NORTHERN PLANNER

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  • Let’s talk about advertising

    I realised the other week how much my job doesn't consist of talking about advertising. By advertising, I of course don't mean the old fashioned 'above the line' thing, just ways of making people want the thing your selling. But whatever you want to call it, planners don't do a right lot of it next to all the other things.

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    'All the other things' will vary, depending where you work of course, but amidst commissioning, managing or doing research – groups, quant, ethnography, TGI runs, desk research etc etc, analyzing data, preparing and running workshops, strategy presentations and a whole lot more, writing creative briefs and doing creative briefings, attending creative reviews and tracking meetings don't make up the bulk of our time.

    I suspect most of us like talking about the actual work though, I know I do. So, to vent that particular spleen, I'm going to do more of that here.

    Not in that dreadful, self serving way they doing in Campaign Review. A trick to get better at thinking about strategy for new work is to look at stuff that's been made and 'work backwards'. Try and think about what the strategy was, what the brief might have been. It worked for me back in the day and seems to be useful in training bits and bobs.

    So I'm going to do a bit of that, look at stuff I find interesting (not necessarily like) and write about what I think they're trying to do and why. Hopefully that will be a bit constructive. Hopefully, if anyone thinks I'm wrong, they'll quickly set me straight.

  • Dad soon, but not soon enough

    9 months (ish)  ago I had to share a Zurich hotel room with Mel from work. Yesterday she brought in her new baby girl.

    The purpose of this post is not to deny being the father (looks nothing like me, she found out she was pregnant the day before). It is also not about how time flies, and how so much has happened since last November (though it has).

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    What I want to say is that I held that adorable little baby in my  arms, until one of the girls finally peeled her off me and just wanted my own baby to be born right away. I have to wait until October for mine, too long. Looks like I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

  • Oh, so that’s OK then…….

    "Sir Martin, too, thinks that American and European consumers have been “scarred”, and will take a long time to rediscover the joy of splashing cash around. But as Mr Swinburne points out, advertising has done so badly of late that “it doesn’t have to come back all the way to have a strong recovery”

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    From The Economist

  • What are we like?

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    I'm in the middle of reading Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie. Not only is it fun, he manages to get an incredible amount of detail into everything. Really worth looking at if you want to understand what people are like Up North – and if you're a planner in London, isn't that essential?

    This book is pretty essential for anyone involved with communicating to the English. In 'Watching the English', Kate Fox, a 'proper' anthropologist, has looked at all aspects of English behaviour, from food rules to dress rules, from our houses to why we always talk about the weather. Much of planning is understanding why people behave as they do, this book gives you lots of hidden behaviours that will help.

  • Eat less, live longer – if you really want to

     I was reading in the Economist that they're on the way to proving that extreme calorie restriction makes you live longer, they might even get to a simple daily pill and nothing else. It might even add two decades to your life.

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    I say, what is the point of living a life like that? (picture thieved from russell). Where's the joy?

  • Northern Trainers debate

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    Meet the Marmite of trainers. Embarrassingly, this is the most provocative thing about me (unless I get to tell you my f*** dis custard joke).

    I love these, I haven't seen anyone wearing these, which is why I do (although I don't admit to myself there's probably a good reason I'm the only one).

    So what do you think? Are you with the naysayers who reckon they look home made, like they're Apache or just plain stupid? That I'm to old for trainers like these?

    Or are you with those that think they're ace?

  • Keep calm and carry on

    Hello, it's been quite a while since the last post. Truth is, I haven't been lazy, I haven't found there's nothing to write about, I've just been too busy lately. Doing a 160 mile round trip to work is never condusive to spare time, but there's just been too much to do. I'm guessing that come October and the arrival of our new baby, this won't get any better.

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    To be honest, I had considered just packing the whole thing in for a while. I've found that writing a blog, like so many things, is all about momentum. You need to find a rythm, build up some sort of pace and the posts just type themselves. It's a bit like going to they gymn, it's much harder to go a couple of times a week than it is to go every other day. Writing little and often is hard.

    But I'm going to carry on. Not for any vanity reasons I hasten to add, I'm not labouring under the illusion that any one is panting with antipation about the next Northern Planner post, willing their RSS to show something. I hope that the basics stuff is useful and will continue to be, I think that stuff is really important, but really, this blog is for me.

    It's forced me to keep writing something, to keep interested, it's allowed me to try out a thing or two. This is a good thing. The job's hard work, there's little time to think out of the here and now. A blog forces you to do that. And then there's the community. I've met a lot of people I wouldn't have, I'm part of a community that I simply wouldn't be without blogging and stuff.

    These are all reasons to carry on. Posts will not be as regular as they once were, but I'm  going to try and find some cadence again.

    Anyway

  • Mort needs a job

    This talented planner, who is hard working, joy to work with, great thinking, digital native, well rounded, great human being…

    …needs a job. Hire him or spread the word. The campaign starts here.

  • Quote of the day

    Decide the context for yourself, shouldn't be hard..

    BEHIND EVERY GREAT FORTUNE IS A CRIME

    Balzac

     

     

    Oh, and here is another thatone of two people could do with reading, looking in the mirror, nd then reading again..

    ECONOMIC ADVANCE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS HUMAN PROGRESS

    John Clapham

     

  • Propositions 2

    So to finishing off thinking about propositions. (There was this post in case you're wondering).

    So far we've covered most of the ground needed to think about writing a good proposition. Now we're going to have a little debate that goes right to the heart of planning for advertising and how brands should communicate.

    There are two schools of thought when it comes to building communication and the strategy behind it. The most common is what we've already covered – reduce everything down to a single-minded thing you want to communicate or say. Make a proposition the answer to the following question: What single thing must we convey?

    This is, of course, fine. It's a common language for planning and creative departments all over the world, because it makes things easy. Agree on a statement, bring it to life in the most compelling way, job done. But……..

    Another school of thought has been around for a quite a while, challenges this view and is possibly more relevant today than it has ever been. This way of thinking is based on developing communication around what you want people to think, feel or do afterward – the take-out, rather than a 'message'. The focus of a brief should not be what to say, rather, what the outcome of the communication will be.

    This tends to lead to a proposition that is expressed as a task rather than a statement. or not even having a proposition, replacing it with a creative challenge.

    This is not new, JWT's creative brief has centered, around 'What is the key response we want from the advertising' for some time. It then asks you to highlight what attribute, news, need that's fulfilled or whatever, that might provoke this response.

    So the core of the brief for Lurpak becomes: Make Lurpak the champion of good food

    The core of Nike Hurt becomes: Dramatise how much pain and failure are part of what it is to be a true athlete

    The core of Gorilla becomes: Put a smile on the face anyone who sees our ad

    The core of ghd becomes: Make ghd the conduit for desires hidden deep in every woman

    Make the Audi TT utterly synonymous with design

    I think this approach is worth considering because it's rare these days to be 'just doing advertising'. You're looking for ideas that are more like stories that run across lots of platforms, usually across more than one audience. There's little that is 'single minded messaging' about that. You're looking for a theme rather than a 'message'.

    Advertising was never really about 'message'. Like all communication, it's a two way thing – it's what people make of what you say, not what you say.

    Culture is becoming less linear and simple. Look at the Matrix, Lost, video games, even sit coms. They leave you lots to work out, they ask you to put threads together, and we readily do it. Ads, brands,all that are expressions of culture and competing against it – so it has to be at once like it and stand out somehow. Ads become the signal for deeper content elsewhere.

    We're navigating the world in a much more visual way these days – briefs need to be about an experience rather than 'message', tone of voice, brand behave

    This is all put much better here.