I'm off on holiday for a week or so, and feel like taking a longer break from blogging and stuff, so I'm not sure when I'll be back. See you later
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1. Do something cool because it's cool
We've all done it. we've seen something amazing and thought, we could do that, without applying the rigour that goes with any communications planning – and even more to be honest. It's not enough to know you're specific audience will find you there (but it helps of course), you need to be asking if they expect or could be made to welcome you in the space you're planning to show up in. You need to be fully aware of the commitment you need to make, so many do something pretty good for a bit then lose interest or don't get that it takes constant effort, and you need a plan B, even more so than above the line ads, you don't know what will work…you need to have alternatives.
So yes, do something you think or your team thinks is cool.
2. Naturally then, second point is not to do core competent planning stuff
It's harder in new media, you have to get under the skin of it. No amount of data can help you 'get' how to utilise Twitter or Facebook, though it may tell you to consider it within the mix. You have to be in there doing it, understanding the grammar and unwritten rules of conduct. They are there, but just like you only pick up social skills by being around other people, well, you know where this going. And look at great popular culture successes – the Matrix, Cloverfield, Lost..all great social media successes. Study them, learn from them.
3. Listen to everybody
The demands of new media require a lot of experts – comms planners, creatives, techy experts, stakeholders from other media.It can get messy and too many opinions and, lets face it, agendas, can leave you paralysed by keeping everyone happy and the sheer weight of good advice. Involve enough people that will deliver the input needed, clarify roles for everyone, hold them accountable and never forget, the consumer doesn't care about anything online apart from doing what they want to do, they really couldn't give monkeys if 'flash' is best practice or not (unless they own an Ipad).
4. Don't bother with a business goal
Like any 'discipline' you need to know what you're working towards and how it will be measured. Getting Facebook fans for the sake it is a waste of time, getting. You're still contributing to penetration, brand salience, lead generation etc, usually amplifying something else, or being the beating heart of other stuff. If you can't prove your work is commercially beneficial, you will get found out. Role of communications matters even more here, where stuff is fluffier than any other medium right now.
5.Leave out the maths
Digital media is cheap right? Not if no one gets involved with your campaign. Cost per response still matters.
6. Don't pilot stuff
Social media can spread very quickly. If something backfires, it can backfire big time, before you can stop it. So test.
7. Spend your budget on one thing
You really do not know what will work. Test lots of small stuff, listen to what people are saying and what thy respond to – it's usually a surprise.
So just spend all your budget on one thing and watch it fail spectacularly
8. Make history
Most big budget ad campaigns didn't massively change people's lives and cement into popular culture, not even in the days of a few channels and no remote control. So be realistic about what you can achieve, take lots of small steps, never over promise. Digital does not have the reach of telly.
9. Don't worry after opt in
If you're lucky enough to do something that gets lots of fans, email details or whatever, don't just waste what you'v built by having not planned how to be continually useful and interesting. A pissed of, let down, web enabled fan is far worse than a disinterested one. Don't make any promises you can't keep.
10. Make it all about you
In any situation, talking about yourself all the time is a surefire way to be unpopular. So it is with social digital stuff. Make people feel special, look like you've made an effort, let them participate, make them feel this is genuinely two way. In short, if you want people to spend time with them, you have to offer them something in return. That mean forgetting messages and thinking about conversations and things to do. Like all social situations, listen, be respectful and learn to not just take criticism well, welcome it and learn from it. It's a lot cheaper than focus groups.
Oh, and finally, don't start now. Wait until things have settles down and you're sure how to approach it. Just doesn't work like that. Learn by doing, this medium lets you experiment as you go along. The longer you wait, the harder it will get.
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The advertising world is festooned with cuddly characters, something I'm not against after growing up with the likes of Honey Monster and the Hoffmeister Bear.
Despite a personal relationship with Vinnie,
Chuck is my favourite (imagine the money they'll save on voiceover usage costs). The above execution is my favourite after coming accross idiots like this in my gym. Not to mention the pool – just because they have muscle they think they can swim fast. Brain dead rugby league players are the very worst. By the way, this work shows the value of playing up to stereotypes no?
