Over at Plannerliness they’ve found an article on ethnography. It’s the practice of using anthropology to find the gaps in people’s lives – and then filling them. Another great example of using research to say something new, instead of simply playing back what an audience already knows. You can read the full article here.
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Here’s a link to Oxy’s UK website (kids’ acne products). There a great co-creation idea where they show you their ad, and asks if you can do better. If you enter your idea, there’s a laptop to be won. They’ve realised that young people think grown ups don’t get them, so they have an advisor team of young ‘Oxyologists’;because "Oxy is too old to know what young people really want". Clear positioning, great idea. Shame they still have to include the old ‘confidence’ cliches too.
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I hate Mondays. They start slowly for me and rev up as the day goes on. Thanks to a badly argued article in this month’s Adline, today is different.
If you work in a UK agency outside of London you’ll have heard of Adline. If you don’t, it’s the trade magazine for agencies that never get in Campaign Magazine because they’re outside London.
There was an article this month on ‘integration’. Sue Little of McCan Erickson was describing it as a ‘new trend’. Hello? We’re way past this are we not? There I thought agency folk had ‘got the integration thing’ ages ago. I just assumed they were busy worrying about co-creation, branded content and the whole ‘Is TV dying?’ thing.
Outside of London, clients tend to be wee bit smaller and expect you to do more than just one thing as a matter of course, so what’s the big deal. Shouldn’t this be second nature now?
The bit that really got me going was the way she talked about encouraging specialists to understand other disciplines more. Why?
If someone lives and breathes direct, PR or SEO, why dilute their skills? If we end up with a world of generalists, we’ll be okay at lots of stuff and great at nothing. What matters is someone, not everyone, at the core to make sure that the briefs the specialists get works as part of a wider whole. I think I’m talking about planners.
Sure, they’ll be specialist planners still; advertising planners, DM planners and stuff, but more and more, planners will be the generalists at the heart of campaign planning. If people like Sue Little don’t cotton on to this soon, there will be no need to worry about re-training specialists, clients will have their own in-house planning function after giving up waiting for agencies to sort themselves out.
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Apparently the billboard covers a bridge that was being repaired. So much more interesting than a normal special build. Although it doesn’t tell me much about Adidas, at least they’ve taken the time to do something to interest me.
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You probably know about Bono editing the Independent last week. I just can’t help but feel that it’s a bit of a missed opportunity.
He didn’t pull any punches in his choice of articles but since he was editing a middle class, liberal newspaper, wasn’t he preaching to the converted? Wouldn’t it have been better to challenge readers of the Telegraph, the Mail or the Sun?
On the other hand the BBC’s Radio 4 invited in people as diverse as David Blunkett and Steve Savale (from Asian Dub Foundation) to edit the Today programme. This gave you quite a challenging listen as it took you outside our your usual comfort zone.
So to summarise – challenge people with new stuff and they’ll take notice. Spoon-feed them and they’ll switch off.
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We spent our Bank Holiday camping in Ripon. 
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Finally, my top ten tips for working with account handlers. I used to be one, so I have a fair idea what goes on in their heads.
1) Never forget that they do all the things you hate. They organise meetings, do the contact report, take countless phone calls at the worst possible time and generally do a thousand things at once.Show you appreciate this, and do what you can to simplify their lives.
2) Creatives hate it when suits tell them, "We can’t present that, the client will never go for it." Since it’s their job to bring the client perspective into the agency they take constant abuse from creative teams. You can help mediate between them, and take some of the pressure off. How can you help save the creative idea, but make it client friendly? Sometimes it’s research evidence, sometimes it’s knowing that the client likes pictures of dogs.
3) They don’t need you. Creatives and suits can do the job relatively well. You need to be the person they want in the room – both client meetings and creative reviews. Account people don’t like losing control, so don’t threaten this. Do make them feel that you can tell them something they don’t know, or look at something in a different, or help them in a tricky conversation.
4) The above means that you’ve got to be interesting. Read a lot, keep scrapbook,collect stuff. You want them coming to you for things.
5) Suggest as often as possible, as opposed to tell. Be subtle, go in the back door. Let them make the decisions, just make your suggestions so useful they become difficult to ignore.
6) Creatives see one of your roles as getting their work through research. So do the suits. The work bombing in groups means more work for them (and grief from the client). Make sure any testing makes the work better opposed to a re-write.
7) Be quick. The client always wants things yesterday, which means they’re always under pressure. Deliver things when you say you will.
8) Let them have input. A fresh pair of eyes always helps. Talk a lot, they spend more time with the client than you do, they may have picked up something you’ve missed. If they feel they’ve had a role in the strategy, they’ll take a more active role in getting it through intact.
9) Unless you’ve done something really dumb (or someone’s clicked reply instead of forward) clients usually fire agencies because they are bored, or they think you’ve gone a bit stale. Be constantly looking for new stuff they can give the client to challenge them and make them think. They’ll know the best time to pass it on.
10) Make friends with junior account people. They have less baggage than older people and will surprise you with new stuff. They’ll also be an account director before you know it. If you build a relationship before they’re important, it will pay off when they are.
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We’re all moving around this week.My new home is a nice quiet corner with a window. I’m hoping they’ve put me there because they want me to do some thinking in relative peace. Of course, they may just want me out of the way.
NORTHERN PLANNER 
