NORTHERN PLANNER

I did something I haven''t done for quite some time, moderated some focus groups. It's not my favourite way of researching stuff I have to admit, but you know what? Groups are still  a pretty good way of finding stuff out.

Don't take everything at face value, watch for when everyone is agreeing to fit in, be careful of selective listening, but still, qual groups ALWAYS throw out something interesting – quickly. Not an answer, not a definitive direction, but input, something you haven't't considered, a spark, a clue…stimulus. What's so bad about that? I think that's pretty great.

A common criticism of groups is that you don't get to what people really think, you get a misleading consensus. That doesn't have to be so bad. Few people act alone, few want to think for themselves, most are influenced by other people.

It can be useful to sit back and watch that in action. Let them talk, let them debate, watch a real conversation, look for what they want to talk about. Brands these days are largely about starting, or joining in with, a conversation. It's no bad thing to find something they actuallt want to talk about.

I was talking to builders and electricians, even creatives in an 'Eh by gum' North England agency are highly unlikely to put themselves in their shoes, not to mention suits and planners!

One last thing, the groups were getting feedback on creative work. Mostly, I'd rather open my veins with a rusty scalpel that test ideas…BUT……….as a planner, sometimes you know some work isn't right.

It may be an amazing idea, but it's not right for the audience, it's not right for the brand, it's just not right. A clear, inspiring brief and briefing is always the start, never the blueprint in my book, so just because it's on/off brief, it doesn't mean it's wrong/right.

Even the greatest powers of persuasion can fail against a creative director that's seeing shiny awards in the mind's eye. It's one of the dark arts, but sometimes, consumer input can do that work for you, maybe killing a route, maybe saving it by some modification, sometimes throwing up something more interesting.

In other words, sometimes it's better to get someone else to talk for you.

Come to think of it, research can be great to use defensively against the risk averse client. Get the right work through research, or kill the wrong work for that matter, prove how pointless making the logo bigger is, how boring their ads are, whatever.

I thought it was time to get back to some planning craft stuff, it's been a while. Now we've done creative briefing already, but I thought it was worthwhile looking at propositions in more detail.

I think it's important because it's always the part of the brief the creative reads first – to the point where they'll read that, hopefully plow on ahead and only read the rest of your brief when they get stuck, or want to build on their initial ideas. Like it or not, it's the most important part of the creative brief.

It's also the most debated. How it should be written, how long it should be, how simple, how single minded, how open, how closed, ask four people in any agency and you'll probably get five answers.

One thing most will agree on is that there is a part of the brief that focuses all the other information into a simple statement. The role of that statement is the bit where the conflict comes in.

Many cling to what I believe to be an outdated view of advertising, based on 'information processing'. This still dominates most thinking about how ads work. Basically, it assumes we are all rational people, you can predict our behaviour and, as long as you give people the right (usually very rational) message, they'll behave, think, do what we want. The role for creativity and emotion supports the core message by making someone 'like' the advertising, while the advertising is most effective when it gets high attention and people think a lot about what you are saying.

Another way of looking at this is to focus on response rather than 'message'. I think this is a much more credible approach. It's not what advertising 'does' to people that matters, it's how they respond to the advertising. Long gone are the days when you could assume that a person was passive, rational receiver of information, ready to do or think what you say. People make a contribution to how communication is received. Let me explain:

Humans are influenced by subconscious perception, we like people without knowing why, we act on instinct way before we have time to think about it. Decisions are always influenced by feelings. In this sense, communication is continuing process of developing and modifying relationships through behaviour, not just 'words'. There are signals that are responded to without the person knowing, feelings, associations. At the moment of communication, HOW you say it is important as WHAT.

I'm not saying delivering facts or information is wrong. I am saying though, that advertising with no clear 'message' or 'benefit' is always right, in my view, quite rarely.

What I think this means for propositions is, firstly, that they are not the most important bit on the brief, whatever the habits of creatives. Tone and manner matter too – that's hard to get across in words when these things are, of course, intangible. So the briefing and the stimulus you provide really do matter.

Secondly, a simple sentence is good, but a proposition isn't necessarily a simple benefit or USP, it the one thing you need to communicate to reach the objective set for communications. That can be a lot of things.

Whatever you write should be interesting, true and shouldn't be an endline. Sources for it might be:

Product characteristics

Ways of using it

How it is made

Surprising things about who uses it, how they use it

Price characteristics

Product/brand heritage

Direct comparison with competitors

Picking new competitors

Philosophy of the company

They tend to be written as a statement, promise or observation, but should never be just information, it should be information that's relevant. Imagine telling someone your proposition in a pub, would they be interested.

You should already know your strategy, for example make people trust British Airways because of its scale.

So explore the product/brand truths – every year British Airways carries 12 million people

But then follow the argument through – every year BA carries 12 million people…to other people.

Then find the observation that brings all that to life, something that makes it human, emotional relevant and reflects tone of voice a little – BA brings more people together than any other airline.