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So young William Hovells is nearly 7 months old and quite a few things have changed since he was born, but quite a few things have stayed the same.
What is a constant, at least for now is his total dependency on us. It is no exaggeration to say that he is the most important thing in our world, amongst other priorities and passions, nothing comes close. But from his point of view, we ARE his world. He's visibly happier when he's with both of us, in fact, according to some child psychologists, he hasn't made the distinction between him and us yet, we're one person. Anyway, there isn't a single thing he can do without us, and he wouldn't want it any other way, he loves us both, there is nothing else.
But one or two things are wildly different too. From his point of view, he's off milk and eating. He loves it, absolutely adores eating time. Lasagne, cheese sandwiches, peanut butter on toast, beef tagine, lentil bake, weetabix, he loves it all. And it's lovely cooking for him, or cooking for all of us and watching my ingredients to make sure it's edible for a little tummy.
He's constantly laughing, he watches everything now, gurgles gibberish, plays games and adores In the Night Garden – and I adore watching it with him.
The other big change is with us. When he was born he had a blood infection and spent the first two weeks in hospital. I only realise now how stressful all that was. It made us a little neurotic over his health and wellbeing for a while. We were never those nauseating over protective parents who believe the world should part like the red sea for their child, but we worried about his first chest infection and when he had a bout of stuff that had him in A&E for a bit, all those repressed feelings from those first two weeks came flooding back.
All that's gone now. Let's face it, during the first two weeks, you don't really know what you're doing, to be honest, after six months you don't either, but there's some semblance of routine and you become quite relaxed about it.
I'm so glad I changed work and life arrangements, every day I can't wait to get home to see him. But being a Dad can be contradictory. He's going away with his Mum for a week to see family this month. I'm looking for a week to myself, despite knowing how much I'll miss them. You sometimes find yourself wanting some time on your own, and feel guilty for it.
By the way, he seems to like swimming. Wonder how long it is until he beats Dad? Don't care if he hates swimming though, he can do ballet for all I care as long as it makes him happy.
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New T-shirt from Howies that I would buy if I needed a new t-shirt but I don't and want to spend money on doing rather than owning or wearing.
Anyway, the reason is I like the sentiment:
We like wooly.
We like ‘a-bit-out-there’.
Or slightly ‘away-with-the-fairies…’
Those are interesting and limitless ways of thinking.
The genius that comes from dumb.
The crazy smart and the stupid good.Life in Cloud Cuckoo Land ain’t at all baaaad.
Amen and for the day job especially. There's an art to knowing when to move, knowing the point when the gently bubbling soup of half formed ideas is beginning to coagulate into something really good and really right. You can't explain it yet, you don't know how to put it into a few words and trying to do so before would have killed it – it's just emerged.
Now's the time to apply some compression and logic to make it work. Not too soon. not too late. Call it the Goldilocks moment if you like – from being open to everything to making something work.
There are few moments of inspiration, you don't get many Eureka moments, you have to work hard, read lots of stuff, have lots of conversations, play around, act and think stupid. Density of madness.
I used to work with an account director who used to drive me mad. A soon as you uttered a half formed thought about direction, you'd get, "What would the ad be?". I didn't bloody know, I didn't know it was an ad yet, I didn't even know if it was worth pursuing, but interesting stuff us usually fuzzy and complex and should remain that way for a while.
One thing to remember as a planner, which to be honest I could get better at, is to make something, or find and example. Your best stuff makes sense to you , but it can be really hard to persuade other people without examples or something that shows what you mean. Find what the people around you tend find helpful and do that.
That's the worse thing you can do with creatives too, killing an idea before you've had a chance to live with it a bit. You have to let stuff breathe for a while.
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It's Friday, it's sunny, it's a long weekend, I've just had two buttered crumpets with some tea made properly.
