    Match making sites get more traffic closer to the weekend.

    Fitness brands do well to focus spend around New Years Resolutions. 

    But this only goes so far.

    Because there are much richer deeper patterns to uncover.

    And you get loads of them from this book. 

    When

    So much rich insight.

    Different ways to gain relevance with different lifestages. For example, older people are mentally running out of time and getting out a mental red pen and crossing out anything in life that is a waste of their time. 

    Then there's the  fact most of what we really like culturally is decided in our twenties.

    Don't drink your first caffeine drink until an hour and a half after you've woken up (it messes with cortisol production, the body's way of waking us up naturally). 

    Talking a five minute break every hour boosts productivity, it's even better if you move.

    It takes 66 days on average to break, or build a new habit, yet most abstinence crazes like Dry January are one month, precisely half of the time it takes for lasting change.

    We remember the end of things more powerfully than any other point. Apart from the beginning. How much do you make sure an new employee has a perfect first day? It will influence so much of how the rest of their time with you will go. 

    Conversely, the chocolate we enjoy the most is the last one in the box, or the packet. 

     

    Plan for shifts in the calendar or the day. Connecting people on the way home from work is really effective, but so is the transition from Winter to Spring. 

    Coming to 'transitions' matchmaking sites get disproportionate sign ups from people with '9' in their age. 29, 29, 46 etc. Because the move from one decade to another makes us evaluate our lives and, I guess, our love lives. 

    And on it goes. 

    Once upon a time, it was TV, print, press, outdoor or PR. Now you can reach people anytime anywhere, any place.

    Most folks squander this by bludgeoning them with crap messaging not caring what they're really interested in. Even worse, they re-target them as if once wasn't enough. Sometimes, a sale isn't enough, they'll re-target you with what you've just bought.

    When we can now add value to what people are caring about by the ad synching what folks are doing and what they care about at that moment.

    But it can be so much better, synching with what they care about, the ebbs and flows of the year and even the ebbs and flows or age, new beginnings and even endings.

     

     

     

  • Life is complicated, so why over simplify marketing?

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    I've always been a big believer in the importance of real insight fueling work. It's not that fashionable any more, but thankfully some people still agree. 

    To be clear, I don't mean 'consumer insight', you know, the stating of the obvious dressed up as revelation, the kind of thing that comes out of focus groups usually.

    Although I had a good catch up with an old friend/workmate who reminded me that groups can be great if you plan the right stimulus, pre-tasks and are realistic enough to know you'll get group think.

    Because, as we're admitting more and more, the role of much of brand communication is perceived popularity, looking like you are talked about and the obvious choice. So it kind of makes sense to understand what people naturally discuss around a subject.

    Anyway, I digress.

    My own view is that great brands find a way to be relevant and add to tensions and ripples in real life that are already there. You'll notice I didn't say culture, because I don't think what we do is that grand. Also, it gives folks in agencies and client companies the excuse to just look at what's happening in Clerkenwell, or sponsor some football and pretend it matters. 

    I mean getting into what people really think about and relate to everyday.

    If you haven't seen 'An Uncivil War' then you should. On the surface, it's a film about how the two campaigns in the Brexit vote operated. Really, it's a masterclass in 'designing for a wider context' as some marketing buffoons would call it. Real people would say, find a way to be relevant to what lots of people really care about. In this case, that wasn't Europe, immigration or anything else. It was a, mostly not articulated, feeling that you had no control in your own life, and being left behind by an amorphous elite doing very well out of life. 

    You can get insight like that from primary research, but only if you train yourself to look at the themes and the motivations behind what people are saying. 

    You can also get it through looking at the data – people tell the truth to Google even if they lie to their best friends, usually in direct contradiction to what they project in social media.

    So if you're just mining social data for insight, or just mining Google, you're only seeing part of the picture.

    Like today's physicists who still can't account for most of what makes up the universe. 

    But you can get it from constantly building a scrapbook, mentally at least, of reference. 

    Which brings me to this book   once more.

    Of course, it's only one way of looking at things, but it's a treasure trove of real life tensions in how the UK (and some of the US) lives. The gap between the narratives that drive how we live, how we judge ourselves…. and what actually make us happy.

    There's lots in here I'll use in work at some point, but it's only one of many, many reference points that get into real, complicated, fascinating life. If only we have the curiosity to look for them.

    Of course, there is going out and actually meeting real people too, you'll get far more from observing real people in the environment you're aiming to influence. Just as you'll learn nothing from analysing Lions in a cage.

    As I've said before, go to the jungle, not the zoo. 

    But also, master the art of looking sideways at stuff. If something doesn't make sense, or it seems contradictory, there is competitive advantage in embracing it, rather than ignoring it because it's not simple enough.

    Real life is complex. To hope to find relevance, ignore this at your peril.