I guess I mean push it. Whatever fact, benefit or observation you have, find the fact behind the fact, the benefit behind the benefit.

It's fast…it saves you time…….it saves you time……it gives you more time with your family…….it gives your family more time with you.

Polaroid lets you look at pictures just after you've taken them….everyone can look at the picture you've just taken…..polaroid isn't a camera it's social lubrication.

For brand usage – Eating Revels is a risky business

For target audience – Harvey Nichols is heaven for fashion addicts

Benefit – The new VW makes you feel safer than the average small car

Philosophy – Irn Bru is the maverick of soft drinks

Comparison- Umbro don't make leotards, they only make gear for football

Product usage – you either love or hate Marmite

                        Oasis is for people who hate water

Now, we could stop there, if we weren't going on to go about process. In fact, we will, I've run out of time. We'll go on to show how 'task' based propositions free up a different kind of work, a different kind of process and maybe lend themselves to the 'take-out' or 'emotional school of thought' a little better.

To fill the thick silence between people who have only just met there is often the most dreaded question in small talk:

"So what do you do?"

If you work in advertising, this question is to be dreaded. You'll get:

1.The armchair creative geniuses who love to pound you with reasons why they don't make any decent any ads any more ("What was that gorilla all about?"), before unleashing their own gems that will re-write the creative lexicon.

2. The (wrongly) envious, bored jobsworth who refuses to believe you don't enjoy a swanky, overpaid lark for layabouts while coked up to the eyeballs.

3. It's this one I'd like to draw your attention to. The 'no logo' protagonist. You know, the one who believes advertising is an evil capitalist conspiracy, hoodwinking defenseless people into buying things they don't need, that brands are evil and represent everything that is wrong with capitalism. And cannot resist letting you know.

Now, before I go further, I totally agree that capitalism needs to take a long, hard, look at itself. If the mess we're in right now proves anything, it proves that. 

But advertising and 'brands' isn't simply about making people want things they don't need. It's everywhere and it always was. Information to help people make informed decisions has always been important. We wear wedding rings to advertise our unavailability, we wear religious symbols like the cross to communicate our beliefs and let others identify with us, or modify their behaviour. Clothes code all sorts of messages for us, what group we belong to, availability, mood and even rebellion.

Now of course, the easy response to this is that straightforward information isn't the same as artful persuasion intended to make us do things and think things. I say there isn't anything more carefully calculated and well executed as religious propaganda. But then there's personal propaganda too. A push up bra greatly distorts the truth and could be construed as false advertising (yes I know women dress for themselves a lot, but sometimes they really don't).

And what's the difference between a well crafted headline and the witty market stall patter?

Amazingly, within the same breath, there will be depictions of the brand alchemist, a terrifying magician capable of incredible feats of manipulation, followed by assertions that it's mostly an annoying waste of time.

The thing is, it mostly is isn't it. The public doesn't care about advertising, they don't lay awake at night thinking about brands. Nor should they. Most brand communication is annoying, crass and just not very good and doesn't really work.

But some do of course, very well. But we're making far too much stuff, we're buying far too much stuff and there's too much choice, we need a guide through the clutter. Without all this choice, brands and their communications help us navigate on our own terms.

Now we could do away with the choice, but the economy would grind to halt. If there was just one choice for everything, the jobs would disappear very quickly.

Even if we could find a way to just make one of everything and still make sure everyone is fed watered and have all their needs taken care of, I don't believe that's enough. We need novelty, we like choice, we want ways of both belonging and expressing who we are.

Many science fiction films depict humans eating food concentrates -convenient, simple and reliable. But no would want that, food is so much more than fuel. It's tasty, congregation, fun, novelty, surprise, discovery, indulgence. We don't need it to be that way, we WANT it to be.

We don't need sex (how often in your life have you only had sex to reproduce?), telly, more than a few clothes, sport, holidays, reading.

We could just go back in caves and hunt, but that's not fun, it's also bloody hard. Where's the play? Where's the joy?

We need brands and advertising because we NEED the things we DON'T NEED. It's the same joy as finding the perfect black dress, playing your favourite song (we don't need music either) or arriving in a new country for the first time. We need novelty, we need to dream.

Like we need people who are more glamorous than we are, like monarchs and aristocrats in the old days or film stars now, we want a release from the realities, the banality of everyday life, some magic dust spread over the humdrum.

If it's not brands, it would be something else. It still is… religion, sport all pointless, but very necessary releases from the reality of life. Life can never be perfect, so we all need to dream. Brands are a part of that. This. Is. A. Good. Thing.

Final point. Belonging, self expression, play they are all basic human needs. We all need to both discover who we are, express it and belong to communities who share our beliefs and interests. That's prettymuch what brands do for us, they both help us find who we are and demonstrate it.

By the way, don't worry, I don't bore people with this when they ask me what I do, I just try and explain what a planner does. The conversation tends to move on very quickly…