NORTHERN PLANNER

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  • What if all the planners died in an earthquake?

    Imagine someone organised the biggest planning conference ever. Big enough for every planner from the four corners of the Earth to attend. Let's dwell on that for a second- all those converse trainers, moleskins and furrowed brows. Imagine the chaos with no suits to organise it.

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    Ok, good. Now pretend the conference was utterly destroyed in an earthquake. Suddenly the world is devoid of planners. How would everyone manage?

    I bet you most agencies wouldn't grind to a halt. Account management would keep things moving, creatives would still have the ideas, media would still get bought. Market research would still get done to make sure campaigns were not exercises in guessing. Some might even venture that things happened a lot quicker without all the prevarication.

    So what is the point of planning then?

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    Let's roll back to the 1960's. Marketing departments were overflowing with all sorts of data about consumers, while agencies had no one who could make any sense of it.

    Meanwhile, they had heated debates about creative ideas with no input from the people that mattered, consumers. Research got in the way of ideas if it was used at all.

    So planners were invented to bridge the gap between research data and creativity – use research to create more powerful creative ideas.

    Not the voice of the consumer – that's too passive. Planners are not simply market researchers, they use that raw material for the basis of building ideas – new stuff, not just what research tells you to do.

    All the other stuff: brainstorming, workshop moderating, trend spotting, blog writing, media neutral planning, all that came after. All of it was, and is, valuable, but is extra to what planning came into the world for. The trouble is, it's easy to mistake these bits as the day job as they increasingly take up more and more of your time.

    Is that would you would be missed for?

    Maybe that's why planners find it so hard to tell other people what they do, we're suffering from an identity crisis. The world has got more complex, there are more ways to go about it and ways to output what you have learned, but in the end, if all the planners disappeared in that imaginary conference, what you would hope people would miss you for would be why we were invented:

    To use information about consumers to develop better strategy and creative ideas.

    That's it.

  • Account Planning School of the Web returns

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    Gareth's doing the next shool of the web project here. You should do it, it's good.

  • Baby Northern’s nearly here

    Next month to be precise. The wait is nearly over, if it was born now, it would live relatively normally (but very small). Here's some things I've learned along the way:

    An expectant father suddenly becomes very interesting to women – turn up to work with the baby scan and they'll mob you as if you were Simon Le Bon in 1885.

    It brings you closer to the Mrs in ways you would never expect.

    Mundane things like tea and Sunday papers become increasingly special as you realise they'll be gone for a while.

    You were never really a grown up before all this started happening. That was good, but so is this.

    You admire and understand your Dad a little better ( and realise how much like him you really are).

    You promise yourself not to be pushy and secretly hope for the academic genius that is also a sports star (but you're kidding yourself).

    You quietly hope that if it's a boy he doesn't inherit your hairline.

    It is easier to put together an Ikea flat pack wardrobe than fit a car seat.

    We're going to have so much fun playing in the sea at Mum and Dad's.

    Some things you can never really be ready for.

    A world of possible futures disappears, but another one arrives instead.

  • A REAL crisis

    Global recession? Global warming?

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    Here's something to really worry about , the price of tea is going up.

  • Top Tip Number 2 – always be closing

    So you're a clever clogs. You sit in meeting's stir things up, make people think, get them excited over all sorts of stuff. But somehow the strategy that get's signed off, and the resulting work is never what you had in mind. How come? if people were that interested, why did we revert to type?

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    Here's why. People like to get exited about stuff, but when it come to actually doing it, it suddenly becomes risky, so they revert to type. You need to keep the momentum going. The more it builds up a head of steam, the more 'real' it becomes the more it's going to happen.

    So keep that initiative. Next time you get people interested in something, get an agreement to make something, or do something. That might be some desk research to share for next time, an agreement to do a workshop to develop stuff together (make the stimulus amazing), could be proposition boards if you have some sort of direction to explore -anything. But get an agreement to make something or do something for next time, don't let it fizzle out, don't let doubt creep in, don't let the easy option in.

    In the end of a day, we work in a factory, it may be an ideas factory, but it's a factory nevertheless, so keep that production line going, keep working to go beyond talking – to making or doing stuff.

    In other words, always be closing

  • Levis Go Forth

    Thought it was worth building on Flat Eric to discuss this campaign (the ad is here). Interesting – big call to action telly, lots of stuff to do online, encourages young people to rediscover the pioneering spirit that built America and remake it anew.

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    Why?

    Lots of context I guess – few would disagree that America is in a bad state, makes sense to tap into all that 'Obamaness' breaking with the past, rejecting the generations and 'system' that got them there.

    Levis hasn't been about product for some time, it's about how wearing the jeans make you feel – rebellious, anti-establishment, an 'original'. But probably not to the current generation of young Americans. Like every new generation, they'll be rejecting all that came before, Levis needs to become relevant to them. But not like in the past. They see through 'image' advertising, ads alone won't cut it anymore. They demand credibility, they demand to be involved.

