DennisDemori.com

The most recent information that I’ve been able to find says that about 30% of American internet users read blogs. Although many Planners are tech savvy and write blogs themselves, I think there’s still lots of Planners out there who don’t know how to use certain tools on the web.

What is an RSS feed?

I’m going to skip the technical definition and explain it as simply as I can. RSS feeds are a faster, more simpler way of getting the information you want from websites and blogs. Instead of going to your favorite sites to check when they update, you can just use a simple tool called an RSS feed so that THEY send the info to YOU. Awesome, right?

via SearchEngineLand

Let’s say you have 10 websites you check every day, like Talent Imitates, Genius Steals. Now, instead of checking TIGS every day to see if Faris has updated his blog, you can just “subscribe” to his blog, so that whenever he posts something new, you’ll know through your RSS Reader. Think of it like a magazine subscription.

Why would you subscribe to someone’s blog instead of just going to the site and checking it every day? Quite simply, it saves tons  of time. I read about 50 different blogs on a consistent basis, so by using an RSS Reader I get my “feeds” sent to me in a central location. It’s super convenient and especially for a Planner who needs to scan through lots of information every day it’s a huge help.

How To Subscribe

There’s a bunch of different RSS Readers out there – I use Google Reader. GReader is great because it’s simple to use and you can scan the headlines of all your feeds quickly.

There’s basically two main ways to subscribe to a site’s feeds.

1) If you look at the TIGS blog you’ll see a little orange icon (like the one at the top of this blog post) where it says “Subscribe to my feed.” If you click on the link it’ll take you to this page, where it gives you the option of which RSS Reader you want to use. If you choose Google, just select “Subscribe Now.”

You will now be taken to another page that lets you add this feed to your Google Reader with one click. That’s it.

2) The other way to subscribe is to copy the site’s link: http://farisyakob.typepad.com/ and entering it where it says “Add A Subscription” in Google Reader.

So that’s it. Depending on whether you use a Mac or PC, Firefox, Internet Explorer (or some other browser) you may want to use a different RSS Reader, but GReader is a great place to start. The video below from Common Craft also has an explanation for RSS feeds.

To subscribe to MY blog, just follow the steps above.

I was in Midtown Miami today and I took a few minutes to check out the PEDESTRIART urban art project on display on the lawn across from the shops. It’s in kind of an odd location – no one that I know of walks across the area, nevertheless, it’s cool and different.

According to the artist it is,

“…a public art installation of a series of street signs utilizing the artist’s own iconography.”

I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s an interesting collection of common street signs with assorted graphics on them.

Check out my Flickr set for “PEDESTRIART” for more pics.

The videos below have more info and an interview with Cuban artist Leonel Matheu

via ffffound!

I recently read a Fast Company article from a couple years ago titled “The 6 Myths of Creativity.” Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, has been studying creativity for nearly 30 years. Her research found 6 “myths” that help us understand the thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.

1) Creativity comes from creative types

“The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation — people who are turned on by their work often work creatively — is especially critical.”

One of the things we’ve been told at MAS is that everyone can contribute creative ideas. It’s not just Creative teams that come up with ideas – Planners should be unafraid to make suggestions. In my experience with creative teams, they appreciate ideas from their Planners. It makes for a more collaborative effort where everyone contributes and participates.

2) Money is a creativity motivator

“Bonuses and pay-for-performance plans can even be problematic when people believe that every move they make is going to affect their compensation. In those situations, people tend to get risk averse. Of course, people need to feel that they’re being compensated fairly. But our research shows that people put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized. People want the opportunity to deeply engage in their work and make real progress. So it’s critical for leaders to match people to projects not only on the basis of their experience but also in terms of where their interests lie.“

3) Time pressure fuels creativity

“Time pressure stifles creativity because people can’t deeply engage with the problem. Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.”

In my MAS experience, one of the biggest challenges we have on a weekly basis is ongoing multiple projects. Although getting things done is a whole other subject in and of itself, it mainly comes down to focusing on what’s most important. From that thought you can develop priorities, agendas, task lists, etc.

4) Fear forces breakthroughs

“…creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety…One day’s happiness often predicts the next day’s creativity.”

5) Competition beats collaboration

“In our surveys, we found that creativity takes a hit when people in a work group compete instead of collaborate. The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. But when people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information. And that’s destructive because nobody in an organization has all of the information required to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

I find the environment at MAS the perfect example. Although I wouldn’t share my actual strategy with another team, I don’t see anything wrong with sharing my ideas or information.

