Anti-proposition propositions?

Robert Heath's digest of his new research indicates that emotion and creativity are way more important than message. Ivan Pollard spoke at the Battle of Big Thinking about how the message is just 7% of the received communication - which would seem to mean the planners role is now about planning the context for delivery, rather than the channel or proposition. And I wonder what the creative brief would look like, in a world where the proposition is an afterthought, or a secondary consideration?

Spam

I used to work in an agency called Still Price Court Twivy D'Souza. At one point we could have had a spin off called Cronk D'Aguillar Guz Jaffray Squibb.

Pretty wild but nothing to the sheer wonder of spam email names. They should all have their names on the door. Careful P Mutton, Goalie H Pinter, Helmine Knaack. They're genius advertising names. Update 5/1/07: Seems like I'm not alone.

On a serious note, Richard mentioned a report recently that 91% of all email traffic is spam. Is it time to stop corporate email? A controversial view, I expect, but 91%?

Info-pR0n

Nathan put me onto swivel. Like 'You Tube' for data. It's a bit early days to be truly useful yet - 580 users - but good nontheless.

One of the things about being in an independent agency, and a smallish one, is that you become incredibly hungry for data - it's just not as pervasive as in larger networks or client organisations. There are a few good sources dotted across the web - like Flickr's camera finder - but few give you the ability to upload and interact with the information.

An idea?

I guess this is a follow up to a slightly earlier post about whether there's anything more physical we could do with the shots and commentaries on Planning Eye.

It might be fun to try and create a knowledge exchange / book club / photo sharing / research learning / idea site for planners around the world.

What would that look like? What should it be about - if anything specific? Is there a technology platform for it we should use (Flickr is good but limited)?

Since I put a job ad on this blog and Russell's, I've been inundated by CV's. I've been blown away by how interesting and inventive everybody is. I've had podcasts, business plans, dedicated websites, and brilliantly written emails. We have hired one planner already and may hire another. But you should all be in the creative department as far as I'm concerned.

One really interesting thing is that the non-UK planners - and there have been many - are typically a notch ahead in terms of web competancy - or confidence. There's a freshness and originality in a lot of your contacts that's been just brilliant.

As an aside, I hope I've written back to everybody and final decisions are yet to be taken, so bear with me; I've just been a bit busy. Thanks.

Blogging about Blogging about, well, you get the picture

Went to a debate this afternoon about whether corporate blogs are vanity or a useful marketing tool. Richard won - props. First off, I clearly think they're vanity projects, which is why I have an independent blog from the corporate website.

But I couldn't help thinking that most of the people in the room were talking about threaded discussions, message boards, forums, or whatever. Basically a corporately enabled digital interaction site to make up for corporate screw ups or somesuch.

I think that the notion of a corporate blog assumes either one person blogging on behalf of the company, everybody blogging individually (so the whole represents some sort of corporate view) , or - and I don't know what this would look like - some sort of hive-mind collective viewpoint blog. Given all the fuss a couple of years back about the wisdom of crowds, I wonder how you could build a hive-mind blog for a major corporation?

Why don't we see more tilt-shift around?

This has very quickly become my single most viewed image on Flickr. It's a fake tilt-shift using photoshop. I can only attribute this level of interest to two things - the popularity of the tilt-shift group and to the faddishness of tilt-shift.

I'm just amazed more ads don't use the technique - or maybe it's too mainstream to be cool anymore. Creatives - what do you think?

Pictures. Lots of pictures

I'm super-impressed about the number of planners and planning type folks and planners from other industries who have joined Planning Eye group on Flickr. People are posting pictures of all sorts of things that I'd never have taken, and see things I'd never look at. It's wonderful to know what's exercising planning minds around the world.

The thing is I want to do something with all this stuff. The web is wonderful but people have to find it. It's the people who are involved who are seeing things. I think I might produce a booklet or somesuch and give a copy to all the planners and creatives I know. Don't know what good it would do, or what they'd do with it, but it seems like a nice idea.

Headhunters

Now there comes a time when we all need a good headhunter. And I hope there's a good headhunter around when I next might need one. But I hope I haven't annoyed too many of them. Between the job ad on Russell's blog and here, I've had a fair few CV's and I gather there might be some unimpressed headhunters out there. Sorry about that.

But they've all been interesting CV's - and some approaches have been really innovative. I've been really blown away, in fact. And that these folks have come through these channels says oodles about them - by default, web savvy, involved in the community of planning, and Russell's site is as good as a recommendation as you need.

Perhaps, and here's the kicker, we need to build a community around our headhunters - perhaps a blog or knowledge exchange or virtual book club - where we can keep in touch with our headhunters and they, us. And jobs and candidates somehow magically get connected up. It's time to get with the programme.

Expression or the anticipation of expression?

The Slides.JPG
Originally uploaded by alt.planning.

What is art in a commercial context? The Tate Modern was absolutely heaving, which is great, slides are a great thing, but are they art?

There's a lovely story about Leo Burnett in Sydney who kept inflated the emergency evacuation slide in the building's atrium, just for the fun of it. Good for them.

Should advertising be more arty or more fun - or are they not mutually exclusive concepts?

Brand expertise.

Brand expertise.JPG
Originally uploaded by alt.planning.

