NORTHERN PLANNER

I refuse to call them audience.

'Audience' suggests people sitting and waiting for our stuff. 

It suggests arrogance, that we don't need to impress them.

We just need to fire things at them. 

When we need to get noticed and earn space in their heads. 

Now, nearly every strategy presentation should have some observations about your target customer. 

Planning has evolved into all sorts of stuff, but at it's heart, it's our job to make sure the work does the right job with the right people. 

That means understanding what we need them to think/feel/do in the first place. 

But it also means a deep understanding of their lives. Not just some dry data on TGI -questionable personality traits or motivations and the like. 

They're more likely to notice and maybe feel something about brand communication if it has some relation to their lives. 

What they care about, what keeps them awake at night. What suprises them, what excites them.

I have one golden rule that helps me do things quicker, get a true perspective and, ultimately, help doing stuff that works. 

Find something to admire in your audience. 

From defining a brand new customer group for the brand, to a specific quarterly comms brief, you'll get to something strategically useful quicker if you're able to edit out the extraneous rubbish in service of something that makes you admire them.

Something that makes you care. 

This matters. 

Because great brands talk about what they love and that should include what they love about their customers. 

But mostly because too many people in this business don't know their customers well enough and, worse, in some cases are quite sneery about them. 

They do work for themselves, not the customers. 

That won't be enjoyable, want capture the imagination. Won't get talked about. 

More than the 'voice of the consumer' I think we need to be the champion of the customer.

One way at looking at this work is admiring the work ethic of potential Chrysler customers and America at large..

This largely came from admiring the growing independence of modern UK women.

This came from the admiring the determination of the young Scottish people in adversity..

While this admired the unquenchable hope and enthusiasm of Scottish sports supporters no matter.

Even publicly thanking them…

You get the picture I hope.

I'm convinced that the secret to great presentations, and meetings too, is two fold. 

But mostly it's about love. 

1. Hard work and preparation.

If you know you're stuff inside out, if you have rehearsed, if the slides are engaging and more of a support to you than 'the show',if you've prepared for any difficult questions, you'll be fine.

People will see the hard work, appreciate it and immediately warm to you. Even the most shy person can perform if they've done the work.

2. But the real secret is being able to connect to people. 

I don't think that has to be finding a link to what your audience deeply cares about, although that helps. I think it's more about getting folks to identify with YOU.

Which means linking your presentation, or your part of the meeting to something you deeply care about. Link a personal story or passion to the theme of your stuff and you won't go wrong. 

Firstly because when people see you the human, rather than the professional, they'll connect to you more. If they can see your enthusiasm, if they can see what brings you joy, pain or whatever, the mirror neurons will fire and they'll feel it too. 

Secondly, by channeling what matters to you, you'll care more, so you'll perform better. Not least because, again, if people see your enthusiasm, if they know you care and they'll care too. 

The best feedback I ever got from a client, apart from how I made things simple and clear, was how they loved I was enthusiastic about their brands. 

Which is why nearly every presentation I do nearly always has a Star Wars slide (in fact, clients that know me well are usually wondering when the slide with a crow-barred Star Wars bit will arrive), a slide with the kids in, with guest appearances from swimming and cycling.

In other words, like the key to advertising communication itself, rather than talking about yourself, talk about what you love – and make people feel something. 

Seriously, naked emotion and humanity trumps slickness and 'performance' any day. 

'Corporations don't own modern brands, consumers do' – try telling that to shareholders or venture capitalists. Consumers- let's call them customers or people – decide your fate, they don't reap the profits, and don't think about brands enough to even merit the word 'relationship'. 

'Brands today are conversations' – true in the sense that a minority of strange people might spend time talking about a brand/with a brand, but they make up a tiny fraction of commercial  sales, while the people that growth and the big numbers come from, they indifferently get on with their lives. Just maybe, a decent amount of might notice the brand more, thanks to this minority doing stuff.