Why? Because everyone interprets information differently; whether it’s a client brief, a quote you found online, or an Annual Report, people will make different observations.

As Thomas Edison said,

“Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.”

As Planners, especially with the ubiquitous nature of the web, we really do have access to a lot of the same information. It’s in how we interpret that information – our insights – that we are able to come up with unique recipes even though they’re based on a lot of the same ingredients.

6) A streamlined organization is a creative organization

“Of course, the opposite is true: Creativity suffers greatly during a downsizing…Anticipation of the downsizing was even worse than the downsizing itself — people’s fear of the unknown led them to basically disengage from the work. More troubling was the fact that even five months after the downsizing, creativity was still down significantly.”

Shout out to my Planner buddy Jody Taylor on this post!

People just LOVE to post videos of themselves dancing. Obviously, not everyone’s video gets viewed by millions of people, but these videos have the qualities that make them spread like wildfire:

1. They’re simple

2. They’re interesting

3. They’re easily shared

Here’s the newest one I discovered today followed by some classics:

Last night we spent an incredible lecture session with Richard Montura, a Strategic Planner from La Comunidad in Miami. He didn’t come to us to specifically talk about Planning, but to discuss his observations from traveling all over the world for two years.

His story was fun, inspiring and entertaining. To paraphrase one of my Planner friends, “I thought I knew a lot about this stuff, but he made me feel like a child all over again.”

From the author’s website:

“Nearly 10 years into the 21st century, a new creative world is forming.

Very soon, a lot of the world’s best art, fashion, music, entertainment, media, design, and style will be coming to you from Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The BRICs have been tipped by Goldman Sachs (who coined the acronym) to become four of the six largest economies in the world by 2050. But it isn’t just about the money.

BRIC Pop reveals another side to these four countries: their rising creative and cultural power. It’s just as significant as their economic story, and has major implications for entertainment, media, creative and marketing industries in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Plus, it’s fun.

I spent two years traveling to 42 cities, from Ahmedabad to Yekaterinburg, discovering first-hand how the BRICs have shifted from exporters of products, services, and commodities to arbiters of pop cultural ‘cool’.”

Visit the BRIC POP site

via sciondriver

Interesting study from San Francisco State University says that,
“An experience may generate positive memories that outlast the allure of a new material possession. That’s in part because the initial joy of acquiring a new object, such as a new car, fades over time as people become accustomed to seeing it every day, experts said. Experiences, on the other hand, continue to provide happiness through memories long after the event occurred.”

What does this mean for brands? Although I believe the word “experience” is being tossed around a lot these days in strategy sessions, I think this study is further proof that brands can expand beyond products attributes to engage their consumers.

“What’s the brand’s highest calling?” is something we had discussed in the first couple weeks at MAS. It’s the difference between Pepsi being about soda and Pepsi being a brand that “refreshes everything.”

Article via current.com

This weekend some of the Planners got together for the Miami Design District’s Art + Design Night, a monthly event that takes place on the second Saturday of every month. The Design District’s website says,

“Visit the Design District and experience a gallery walk featuring inspiring art, design, music, cocktails, dining and shopping.”

It’s one of the cooler and better cultural events in Miami. Basically, you get to walk around participating art galleries and trendy furniture stores to check out their goods. Some of the venues provide free food, drinks and even music.

The art featured is predominantly from local artists and you even get the opportunity to meet many of the artists themselves.

Click the link below to check out my photos.

Dennis Demori’s Flickr Set – Art + Design Night in Miami’s Design District

via ky_olsen

Every Monday night at MAS we have a new guest speaker(s) from the industry. Some speakers tend to focus on the work their agency has done, while others spend more time talking about ad careers, develop skills and/or current industry trends.

My favorite presentation so far was this past Wednesday night. The speakers were:

Mat Zucker, VP, Executive Creative Director at Agency.com

Bryan Fuhr, Director of Strategy at AKQA

The main topic of the evening was listening, and how it is so essential for effective communication. I used to be terrible at this – I would constantly talk over people because I was more interested in telling them what I knew than paying attention to what they knew. What I’ve realized over the past few years and what Mat and Bryan discussed Monday night is that some of the best communicators also listen very intently.

I think when two people speak at the same time it’s like two cars driving towards each other on the same side of the road. One eventually HAS to step aside otherwise you arrive at an impasse where neither will arrive at the desired destination.

