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Continuing the theme of the last post, we spent the week after graduation (March 24th-27th) visiting agencies all over NYC. As I listened to various senior level Planners talk about their company philosophies/cultures, their work, their approach to planning, etc., I began to notice some major themes:

1) The shift from AUDIENCE —> PARTICIPANTS. Agencies are starting to realize that they need to get people INVOLVED if they want them to buy into the brands they are building.

2) The shift from DIALOGUE —> MONOLOGUE. Agencies have come to understand that the days of shouting at people has passed; we need to encourage a conversation.

3) The shift away from TV spots as the central hub of communication. R/GA said that, “The digital periphery is now the core.” I don’t completely agree with this, but I do think that the days of building every communications campaign around a :30 second spot are over.

In my opinion, the future of advertising doesn’t have a centralized soapbox to promote your product/service. Instead, we’ll have a series of super-targeted communications spread out amongst various channels to build a “brand story” that will engage consumers.

4) The shift from Advertising solutions —> creative Business solutions. When I used to work in the lending business, Mortgage Brokers would rarely tell their customers they could get a better deal from their local bank. Direct lenders, on the other hand, would rarely recommend a Mortgage Broker. Why? Because each side was trying to preserve their own self-interests instead of focusing on what was best for the customer. 

It’s the same thing with Advertising: if you go to an Ad agency with a problem – surprise! surprise! – an Ad campaign will be the solution 10 times out of 10.

While some companies have begun to make this transition, others, like Naked, have built their business on this media-neutral method of prescribing business solutions.

5) The shift from logical/rational decision-making to emotionally-based choices. I’ve been noticing more and more Planners talk about the importance of understanding peoples’ emotions and behavioral economics, suggesting books like Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational” as Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan“. 

When I worked in sales, I learned that “selling is the transference of emotion.” The same is true in the Advertising world. If you want to get people to act a certain way, you’re not going to get very far by trying to logic them to death. You just can’t underestimate the power of influencing people through emotion to guide their actions. 

To anyone who’s been reading the Advertising/Marketing/Planning blogs, none of these themes are new news. If you’re new to these concepts, however, it’s important to familiarize yourself with them because this is the future of the business. Not only that, you should know WHY the industry is going through these shifts, since “past is prologue.”

     

Madison Ave Stoplight

Originally uploaded by joey.parsons

The week after graduation from Miami Ad School we had the option to visit a dozen agencies in NYC.

BBH
AKQA
Wieden + Kennedy
Euro RSCG
R/GA
JWT
Y&R
TBWA/Chiat/Day
Digitas
Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners
Anomaly
Naked
Deutsch (#13 – we set this visit up ourselves)

I can’t stress enough how valuable it was to have the option to visit so many well-known agencies AND meet with so many Planners in such a short period of time.

I’m going to provide some of the highlights of our visits, and the next post is going to round up some overall themes I noticed.

BBH – “Where is an audience without a brand?” The idea that communities already exist – it’s up to brands to harness them.

AKQA – “Planning is creating a story with a series of communications.”

W+K – When building your book/in interviews, “Show perspective of your ideas, your strategic insights, and POV of every project you work on.” Also, memorize your best case study.

R/GA – You never want to have a dead end – if you have enough (or keep uncovering) data you can continue to build on a campaign.

JWT – “Don’t interrupt what people are interested in. BE what people are interested in. Time is the new currency.”

Y&R – “Resist the usual.”

Digitas – “The biology of decision-making is always the same, so don’t discount emotion.”

Anomaly – “It makes no sense to develop theory and pass it on to someone else. If you can create…CREATE.”

“Every piece of communication you have is media.”

“Conviction is standing up for your authenticity when it matters most.”

Naked – “Unsexy is the new sexy.”

  

School Bokeh

Originally uploaded by shinealight (taking a break)

FYI – I already graduated from Miami Ad School’s Account Planning program on March 19th, so the classes I’m writing about in these posts actually took place a few weeks ago.

I’m going to combine Weeks 9 & 10 in this post since I really want to move on to writing about Agency Tours in NYC the week after graduation and some other things.

Anyway, our Planning instructor for Week 9 was Neal Arthur from Wieden + Kennedy NYC. Neal started us off with a great quote,

“Don’t give then what they want. Give them what they never believed was possible.” — Orson Welles

A couple key things that Neal said that resonated with me were:

1) New business pitches are the best, biggest and most grueling opportunities that a Planner can have

2) Work with as many new business pitches as possible

3) When you get a new business call, it’s because something’s broken with the client

Our instructor for Week 10 was Liam from Hall & Partners, which is now primarily a brand and communications research agency. Nice quote:

“Clients often use research the same way a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support instead of illumination.” — David Ogilvy

A few things that stood out this weekend:

• Just because it’s quant doesn’t mean it can’t tell a story
• Focus groups should not be boring – they should be fun!