    So this campaign bridges the gap between the Levis of old and today – it doesn't tell them what to do, how to be, who to be – it challenges them to put the money where their mouth is, to do something and gives them a forum to come together and do it, share it, feel like they belong, become a movement. Own it.

    Very smart. The most commercial thing Levis can do is become The Jeans for every young generation. They've understood that today isn't about 'telling' it's about starting, joining in and housing conversation. Influence culture, sell more.

  • On holiday for a week (at Mums)

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  • APG awards and Top Tip Number 1

    You can read the APG Awards shortlist here (they'll add them week by week).

    Awards

    Mother's PG Tips paper is a joy. Reminds me that there's no point just having the best strategy or actual work when it comes to pitching, presenting or even in your day to day. It's how you present it.

    Which reminds me of a top tip for meetings (especially if you're shy). You're likely to be going with the account team – agree with them who will be saying what, make sure you have something to say, you know what it is and so does everything else.

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    There's many a planner who's done the thinking, written most of the deck (if you're doing one) but not agreed who's doing what bit, so on th day, the suits, verbose, charismatic people as they are, go through the whole thing, leaving planning person no chance to have any impact, unless they're equally brimming with chutzpah and effortless charm. Most of us are not.

    So agree what you're going to say before hand. Make sure you have something to say.

  • Levis Flat Eric

    This was an incredibly popular campaignback in the late 1990's. It spawned a number 1 hit single and God knows how many toy Flat Erics.

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    But what were they trying to do?

    Let's roll back to the 1980's and the launch of Levi's Laundrette,followed by some of my favourite ads ever including Creek and Drugstore. They knew what they wanted to do, rather than have a jeans brand about fashion or style, have one with real meaning with their chosen audience.

    That chosen audience was young people. Their observation was that people this age are non-conformist, rebellious and reject the establishment – 'The man'. So they wanted to make Levis the ant-establishment brand.

    One problem, were very cynical about America in the UK then (and now). Anything to do with contemporary America was likely to fail. BUT – we loved, and love American heritage. That might mean the America of the fifties, the pioneers that conquered the American West and everything in between. Levis were the original jeans, they has been there since the days of the Wild West, they were part of American history. Part of that pioneering spirit.

    So that's how they brought the rebellious spirit to life – they told stories of young people challenging authority in America's past, not right now. The Hollywood version rather than the 9 'o' clock news one.

    And my God it worked. But the problem with becoming the brand for a generation is that the next one coming behind wants to do the exact opposite of the one before – like Punk rejecting Rock and the New Romantics then rejecting Punk.

    Levis had to make their anti-authority DNA relevant to  new generation which meant a break with their own recent past. So rather than the sweeping, filmic grandeur with the soundtrack of American music history, they moved to something contemporary. With a new hero product – Sta Prest, that was only intended to be short term, and really make most people feel different about buying the core jeans range.

    I guess I'm saying they were still following the strategy of building meaning into the brand, selling the same attitude to the same audience, but they had to modernize how they brought that to life, so a new generation could feel like they were rejecting the one that came before.

    And then they reinvented again with Twisted, and yet again with anti-fit. But then they ran into a new challenge, which I reckon I'd like to cover next time.

  • British Airways

    I have always loved this British Airways adfrom way back in the 1990s.

    Others can talk about the way the ad is made, the casting of PJ O Rourke etc. I want to talk about why I think it was made.

    I think it all comes down to consumer insight. That dreaded, dreadfully over-used phrase.

    This ad wasn't aimed at everybody thinking of flying that year. It was aimed their specific premium, frequent flying audience:

    'British opinion formers who are highly cynical, speak loudly over other people at dinner tables and express their opinions as fact. Unlike every other country in the world who talk up national success stories, they delight in knocking them down'.

    What a great observation about the British! And how true, it doesn't matter what subject you're on, if you're British, you'll be suspicious of success; anything that's done too well. We love underdogs, we celebrate cheerful failure.

    So if we have a communications challenge of making influential British opinion formers proud of British Airways, feel good about it, rather than knocking it's success…what was the business challenge?

    This to me is all about justifying BA's price premium, creating emotional involvement and longer term loyalty. Much more commercially effective than promotions. Make feel good about spending money with you and you won't have to continually bribe them. Despite what many will tell you, reducing price sensitivity is rarely about delivery of facts, it tends to be about emotional, communicating the brands r'aison detre in a compelling way.

    BA was a great British success story, they has sheer bigness, world wide success, that would make any normal country feel proud and want to join in with.

    That's where the clever communications strategy at once identified the barrier and the opportunity. With this audience, showing off will work against us, not for us. But if can get to the heart of this, find a way to make the conversation ABOUT this very British habit, we can not only overcome the barrier, we create all that pride, loyalty and, ultimately, price premiumness we we're looking for. All we really have to do is laugh at ourselves a bit.

    What do you think? Does that make sense?