It’s the same with conversations. There needs to be a constant and healthy rapport back and forth.

When I worked in sales I learned that it’s actually the person that ASKS the questions that has control of the conversation and the sale, NOT the person speaking. I used the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, so I would only speak and ask questions for about 20% of the conversation. The rest of the time I was listening to uncover my client’s needs and understand the situation.

In “Perfect Pitch,” author Jon Steel says that the most important lesson he learned making new business presentations and in life in general was this:

“…successful communication and persuasion is not, as most people think, about being good at talking, having the gift of the gab. No, the best communicators, the best persuaders, are the best at what they do because invariably they are good listeners.”

Moving on, here’s the slides from Monday night’s lectures. Thanks to Bryan Fuhr for allowing me to share these.

A lot of people say that this is their favorite Ted Talk, and I really enjoyed it too. I just watched it for my first time today. A few quotes from the presentation:

“Kids will take a chance – they’re not frightened of being wrong…If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

“Picasso once said all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. We don’t grow into creativity..we grow out of it.”

“If you think of it the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued or it was actually stigmatized.”

“We know 3 things about intelligence: 1) It’s diverse 2)It’s dynamic 3) It’s distinct”

It’s interesting how right on Sir Ken Robinson is during this talk. He basically says the educational system – not just in the U.S.,  but everywhere in the world, is fundamentally flawed, because it mirrors itself after its educators. Professors, he says, “Live in their heads.” They’re focused on Mathematics, Literature and Science, and the Arts are always placed at the bottom of the educational hierarchy. As a result, students who excel at the Arts and creativity aren’t celebrated – they’re perceived as inadequate. This thinking stifles our creativity instead of nurturing it.

via koka_sexton

The Planners have a pretty full schedule at MAS between classes, lectures and group meetings. Here’s what it looks like for Week 5. It varies a little bit each week, but this should give you a good idea of what it’s like.

Our week basically ends on Wednesday nights and starts on Thursdays. Wednesday  nights we have presentations and we showcase our fully executed strategic and creative campaigns.

Thursday: I worked all day on this week’s assignment for Campbell Soup. I probably spent about 10 hours doing research at home, reading everything from Campbell Soup’s Annual Report to Wikipedia. My Planning partner did her own research. We spoke around 3pm for an hour to discuss our research up to that point and discuss what we wanted our strategy to be for the client. Around 9pm we emailed each other our own version of the Creative Brief, then I combined both versions and revised them again, taking out redundancies, rewording the brief, reducing it to the most essential info, and reviewing our strategy again to make sure we were on the same page. Our day ended around 11pm.

Friday:

• 11:30am – Meet w/ Planning partner
• Noon – Meet w/ Creative Team
• 4pm – Planning lecture

I met with my Planning partner at 11:30am to review our Creative Briefs again and talk about how we wanted to brief our Creative team. Our meeting began at Noon and took about an hour. Then we spoke for another half hour about our final project for the quarter.

I was a little nervous about meeting with our Creatives because we had all been in different groups for the 1st four weeks. One of the biggest challenges people have at MAS is working in teams. If you’re lucky, like I’ve been, you get a solid team where everyone contributes, gets along, presents well and has great ideas. If you’re not so lucky, you need to figure out how to make it work because when you work in an agency you’re not going to be able to choose who you work with either.

This is a fact of life: sometimes you’re forced to work with people you don’t get along with and you need to do your best to make sure the job gets done.

Then me and my Planning partner headed over to the local supermarket to check out the store display for Campbell Soup to get a better idea of how things work at the point of sale. We wanted to see the variety of products but also understand what the prices were for all the kinds of soups they sell.

I stopped at my apartment for a little bit but I had to be back at MAS at 4pm for our Planning lecture (which is basically every Friday night). Our Planning instructor this week is Beth Knight with Tracey Locke in NYC. She provided an overview of what we were going to do over the weekend and discussed Qualitative analysis.

Saturday:

• 9:30am – Class at focus group facility
• Afternoon (around 2-4pm) – Go to Vitamin Shoppe to conduct Qualitative research
• Evening – Prepare brief for Sunday morning

Usually we have class on Saturday mornings from 10am-1pm, but this weekend was different. We met at a focus group facility at 9:30am. We were given an assignment the night before, and we received further instructions in the morning. The new client was Vitamin Shoppe, and our task was to create a strategy to increase female customers. Before leaving the facility, we also participated in mock focus group interviews to get a better understand of how the process works.

