3 Things Every Planner Should Do

It’s with a sense of trepidation that I write this post, particularly the headline. The Internet is already bursting with things you should do.  Having said that I’ve been lucky enough to get some pretty great advice that I do feel is worth passing on. So here we go, three bits of advice that I believe have significantly influenced my work (fairly immediately) and helped my career.

Work On Creative Briefs

When I was first trying to get in to advertising I had a chat with Jon Steel. He told me to get creatives to give me briefs they were working on and to present work back to them. 'You will present a lot of shit work', he told me. 'But you will learn, and stay in touch with the agency creative process. You will learn what creatives need from you. And most importantly you will become acutely aware of what makes a good, and bad brief.

There are things you can only learn by looking from another perspective.'

Subscribe To A Few Magazines

Herons In Time And Space . ‘To overcome the various technological challenges of a night-time shot, he had built two timing devices for his camera to execute the single exposure. One device moved the focus, while the other adjusted the aperture within a single frame, so both the herons and the stars were in focus. It took 74 nights in the hide before the conditions were right and it all came together.’

National Geographic could be making you a more interesting person for £1.20 an issue. Why would you not subscribe? 

It's hard to say precisely why a physical magazine is better than the Internet. Perhaps it's long articles and big pictures. Or a monthly amount to read. Or the lack of distractions. It's worth having both in your life though.

And pick up a really weird magazine every time you travel.

Write An Advertising Blog

It will force you to have regular, considered points of view on stuff outside your day to day. You’ll find out what it takes to get people to read your (*buzzword claxon*) content. It might get listed on other sites. If someone Google’s you they’ll be impressed. And It can end up giving you the edge in a job interview. …

Got any great tips? Give me a shout @LucianTrestler

P.S. If you found this at all helpful, and can find the time to share the love with other planners on twitter, I’d be hugely grateful!

The future's bright, the future's...

Orange, 1994. ‘In the future, you wont change what you say, just how you say it.’ 

In the future a lot will be different BUT some things will be the same as they’ve always been. And some of these things will continue to be the fundamental tenets of planning. In my opinion, some of these things being;

Unchanging man

Hard to believe this will become any less important.

What makes a great idea

‘At BBH we aim to deliver intelligence and magic.

We don’t believe that an idea is great unless it’s delivered off the right strategy and we don’t consider a strategy worthwhile unless it leads to inspiring work. Intelligence AND magic are mutually reinforcing’. 

Understanding this process will continue to lead to great ideas.

The art of creating power

Sir Lawrence Freedman defines strategy as the art of creating power. Notably, not a science. And in order to do this it must be continuous. It must carry on after you get punched in the mouth. Strategy (over planning) is ‘the evolution of the big idea through changing circumstances’.  Changing circumstances being the operative phrase here.

Consistency>Distinctiveness>Fame>Success

“A brand cannot be distinctive if it is not consistent." And communications will not increase a brand’s fame if they aren’t distinctive. Which is not great seeing as increasing brand fame is the most profitable objective for communications. And although this pattern is reflective of the findings of the marketing book du jour, ‘How Brands Grow’ by Byron Sharp, it is a pattern that has long been known by brands. Just look at the Catholic church.

In summary, what we have learnt will not one day become useless when some one proclaims that ‘X is dead’.

Quite the opposite.

In an uncertain future, knowing how to apply certainty will make strategy more valuable than ever.

Uncertainty + Certainty = Opportunity

*This article was originally published on BBH Labs within a larger article. To read the whole thing, which includes two other points of view from fellow BBHers Shib Hussain and Melanie Arrow, click here.

SHORT AND SWEET #1

PRODUCT INNOVATION

Forget taxidermy, now you can mount fresh flowers on your walls. 

THAT VIDEO YOU'VE GOTTA SEE



3 minute music video shot in 5 seconds.