‘It’s all about content’ – well this is actually true, it always was. If you have nothing of value to add to what people are already doing, or your stuff isn’t good enough to merit your interruption, there’s little point. That’s not the same as the modern way of thinking though – the current fixation with the ‘build and they will come’ content model, or really entertaining stuff that’s not relevant to what the brand makes or does. Even worse if it’s nothing to do with any hard commercial objectives. That said, relevance can be overrated. People don’t need to rationally accept whatever you’re doing/saying/demonstrating, because they don’t buy that way. But if it feels intuitively wrong, or it doesn’t make sense somehow, if they can’t see the point, you have wasted your time.

‘Modern brand storytelling needs to leave lots of space for people to put the story together themselves in their own way’ – now, as Gossage said, “If you’re going to lay a mousetrap, leave some room for the mouse’. That was always true. In terms of culture, even more so these days. The entertainment we all enjoy has become more complex, less linear and asks more of us in terms of filling gaps in plots etc.

Now there are limits even in popular culture. I give you exhibit A, the initially brilliant Lost. At first most loved the big questions, they loved debating what was going on. It was good. But then it got so complicated it seemed that not even the writers knew what was going on – and the ratings plummeted to the point only the die-hards stayed until the end.

There are limits to the complexity we will accept in culture, even in a world where The Dark Knight and Interstellar can succeed as blockbusters.

Which brings us to brands and back to that point about conversations.

Most people cannot be bothered to work it out, let alone talk to anyone about it. Of course, any modern campaign needs to be respectful to the grammar of the media it’s in. Your creative really shouldn’t be the same everywhere. For example, you need to front load your message and brand attributes on a YouTube pre-roll before folks click away, while you can still afford the big reveal in a linear TV ad. But that’s about people noticing and accepting your stuff.

‘The agency model is dead’– which agency model?

If you mean the one where shops that operate in different disciplines try and charge a fortune for selling a process that has a very obvious end, and the output is judges as effective because if the way it’s measured, there are still global corporations making a lot of money with big clients doing exactly this. Their shareholders are not complaining. Even if this might not be the way stuff should be done today, tomorrow or ever.

If you mean the one where clients will pay a hefty fee for genuine creativity and ideas – again in all sorts of agencies, there are still clients that are more than happy to do this, but the thing about the successful agencies, is that there is a lot of hard work and thinking behind the great work. To quote John Hegarty, there is still money there for ‘Intelligence turned into magic’.

 If there are fewer who will pay for this kind of work, it’s probably because they’ve invested in agencies that are all for doing the crazy stuff, but not the hard work of understanding what the crazy stuff is supposed to be doing, or if it’s right for the people it’s aimed at.

If you mean the kind who are willing to pay for fantastic service, a groovy reception and being made to feel special, it’s fair to say that world is gone.

The people who say the ‘agency’ model is dead are usually people who are peddling something else. It probably works really well for them, but there are other ways.

Ultimately the agency model is a place where you do stuff for clients they cannot do themselves. I’m not sure this will ever go away.

I was brought up in creative agencies.

They had good points. They had bad points.

I now work with the media folks. They have good and bad too.

I really never thought I’d end up in a media agency though.

Then again, there was a time I was sure I’d never get married, be a parent or go to a Queen concert.

Now, beware of post rationalization, confirmation bias and the general way the brain makes you feel good about yourself, but I’m becoming more of the opinion that, maybe, media agencies are set fairer for today’s world than the various guises of today’s creative agencies.

Here’s some reasons why. Based purely of my experience of working for some from both sides and working with even more.

Let’s get one thing clear though, we’re all in marketing which means for the average person, we’re about as respected as estate agents. Still, if you work in this industry, may as well work on the side of the least evil.

Media agencies are much nicer to their staff. While there one or two creative or digital agencies that don’t work mental hours, have a culture that nurtures and invests in their people, encourages staff to respect each other and is grounded in the reality of the people their work, is aimed at, creative agencies work much, much longer hours, tend to make their people redundant more quickly, celebrate loud mouth extroverts rather than talent and thoughtfulness, don’t train staff, expecting them to sink or swim, and generally chew their people up and spit them out.

And they use creativity as an excuse for leaving things until the last minute and being disorganized as hell.

Media does have its share of extroverts, there is still the odd late night and any service business is only one phone call away from having to shed staff, but they are much nicer places to work. Hours are more regular, yet all the work gets done. They manage to be much more flexible around the lives of their people. They invest a lot more in training and staff development. There are whole search departments full of shy science types who would melt in front of clients. And people do seem to have a life.