We wrapped up around Noon, and my group decided to grab lunch before working on our assignment. To help us develop our strategy, all the groups were assigned various Vitamin Shoppe locations to visit as part of our market research; our location was in South Miami. We walked around the store and took pics, interviewed staff members and store patrons. I was happy to put my new Flip Ultra Camcorder to use and I ended up using it as a voice recorder with one of the staff members.

We spent the rest of the afternoon developing our strategies and our creative briefs. I also did a little work on our current Campbell Soup assignment, and the day ended around 11pm.

Sunday:

• 9:30am – Class
• 1pm – Meeting w/ creatives

My day began with class at 9:30am when we presented our findings and our creative briefs for Vitamin Shoppe. We received feedback from our Planning instructor Beth, and finished with a little Planning Q&A session. Class was over at Noon, and then I was recruited by some of the creatives to help them model for an assignment. It was fun but I think I should keep my Planning job (when I get one).

At 1pm I had a meeting with my Planning partner and Creative team to review our progress on the Campbell Soup campaign. We discussed our key insight and executional ideas. We also discussed our NYTimes assignment briefly. Our meeting took about 45 min and we parted ways around 1:45pm.

Soccer is really popular on Sundays, and the faculty encourages everyone to play. I really needed a break so I’ll confess to skipping it to take a nap at home and recharge my batteries.

On the agenda for the rest of Sunday:

• get some reading done
• work on blog posts
• finish assembling supporting info for Campbell Soup insight
• keep researching Vitamin Shoppe assignment if I still have time at the end of the day

Monday:

• 12pm: Special Planning class with Marco from Concept Cafe Advertising. Should last about 2 hours
• After class meet with Planning partner to work on Campbell Soup presentation. Should last about 2 hours.
• 5pm: Monday Night Lecture with guest speaker. Should last about an hour.
• Quick meeting with Creatives to monitor progress on executions.

Tuesday:

• 12pm: Meeting with Creatives
• 7pm-9pm: Planning class to work on our book
• Spent all morning and afternoon outside of meetings and class working on the PowerPoint presentation for Campbell Soup.

Wednesday:

• 5pm – Meet w/ Planning partner to review/rehearse presentation
• Presentation class at 6:30pm

Wed. morning I spoke with my Planning partner. I sent her the PowerPoint presentation for review, and started making revisions when I received her comments. My revisions basically took all afternoon.

I got to school around 5pm to review our slides and rehearse for our presentation. Around 6pm our Creatives joined us for a final review.

Everyone is presenting Wednesday night. It’s about 10 teams, and unfortunately our turn wasn’t until about 10pm. I’ll save the discussion about Wednesday’s presentation night for another time; that’s a blog post of its own.

So that’s it. A week as an Acount Planner at MAS. I never found a detailed breakdown like this when I was considering the Account Planning program, so I hope this helps anyone who is thinking of attending the Boot Camp.

If you have any questions, you can ask them in the comments or follow me on Twitter.

One of the key insights author Elizabeth Gilbert has goes back to the times of Ancient Rome and Greece. In those days, people believed “genius” came from a divine source. This theory evolved from having genius to being a genius. She says that this tremendous pressure to live up to the expectations of being a genius puts an unnatural burden and expectation on creative people, which inevitably leads to their burnout or early demise.

She says,”I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the past 500 years.”Although I don’t wholeheartedly agree with her argument, I think it is important for people to distance themselves at times from their actions and behaviors to gain perspective. NOT to shun responsibility or accountability when things don’t go well, but to understand that WHAT you do will vary in success despite your greatest efforts. Creative people are often defined by their creative output (or lack of) and I think the key takeaway here is by putting less pressure on themselves they can rebound more easily and dive back into the creative process.

What do you think?

via frozenchipmunk

Fast Company recently asked former students, co-workers and friends to share their favorite life lessons from IDEO‘s founder. Here’s my favorites:

• “Success tends to focus your efforts, failure assures me that you try something different and eventually better.” — from Perry Kleban, CEO, Timbuk2

• “You’re the best version of yourself when you manage to have fun doing your work.” — from Chris Flink, IDEO

• “You can’t think your way through every problem. Trying things and engaging people helps you get unstuck.” — from George Kembel, executive director, Stanford d.school

• “Make the human element as important as the technical and business elements.” — GK

• “Your failures interest me far more than your success.” — PK

• “David helped me realize that it’s not what you work on, but whom you work with that makes all the difference. This, ironically, resonates even at a company that tackles some of the most exciting creative challenges in the world.” — CF

• “Think with your hands, build something or try something, then talk about it, NOT the reverse.” — PK

Here’s the rest of the career lessons.

