NORTHERN PLANNER

Since this is blog from a Northerner, living in the North, I thought it might be worth looking at things from perspective for a change. If it's relevant to where you work, then great (I suspect it might).

Let's roll back to the so called golden age of advertising first – the late 70's and 1980's. Agencies got to make lots of big expensive advertising campaigns, lots of TV lots of glossy print lovely. This was true outside of London…some big names, big campaigns lots of telly out here too. It must have been brilliant. Agencies got away with murder, clients were still getting used to emotional brand communication, you could talk to loads of people at once on ITV and make people buy stuff just by entertaining them.

But then got a bit sticky, clients got wise to the flashy sell and lovely lunches and began demanding proof of return on investment. They wanted accountability and ad agencies got found out. They saw their place at the top table at become less secure. London agencies held on, but regional agencies saw only the very best, the very rigorous hold on to significant ad spend.

So they diversified. They became very good at DM, design and other stuff – they got good at being integrated because they had no choice.

Then along came digital. It turned the industry up side down. Up sprang the digital specialists. They spouted jargon in a manner much worse than any ad exec, they were technically brilliant, but no one really knew what they did, perhaps not even them. They made things look very pretty, they even managed to appear accountable with instant, real time measurement….and yet……..

…we come to the present day. Old fashioned agencies are getting okay at digital too, they have no choice. But they two advantages over digital specialists, based on my experience anyway.

Firstly, they know where different media and tactics fit in to the overall picture. They're good at integrating things together in a way that all but the best London shops are not. Digital agencies are good at digital. Digital is the the answer no matter what the question.

Secondly, they don't have planners, or people that can think strategically. Some of the most technically brilliant digital practitioners I've met (technically) don't know WHY they're making stuff, they don't care too much about matching experience to consumer needs, they don't go through the rigour of role for communications. In short, they don't do planning, if you're lucky, they do tactics. They don't own the brand conversation.

In the recent past, this didn't matter, the jargon and technical advancement glossed over this. But like ad agencies in the 90's and beyond, everyone's getting wise. Soon, they're going to have to be accountable, and then they're in trouble.

Many creative agencies don't do artwork, most outside of London don't have a TV department. Clients have become good at taking some thinking, concepts or whatever and getting made direct, or even in house. The making isn't that hard once we all get the basic principles. It's the thinking and creativity that's hard.

I wonder if, like creative agencies, their will be a bit of cull, a lot of consolidation and a big bubble bursting as digital agencies learn to be accountable. I think that means they need planners (amongst other things) people that don't have to know how stuff gets made in minute detail, but they know how to find out what it's for and what it needs to do.

When I was suit, I used to have know lots about print, I needed to know what grading in TV was, now I don't, just as I don't need to know what Ruby on Rails actually is. Making stuff well matters, but I suggest knowing why you're making and measuring it's success matters even more.

I wrote this a while back for something or other. Thought it was worth sharing. I don't pretend to understand the mysteries of the better sex, but I thought these were OK thoughts for people (men) in my predicament….

"David Ogilvy would have been a great ad man on any era. Sure, the pipe and braces might not have gone down as well today, his views on avoiding humour at all costs seem out of place these days, but let's not forget what he thought about women.

"The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything." Even back in the heyday of the ‘Mad Men’, he knew that brands underestimated women at their peril, today that's never been more important. Paying due attention to women does not signify a return to a seventies feminist doctrine or a mere sense of 'fairness' - it just makes business sense.

In the UK, a woman's disposable income has shot up by 50% in the last 20 years; today they’ll make 80% of all buying decisions while in twenty years time, they’ll be the main earner in a quarter of households and account for over half of UK millionaires, according to the Future Foundation. But it’s just not about share of the purse strings, it’s about influence too.

The performance consultancy Catalyst found that companies with more women in senior management earn their companies a higher return on their equity. They’re increasingly climbing the corporate ladder as the economy continues to shift towards knowledge based services and creativity. The future currency will be one of collaboration, communication, teamwork and democratisation. These are all female traits that are associated with the 'right brain', as opposed to the male 'left brain', which is more skilled at logic, systems and hard data.

The future is definitely female, but a shift in targeting will not be enough, there’s a need to examine and possibly change long held assumptions about how marketing is supposed to work. If we’re going to capitalise on the emergence of the financially empowered, influential women of today and tomorrow, we’re going to have to find a new ‘act’, that’s based on how women think, and behave.

The last 50 to 100 years of marketing and brand building was mostly built by blokes. Methodologies have been codified; conventional wisdom has been institutionalized, leading to a bunch of well ingrained habits. This is OK. This has gotten us somewhere, it’s created some interesting and useful things, not to mention some great brands, but peel back the layers of brand awareness, brand onions and such and you tend to find that most brands are built on, and for, the way men think, not women. Mostly, it’s about USP’s, objects and ‘benefits’ –  all that ‘left brained’ stuff men do so well.

Engaging with women properly will require brands using the ‘left side’ of their brain too. That means more ‘feelings, people, relationships and what things do’; not just ‘action, objects, self-interest and how things work’. That’s got implications for marketing, branding, the communications job, media and even NPD.

Brands that want a bigger share of the future will have to get really good at their relationship with women, which will mean approaching all sorts of marketing and brand questions in a different way. David Ogilvy wasn’t right about everything but he was more right about women than he realised."

Just a thought. Probably not earth shattering.

I'm a fan of transmedia planning, and both loving some of the case studies coming out at the moment and hating how hard it us to get dinosaurs to think this way.

Anyway……while you're thinking about targeting groups and starting conversations, I believe it's worth thinking about brands as collections of people rather than 'a person'. A community of shared interests perhaps?