This matters, because tired is stupid. Knackered, irritable people who never actually get out and experience the lives of the people they are selling to will simply not perform.

And no amount of concrete hot desk tables, bean bags and ironic t-shirts will make up for it.

Because media agencies respect their people, they also respect experience. So you’ll find far more mature people in media agencies than creative and digital species. Creative agencies, in general, seem to value the young and, even in a world where they’re competing against other professions that are now seen as more lucrative and even cooler for the newer generations– tech companies, The City to name but two, they don’t hold on to experience. Now a variety of studies have shown that you can’t fake experience, you need 10,000 hours of practice to be great a something. Moreover, in a little bubble forever pronouncing the death of this and the death of that year in year old, the more sane voices who see through the bullshit and have seen it all before are very valuable indeed.

The number of older folks with kids and stuff in media agencies means their employers just can’t get away with working their staff to death and sane, humane culture built on respect, temperance and thoughtfulness just naturally bubbles up.

You need your young blood to shake things up and inject fresh energy in an organization. But that constant renewal needs to be balances by experience.

I’m sure the love of rash youth is why creative and digital agencies get all excited about the latest wheeze- they don’t have the frame of reference. Like the social media gurus who have never heard of Gossage, the Behavioural Economics proponents, the folks who suddenly discover co-creation and God know what else.

Everyone in media is a doer. Creative agencies have departments. Account folks ‘handle the client’ with varying appreciation for planning, creative, developing or whatever. Creatives are probably as far away from pure craft as they have ever been. With art directors who cannot draw and writers who cannot write copy. It’s for the studio to visualize stuff and the suits to check copy. While the planners have stopped getting their hands dirty with research and don’t know how telly ads get made, the nuances of casting and many don’t go to client meetings that often. Digital folks of course, just sit in dark corners coding. I stereotype a bit, but you get the gist and probably recognize it.

Now media organisations of course have their departments. But in each one, there is no client handler who can get away without knowing the minute details of their chosen field, and actually doing an element of the planning or buying themselves, based on good evidence based consumer insight. In a world where innovation and content ideas don’t just come from creative agencies, they also need to have ideas too.

If anything, as the media landscape has become more complex, the craft skills have gone up. I’m still intimidated by the complexity and hard work that goes into good TV buying, it’s every bit as skillful and demanding as the shoot for the stuff that will fill the space bought.

But putting together an integrated plan across channels, that will achieve cut through and makes the most of a list of available channels, innovations and prototypes that grows daily, that takes mix of deep knowledge, insight, imagination, rigour and hard work. And then the same people who have done the thinking need to sell it in and make it all happen.

And when you’re at the sharp end of what’s going in your field, when you have to do so much yourself, rather than hand it all over to another department and forget about it..it keeps you at the top of the game, forces you to evolve, which in turn means the organization is always moving forward.

Media is where the innovation happens as the great work by Steven Johnson shows,

great leaps forward come from people building on others’ work. It comes from good people being around lots of other good people. Now some creative agencies are pretty good at bringing in other talents. Film makers, tech geniuses etc. But mostly, they jealously guard the creative project.

My little three year old girl is very independent and insists on doing everything ‘all by myself’. It’s only when she gets in a terrible mess that she asks for help. It can be very entertaining, but watching her nearly strangling herself with her vest before finally holding it out and saying’ fink Daddy should do it’ doesn’t get us to swimming lessons on time now does it?

Media agencies HAVE to work with media owners. We have no choice but to work with the very, very best in their field. Who knows social media better than Twitter? Exactly. Working in TV, especially on a sponsorship or partnership thingy, well, you’re working with people who know how to entertain people and make content people want to experience.

So not only do you get the very best advice and stuff to play with, all that cleverness and expertise constantly challenges and rubs off on you.