Further info:

Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner: David Kelley

The Art of Innovation: Lessons In Creativity From IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating The Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization

via stephmcg

I read constantly. If I was to sum up why in three words, I’d say:

1. Information
2. Inspiration
3. Ideas

I’ve gotten a lot more studious about my reading over the last couple years. I make diligent use of my highlighter and write notes in the margins, and flag useful pages so I can reference them quickly. I’ve also been writing summaries for each book to make sure I have a thorough understanding of the subject – this is a great tool to find certain concepts and quotes that I may want to locate later on.  Plus everything is saved online so I always have access to my notes.

As structured as I am with my reading, I still tend to get backed up here and there. As of today, I’ve got about 356 articles bookmarked on Delicious that I haven’t been able to get to yet. I also read about 50 different blogs.

In the meantime I’ve been accumulating a number of unread books on my nightstand. Here’s what next in my literary queue:

The ones I’ve got next to my bed are basically a mix of evolutionary biology/psychology, sports and marketing.

You can’t see the name on the really skinny one on top – it’s called “Zig Ziglar’s Little Book of Big Quotes.” I usually carry it in my book bag. It has lots of inspirational, pithy quotes like,

“Positive thinking won’t let you do anything but it will you do everything better than negative thinking will”

and

“The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.”

Right now I’m finishing up “Bringing Down The House” (which is what the movie “21″ was based on) and getting started on “Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” by Jon Steel. I try to alternate what I read since I believe there’s a lot we can learn from other industries, subjects and even fiction.

Thanks Libby Ander ( @libbyander ) for the original idea for this post.

What’s on your nightstand? Share some pics!

Further reading:

Ryan Holiday – Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level”

via jmilles

I’m just going to dive right in and assume you know what Twitter is. If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, view the links at the bottom of this post.

My first Tweet was back on Sept. 10th, 2008. It took a few months to really start getting a hang of it. If you’re not following (and being followed) by at least a couple dozen people I think it’s hard to wrap your head around it.

Originally I used Twhirl for a couple weeks but then I switched to TweetDeck and I couldn’t be happier. I also use TwitterBerry occasionally on my Blackberry. The interface on TweetDeck is terrific and it makes it MUCH easier to segment people and track certain conversations. Right now I’ve set up two special groups – in one group I only follow Planners (to network and keep abreast of what’s going on in the Planning community) and in the other I follow non-Planners.

The majority of people I follow are Account Planners, work at Ad agencies, or are involved in Branding, Marketing and/or Social Media. I also follow a few companies like Evernote and Drop.io to stay aware of product updates.

So here’s the main ways I’m using Twitter right now:

• First and foremost, I try to focus on creating value for others. I think karma will somehow work its way back to me.
• As a second RSS Feed: There’s a lots of conversations and links being passed around Twitter. This is a great way for me to stay current on news, industry trends, etc. I think of Twitter as a chat room on steroids. When I find something of value, I often share it by retweeting, emailing or posting on other sites and/or bookmarking it on Delicious for future reference.
• To share items I find interesting: articles, pics, news, stories, etc.
• To take polls/surveys: This is something I started doing recently and I think it’s a great way to do a quick “focus group.”
• I use search.twitter.com when I want to find out about specific topics. I’m in school right now, and Twitter has been useful when I want to get some consumer opinions on clients I’m working on, like Red Mango or Mtn Dew.
• Building my network: I occassionally use Twitter to direct people to my other online locations, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning and my blog.
• Originally I was a spectator on the sidelines, but over the past few months I’ve started to join the conversation.

What I don’t do:

• I don’t follow everyone just because they follow me. I’m sorry. There’s just NO way I could possibly follow thousands of people. I don’t have the time or the interest. Twitter’s just another social networking tool – it’s not my life. There’s certain topics/industries that I’m just not interested in either. In fairness to time – mine and yours – I can’t follow everyone. I prefer to keep my focus on who I follow because I want to build stronger relationships within those circles.
• I rarely talk about day-to-day activities. You won’t know what time I woke up or that I’m bored/tired/sleepy/hungry. Again, I think the best way to use Twitter is by constantly adding value.

Even though we can get caught up in the technology aspect, I think at the core of Twitter or any other social site is information sharing and relationship building. The people who take advantage of these two principles will be able to get the most out of the site.