PIC OF THE WEEK

OUTSTANDING PROJECT

Be amazed in 30 seconds

GOLDEN OLDIE

The story goes with this one that the client said no, Saatchi's shot it anyway and the client hated it so much they lost the account and it never really aired.

And that's all for now. If you enjoyed the post and could give it a shout out on twitter I'll love ya foreva!

The Theory Of Advertising Relativity

CONSISTENCY⇒DISTINCTIVENESS⇒FAME⇒SUCCESS

   The catholic church is probably one of the greatest examples of this pattern.

As a planner and Byron Sharp evangelist, I am often thinking about how to increase the consistency of creative work because consistency increases the effectiveness of communications over time. "A brand cannot be distinctive if it is not consistent." And communications will not increase a brand’s fame if they aren’t distinctive. Which is not great seeing as increasing brand fame is the most profitable objective for communications.

Sadly the word ‘consistency’ is probably the least appealing word a creative can hear. It sounds like a constraint, a formula, the enemy of new, brave and exciting. Basically the opposite of creativity.

I whole-heartedly disagree.

I see the pattern of - consistency⇒distinctiveness⇒fame⇒success – in creativity from churches and Hollywood to graffiti, in YouTube channels and garage music. And there’s a lot we can learn from it.

To be clear I am not attributing all of the success below to consistency, an overwhelming part of it is that it’s all fucking great.  But when you consider what has been kept consistent, in the context of how the creative is experienced, there’s a lot to learn.

Everything in Wes Anderson’s movies, from the opening titles, to the types of characters,  actors, stories, dialogue, colours etc etc is born from one consistent style. Yes other directors have styles but not like this.

Through this consistency he has created a movie franchise around himself as a director, rather than around a story or character as is traditional. It’s the next Wes Anderson movie, not the next Harry Potter or Bond.

And his box office takings show extraordinarily consistent growth, akin to a successful movie franchise, when compared to successful directors like Spielberg or Nolan who are up and down like a yoyo.

Established in 2011, Majestic Casual was one of the first music blogs on YouTube spanning genres including deep house, hip-hop, indie and pop.  99% of their music uploads have no video content, just a static image and ‘majestic’ in white. In that ‘what should I listen to next’ moment, seeing that branding massively increases the likelihood of trying something new or spotting something you like, as ‘majestic’ is instantly noticeable in YouTube’s sidebar. It's a decision you often want to make quickly and this helps you do it. 

Majestic Casual has a total of nearly 600million views, with a guarantee that each individual video will climb into the high hundred thousands, if not millions. This approach has subsequently been copied by a lot of other YouTube channels, although no brands with a marketing budget as far as I can tell.

Onto DJ EZ, widely regarded as the greatest garage DJ of all time, who is still hugely successful despite the rest of the genre practically dying out. He’s the only DJ I know of who’s got what is essentially a branded audio jingle that he starts every single set with. It can often be heard during as well.  Classically this is what Radio stations do, EZ has just applied the thinking to his own work. Have a listen. You just can’t help noticing it and remembering it.

A shrewd move considering he is always playing through someone else’s media channel, be that a radio station, YouTube channel or nightclub. By comparison all other DJ’s introductions sound the same.

Ben Eine fell in love with the alphabet and subsequently created a new approach to graffiti. In line with being ruthlessly consistent in search of fame, traditionally graffiti writers will paint the same word over and over and over again, not necessarily in the same style though. Eine painted different letters everywhere, but they all explored the same style of typography. His rise to fame was meteoric, commercial success followed and David Cameron even gave one of his prints to Barack Obama as a present.

I'm not saying be consistent for consistency's sake. I'm saying let's stop seeing it as a creative problem and start seeing it as a tool to get famous.

What do you think? Give me a shout @LucianTrestler

And if you found this interesting and could find it in your heart to give me a shout out on twitter I'll love ya forever!

Sources:

Byron Sharp on twitter, @ProfByron

Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, what marketers don't know.

Les Binet & Peter Field, Marketing in the era of accountability.

www.boxofficemojo.com