There are certain challenges when working with clients:

• Inertia – We’ve always done it this way
• The paradox of choice – too many ideas, with no clear way to prioritize
• Lack of resources – not enough money; not enough manpower
• Impatience – lack of willingness to take the long view & invest in the future
• Culture – heirarchy and procedure take precedence over experimentation and entrepreneurialism

Lastly, Liam pointed out that Planners are thought partners with researchers. It’s important to create a culture that truly believes good ideas can come from anywhere and prizes openness.

FYI – I already graduated from Miami Ad School on March 19th. I wanted to be a lot more timely in posting about MAS each week, but especially at the end of the program it got really difficult, so some of the upcoming posts about MAS were originally drafted a few weeks ago. 

We had two terrific speakers for this week (end).

Cliff Courtney from Zimmerman Advertising

Domenico Vitale from PI&C

They were both very generous in sharing information, so I’m just going to sum up some nuggets of wisdom they shared with us.

Cliff:

• Clients care about 2 things: 1) Cash flow 2) Shareholder value. As much as art, design and creativity have a place in this industry, we need to remember that it’s a business
• When you walk into a room you need to know the most about trends, both macro and micro
• In our strategies, we’ll be speaking with moms quite a bit since they control the majority of purchases
• We’re in the business of behavior modification
• As a Planner, start thinking about your language and how you use it; what is your personal brand?
• The opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy
• “There are no facts – only interpretations.”
• As a Planner, always question everything
• in Qualitative research, don’t interview people with a clipboard – it creates a barrier to the truth. Be personable instead.
• “Brief creatives in the contextual moment.”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
• What makes a great Planner? Three things: 1) Creativity 2) Courage 3) Curiosity

Domenico:

One of the best things we got out of Domenico was that it’s ridiculous to think that Planners can’t be creative and Creatives can’t be strategic. Ideas can come from anywhere and it’s important to draw them from everyone on the team, regardless of title or department.

I’m going to keep this post really brief since I was juggling about 5 different things when I wrote this post between assignments, preparing my book and job hunting.

We didn’t have any Planning classes for Week 6, so we ended up doubling up for Week 7. We had two instructors:

Shari Allison with Northstar Research Partners

Scott Tegethoff with Universal McCann

Shari discussed quantitative research. Quantitative is basically the numbers side of research where you analyze all sorts of metrics, like % of people currently using your product. It’s the tangible, scientific side of Planning. If you’ve ever prepared a survey then you have done quantitative research.

Scott’s topic for the weekend was “The Changing Media Landscape.” We did some group workshops together where we were given a short amount of time (less than a couple hours) to analyze a business problem and develop a strategy.

This is a very realistic situation since you may be in a position as a Planner where faster turnaround times are often needed and even expected.

That’s it. I told you this would be a really brief post, didn’t I?

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 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.

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.

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.

Our recent “mini” assignment this past week was to take photos and look for 15 letters in those photos. In other words, you might take a picture of an arch that looks like an “M” or a crack in a sidewalk that looks like a “Y.” It’s a great exercise to help you look at things differently, which is an important skill as a Planner.

I decided to take pictures of shadows around my neighborhood. I used a sidewalk, a bicycle’s spokes and a gate at my apartment. Then I cropped the photos so you can see the letter a little crisper.

Dennis Demori’s Flickr photo set: shadows

We had a lot of information thrown at us in Week One: guest lecture, brainstorming techniques, two assignments and our class schedules for the quarter.

I also met my fellow group of Planners, who are a diverse group from all over the globe, including Russia, Lithuania, Romania, Venezuela. It’s very exciting and I love the cultural mix.

Friday through Sunday (yes, we have classes on the weekends too) was Planning Overview with Chris Owens from The Richards Group. This was also when we received our 2nd assignment.

Chris Owens was absolutely terrific, and we all felt very fortunate to have him as our first instructor. It’s obvious he’s very passionate about Planning and he offered a wealth of information.

A brief summary of what we covered:

• What is Account Planning?
• Tools Every Planner Should Use
• Brand Model
• Developing The Creative Brief

One of the highlights for me was the clarification of what it means to be a Planner. Planners are not:

• the “voice of the consumer” (suggests we are a passive conduit)
• just researchers

Planners are:

• Brand & creative strategists
• Storytellers
• Trend trackers
• Idea champions
• Guides

This really only scratches the surface – I just summarized about 11 hours of in and out of class discussions. Up until MAS, most of my knowledge of Planning was through books and the web. MAS tries to create an environment that is very close to what you would experience in a real agency, and overall I think it succeeds. The opportunity to work in a team, bounce ideas off of one another and actually work on a campaign from idea to execution are invaluable.