If you want to be good, hang around good people. Media agencies have that in the job description

Media agencies have no choice but to constantly evolve. When you strip away the hype media agencies still think hard about where to buy space, and then buy it. They get paid for leading overall strategy a little more, they brief content more, they even make some of it, but it comes down to planning and buying media. That media is changing every day. The pace is only getting faster. Which means that evolution is built into a media agency’s business model. We’re automatically at the cutting edge and we know what is useful and what it Emperor’s New Clothes because we have to constantly talk to, collaborate and negotiate with the people who at right at the very sharp end of it all. We still sell TV plans of course, we still recommend 30 second commercials as the most efficient buy, because they are. But we know everything about sky Adsmart, we know that Programmatic TV is a possibility and that it’s likely TV might be bought on impressions, like digital, in the near future. Just as Twitter works directly with us on our briefs and tells us all about what they have in BETA

Media agencies are not blinded by the word ‘brand’. At some point, creative agencies began to talk about ads that disrupted the category, that build brand values as credible objectives themselves. They justified ads that didn’t necessarily result in hard business effects by pointing to results in brand tracking studies. They began doing ‘brand planning’ and messing around with brand essences and such. Media agencies have bought brand ads of course, but as they’ve been charged more and more with taking responsibility for strategy on some level, because they don’t get to do brand planning, they don’t make brand ads and don’t create brand onions, they naturally look for real problems to solve, rather than brand problems, and then use their powers to solve them in the most efficient and effective way they can. The problem with being the custodian of the brand, is that you tend to think ‘brand’ is the problem, solution and Holy Grail all in one.

So there you have it. Maybe I’m showing a new bias based on my new circumstances.

Don’t get me wrong. There are fantastic creative and digital agencies that are just brilliant to work with and ace to be employed by. Just as there are terrible media agencies, some which are relics from the ‘luvvie age’ some that are blatantly steal partner agency turf. Many that don’t plan, they simply justify the biggest media budget they can get away with.

But I am beginning to think as a general rule, they are increasingly where it’s at.

Discuss. 

I had some pretty good training on digital stuff recently.

Some of the specifics –  you know, programmatic buying, blind networks etc.

This stuff is important as I’m getting more convinced that, whatever kind of agency you are in, you need to get to grips with the nuts of bolts of the technology that’s out there and how content and stuff tends to actually get in front of people.

I suppose it’s like great Formula One Driver know their cars inside out and work with the engineers as much as possible.

This matter firstly because of first mover advantage. If you’re first to take advantage of new technology or media stuff, you get the chance to do something really special.

Subservient Chicken springs to mind.

As does this Honda video – a genuinely ‘interactive’ video that integrates with the story.

It also matters because it’s how you put things together that matters. Which means a fundamental grip of what works and what works together.

This great Yeo Valley case study wouldn’t have got so much traction on the back of one hero spot without working so well with social media.

Broadcast working with Facebook was fundamental to this Yorkshire Tea campaign.

What is also true of the last two examples, is how they are still TV campaigns.

Not TV as we use to know it, but television still.

Because, despite the emerging tradition to kill off telly, it’s still the most efficient channel for building business profit, against a whole range of secondary objectives.

It’s just that it’s role, and how it works with other channels and assets HAS changed.

Funnily enough, there’s evidence it’s also the most efficient and driving genuine widespread word of mouth.

Which brings me back to that training.

They made a fair point, that we have to assume that whatever content you put out there can be played with by people on all sorts of networks. There is little you can do about it, so you may as well embrace it.

But what they didn’t say was that you will be very, very lucky if anyone can be bothered, if you intend it or not.

And you have to assume they won’t, which is the most commercial way of looking at things.

Since, as has been discussed by cleverer people than me, it’s the light buyers that notice a brands stuff the least that matter for growth the most. The people the least likely to engage.

The only point of people getting involved with your stuff is how it will extend your reach, to infiltrate the barrier of indifference most of us have for most of the things we buy with some sort of social proof or whatever.

They used these examples to show the power of people playing with your content and getting involved.

But nothing would have happened without, of all things, a finely crafted ad that, yes, was really cool and funny, but also dealt with a specific truth about how shower gel gets bought (by women for men) and a bigger truth the brand could play with –what it means to be a man in our porous, ironic culture.

So don’t forget, be a digital engineer, its essential these days, but don’t forget to understand some older fundamentals too.

Basically, few people care, and the role of people that do is to make them notice.