You can follow me here on Twitter.

For further info, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s excellent blog post: Web Strategy, What The Web Strategist Should Know About Twitter

Twitter on Wikipedia

Beginner’s Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter by Zappos.com  CEO Tony Hsieh

Chris Brogan: Newbies Guide to Twitter

Chris Brogan: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

UPDATE – FEB. 15th, 2009

Excellent new post from Brian Solis: Finding The Tweet Spot, Top Tips For Building Twitter Relationships

via kevindooley

I’m just going to give a super quick review of Week Four, since I want to post about some other things and I’ve been playing catch up on these Week in Review posts.

Our 5th Planner instructor kicks off with a lecture tonight and I’m really excited to hear what he/she has to say. We’re also visiting a focus group facility tomorrow (Sat) morning so I’m looking forward to that too.

Anyway, looking back, our Planning instructor for Week Four was Michael Fanuele with Euro RSCG. Michael’s class structure and style was a lot looser than the other instructors. The best thing about him was he was brutally honest and didn’t sugarcoat anything. He helped us get a better understanding of office politics, the interview process, what we should put in our books, and what Planning was all about.

A few things that stood out:

• Two of the most important Planner skills are: 1) Clarity 2) Separating creative ideas from executional ideas
• The best Planners are the best students
• When looking for an agency to work for: 1) find a mentor who will spend time with you 2) look for the opportunity to work on pitch after pitch after pitch so you can hone your skills

I’ll probably update this post later but that’s all I’m going to say for now.

Our Planning instructor for Week Three was Mick McCabe with Deutsch NYC. Looking over my notes, I realized that Mick’s classes were FULL of great quotes, comments, opinions, etc. Here’s a quick summary:

• Good briefs are emblematic of what you need to be a good Planner
• The Creative Brief is the bridge between the Client Brief and the Creative Execution
• Empathy is an important skill for Planners (primarily for Creatives)
• You need to think in headline thoughts and catchphrases. Write the idea down first (even if written poorly) and improve it again and again
• When you write a brief, clients should say, “We never would have thought of that!”
• There’s an increasing focus in the industry on behavioral results: It’s not just about changing perceptions – are people going to DO something?
• The best Planners are those who really understand people and what they’re like
• Planners need to understand and be involved in Media

Telling a Good Story for Your Presentations:

• It should build to the key strategic idea
• It should be blatantly obvious and make sense when you arrive at that point

Three terrific and very different Planning instructors in three weeks. It’s been a really great progression so far, and each week we’re learning and gathering more tools to put to use.

In Week Two our Planning Instructor for the weekend was Eliza Esquivel, Planning Director with TBWAChiatDay in NYC. Eliza started off with a great quote from Sun Tzu:

If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can come out of hundreds of battles without danger.

How does this relate to Planning? I think the emphasis hear is on research. As a Planner, you need to know your client inside out. You need to know your client’s competitors too. Find out what people are saying on Twitter, the history of the brand, read annual reports, and know more about the brand than the client’s Marketing Department know themselves. When you’ve done your research, you can speak confidently and with conviction.

This is one of the things me and my Planning partner have discussed multiple times. Speak with conviction. If you don’t believe strongly in your strategy, then why should your client? As Chris Owens told us in Week One, “The Planner needs to be the most confident person in the room.”

Eliza also talked about a few Planning Principles. Here they are:

1. Walk in stupid every day: Be humble. Be flexible with theideas you’ve inherited.
2. The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.
3. “Be cautious of worshiping the tea pot, rather than drinking the tea.”
4. Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident. That’s Latin for “If you can see far it’s because you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Lastly, one of the main concepts Eliza drilled into us was the Disruption methodology. I’m not going to go into the details right now, so I’ll just say read the book.

Disruption: Overcoming Conventions and Shaking Up the Marketplace by Jean-Marie Dru.

Eliza was a terrific Planning instructor for Week Two. She gave us LOTS of feedback, and one thing that still stands out in my mind was that I watched her taking studious notes during our presentations. She really cared about helping us improve and I’m thankful for her help.

Clever little video that was a finalist in AARP U@50 contest. I love the simplicity of it.

via Paul Isakson’s blog

UPDATE: Feb. 3rd

I should point out that another video by Argentinean agency TBWA/Savaglio created this concept first. It won the silver lion in the Cannes Lions Contest in 2006, which was about a year before “Lost Generation” came out.

Terrific stop-motion video:

via BuzzFeed