A nice example - of a sticker on the side of an escalator, away from public view, of something the brand (Tate Modern) knows that we might not.

Art envy

There's an exhibition of Moleskine notebooks by artists, film-makers, architects and so on. I saw this one in the Conran Shop but I think they're at Waterstone's in Piccadilly too.

Now I like the surprise of seeing something a bit unsual like this. But I don't know if Moleskines are just analog blogs - and therefore why can't they be digital instead? - or whether to feel envious because I can't paint.

My work Moleskine has a few mind maps in it but it's just too dull by comparison.

(PS this is now my 4th most viewed shot in Flickr. Memo to self - take more Moleskine shots)

The future of TV advertising? Admovies: a theory.

It seems like planning is trying to position itself (sensibly) as the driving force, or glue, for the new media landscape. You know, how to balance TV with digital with all the other channels, fragmentation and consumer media-pull.

I was talking to Richard today about what the new communication model looks like and remembered some of the things people talked about tha the APG Big Thinking day last week. That TV is still tremdously powerful to touch people's emotive core, that even in a consumer-pull media world, repetition is still important. Jonathan from PHD was talking about how TV needs to borrow more from Hollywood. My agency is built on 'entertainment' in communications as a core principle, so I agree.

So here's a theory, I think we're going to see much longer TV spots in the new world. We're going to see a renaissance of great TV commercials, but they're going to epxlore a broader emotional spectrum - be scary, shocking, sad, funny - all in the same spot. Mini-movies. 3 minutes, 6 minutes or whatever. More like BMW films but served up in ad breaks.

We haven't quite figured out what the rest of the communications might look like yet - more to follow on this. But I do think that these new spots aren't the natural province of 'TV agencies'. Just because you can tell a simple, short, one-dimensional story in 30 seconds, there's no guarantee those skills will translate to creating admovies.

Yep, Chemistry is looking for a planner, so if you are a mid-level or fairly senior planner and fancy a change to work at an independent, interesting, integrated agency, drop me a line.

And as you can see I'm loving Spell with Flickr

And the winner is...

Russell won the Big Thinking thing - kudos. I liked his analogy of planner as gardener. Someone else talked of planners as shepherds. I think the notion is that ideas need to run over a long period of time to build depth and richness, and it's often best left to the planner to tend and nurture the idea or brand. Creatives, discuss... 

So to the APG's Battle of Big Thinking. I know we're all into Robert Heath at the moment but I was struck by how many delegates talked about Cognitive Neuroscience. Is this the superstring theory for integrated communications in a fragmented media world? If ad planners are basically psychologists, digital folks are behaviouralists and direct planners accountants (John's analogy), maybe the new integrated comms planner is the neuroscientist?

Ivan from Naked quoted only 7% of the received message is proposition, the rest is context-influenced. He talked about how media planning should be less about how to deliver a message in a channel (actually the province of all integrated planners, not just media), and more about how that message will be received, where, when, and what the recipient will do with it. I'll buy that. So insights become more about message reception, collection (from consumer-pull channels like YouTube), and message propagation based on the understanding of cognitive processes.

I can see a lot of planners scurrying off to relook at their creative briefs after today (me included).

15 megs of Fame

What is the probability of getting on TV, GooTube, or a tourist's camera if you live in London? Went for a family dinner, ended up being filmed by the BBC. I suppose things like this are going to become more common as the appetite for content increases

Went along to Russell's coffee morning today.
Nice to meet so many interesting folks. I wonder, do any other disciplines in advertising (etc) meet like this? Is there a secret brotherhood of plannerliness? (I think so, actually)
I've lost the link to another planning blog someplace, where the guy made a connection between coffee and creativity; that the coffee houses of old were the epicentre of creative discourse and ideas. Nescafe, there's a brief for you.

Planning Eye

This is from a fun little group we've just got going on Flickr, called Planning Eye. OK Stan, who shot this, isn't a planner, he's a creative, and a good one, in Melbourne. Stan has a great eye and makes a great observation. If you want to join the fun in our little flickr group follow this link.
Anyone know if this is Banksy, or an Aussie equivalent?

Art in Ads

The debate about whether ad agencies are moving towards media arts is interesting (see a bunch of posts below) but perhaps cyclical. The industry's way of promoting products used to be to find a graphic artist with a certain style that you'd associate with your brand and bingo you had a poster.

IMHO, there's not enough of this sort of stuff anymore.

Why?

Perhaps there's a tyranny of copywriters that insists on ideas that come from headlines first (I did a stint as a copywriter once, so I can say that in some safety) - or perhaps Design (as distinct from art direction) is not a natural part of the creative team composition. I was reminded of a Nike client briefing someone told me about once where the creative team invited to the presentation was a designer and a planner. Maybe, with the advent of more design-led creatives coming through from digital agencies into the mainstream, we'll see more art-led ideas?

Hand Paintedness

At the Alchemist by Ben Jonson, I was struck by the scene where Subtle draws a sign for the shop keeper. I like hand drawn or painted signs. I do think that if brands are searching for a little authenticity, they could do worse than get their staff or whoever to hand paint a few signs. Maybe it's why some people like their local coffee shop more than Starbucks - the human touch.