Time for this, summery, full of hope and joy, I give you Lorelei by the Cocteau Twins:
And on another note, while we're on about the Friday feeling, I really like this campaign from Crunchie, shows how to take your heritage and turn it into something new and relevant – in a world too full of busyness and serieousness (not to mention the archness and ironic cynicism the British are so famous for) here's a clarion call for some pure joy.
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This is a little late, but since I'm in charge, who's going to punish me?
It was one of those weeks at work where you do lots of stuff yet end up with nothing to show for it. It's something they never tell you about working for agencies when you sign up; you're mostly prepared for hard work but you're less ready for sheer amount of stuff you have to simultaneously do and think about.
I've been finding that multitasking leads to skimming over the surface of thing without getting into anything with the proper amount of rigour. Email, etc really doesn't help. So it's time to consciously go back to doing one thing well at a time and blocking email and internet for decent periods during the day.
In the swimming training quest, I had one of those days where everything felt wrong. It's a curious thing about human physiology that you can perform so differently in the space of a couple if days. The 'wrong' day was hellish, it felt like I wad swimming through treacle. Then two days later, everything was fluid, even the pain felt good. Odd, very odd.
I also made a decision to read magazines less for a bit. I've been reading the Economist and Prospect, along with two weekend papers, and it just doesn't leave time for anything else when you have a baby. There are too many books on my shelf waiting to be opened.
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Here's two views on social media, digital type thinking.
The first is from the very clever (and very pasty) Dave Mortimer (and spot on with the role of creative briefs):
"I'm beginning to think a good digital campaign is a bit like writing a brief. You produce something that inspires them to play. Then they ignore how you told them to play, but hopefully you can work backwards and pretend it was what you wanted them to do in the first place…"
Another view as far as brands are concerned is this:
People will only pay for the things they can't do themselves. People will pay to watch Roger Federer play tennis, few will pay to watch someone hacking away at the local club. They'll pay for good chef to cook the kind of food they can't make at home and they'll pay for great music or films (mostly) but not amateur efforts on Youtube.
In other words, if you want people to spend anytime doing anything with you, pay with their time if you like, it has to be stuff they can't create or do themselves, or stuff they can get for free anyway. There are too many brand owners just showing up on Facebook or whatever, expecting people want to be friends with them. They don't, they want to be friends with friends.
That goes for ad campaigns that are really good, followed by a half hearted Facebook fan page. Do it properly or not at all.
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It's easy to forget, in this social media, crowd sourcing, co-creation world we're supposed to be living in, how great a great piece of old fashioned advertising can be. This reminded me.
Online created loads of pre-launch buzz, you can see how the story can be expanded or drilled into etc, but to be honest, it's a great ad and great ads still matter.
As usual with Nike, there's more than one thing going on here, there's the way sport, life, fate turns on a dime, a call to action for young turks to take the future by the scruff on the neck, the sheer community joy that football brings, but at the end of the day, it's a good ad. Remember them?
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I love the sea. I love being next to it. I love being in it.
There's nothing more calming than listening to it. Or waching the sun go down behind it.
There is little more cleansing or invigorating than swimming, surfing or whatever in the ocean, especially when it's decided to be get a little angry. You get to feel very small and insignificant tossed around by waves that don't care you're there, they just keep on rolling. Everyone could do with a dose of feeling puny from time to time.
The air is just different when you're near it. It smells different, it tastes different. It knocks you out when you first come into contact with it. There's no sleep as peaceful as the first one by the ocean.
That's why I love my daily photo from Aquabumps. It cheers me up when work is, well, work, and reminds me what's important when forget that brands and stuff are a pleasant illusion that make the 21st century a little more colourful. No more, no less.
Surfing type brands, once you scratch beneath the surface of all the coolness tend to be quite thoughtful and spiritual, the good ones anyway. It's not manufactured, it's just that people who live near the sea. or live for the times they are there. just tend to be that way a little more. The hippie thing is genuine.
However, I quite like the Miss Bondi shoot too, I'm not going to lie to you..
NORTHERN PLANNER 