Mr.
Matt
Spangler

Nice video series on planning from PSFK. I strongly believe in the sentiment espoused in this episode and its why I have focused much of my energies over the last year on making things (after the process of strategy, research, intuition etc) and I’m looking forward to some stuff getting out there before the end of the Summer.

By being responsible for putting something out in the world as fast as you can, seeing how it is received, promoting it and working from those results on improvement, you are forced to vet your strategic decisions by reality. It ceases to be academic.

Lip service is paid to this in big agencies but the reality is the standard processes of brief > comms arch > etc that have been around for years are so standardized that they output often doesn’t help or influence today’s creative teams to come up with better ideas.

You might say its the combination of an entrepreneurial attitude/experience that helps with this and was a piece I felt was absent from this PSFK series. 

Have heard about the Spur video series that talks with planners in the industry but haven’t had a chance to watch the videos until the break. I enjoyed the first three episodes and would encourage anyone interested in the fields of strategy, planning, management consulting or the agency environment in general to check them out.

This particular one about the planning “identity crisis” seems to offer the the most diverse sound bites that I connected with from my experiences of 2009 so I thought I’d pass it along with a few personal thoughts about the coming year.

1. Hank Leber (McKinney), Heidi Hackemer (BBH) and Robin Hafitz (KBSP) talk about the antiquated idea that most advertising/marketing agencies still hold onto regarding who owns the creativity, the titles that come along with it and thus the credit and accolades tied to it.  This is an issue that I think is still pervasive at agencies of all size and especially among creative directors (something Russell Davies and David Armano spoke about a bit last year). The most intelligent and forward thinking agencies I have been talking to the past 6 months are starting to tear this down and I think 2010 will mark a significant shift in this thinking. Good ideas come from many different places, but the structure of the top down pyramid creative direction can often stifle the best collaborative thinking.


2. John Gerzama stresses the importance of hybrid talent and compares it with hollywood writer/director/actor.  I think this year marks the continued consolidation between this entertainment driven hybrid thinker and the kind of talent that agencies have to recruit.  As everything becomes a form of “entertainment”, experience and storytelling has increased value, and the ability to reach the right audience becomes more confusing (not necessarily harder), the blending of the talent between these two worlds will become more necessary and for those in the strategist and planner position, this wider perspective will make them more critical to the success of the organization and its ideas.


3. One thing that I didn’t hear touched on in any of the videos that I think is critical is the idea of problem identification before starting to work on the solution. Robin briefly whispers about being a good listener which I think is a true art for the best planners and strategists. In a world where everyone is looking to provide the next great “idea”, there is less and less time spent on identifying the real problems. Often times, there are bigger communications issues that go beyond the next marketing campaign. This analysis and the ability and process of identifying the problems will become more critical then ever for the success of clients in the coming year.


4. Paul Woolmington from Naked talks about the fact that good planners worth their salt want to get upstream to solve more critical business issues.  From my experience and discussions this is incredibly challenging from inside many agencies but will be more important then ever in the coming year. For the past 3 months I’ve been consulting with Naked Communications on the extension of this thought. As a consultancy they have already had many successful engagements using communications to solve problems that go well beyond the traditional marketing challenges. We are working to develop updated processes that emphasize identification of the problems and communication plans that may not fit within the traditional “marketing” buckets but help solve core business issues. While keeping an eye on the changing way that organizations are using digital communications channels daily (with consumers, partners, employees…whatever label you want to give them) this becomes more important then ever and thus more critical for marketers to extend their thinking beyond the next campaign.
   
   Would love to hear your thoughts…