The Planning Lab

The Planning Lab has moved. Reset your RSS.

I've moved this blog to a Wordpress site which you will find here: www.theplanninglab.com. See you there! 

The Planning Lab has moved. Reset your RSS.

I've moved this blog to a Wordpress site which you will find here: www.theplanninglab.com. See you there! 

You ' re not innovative

This guy is.

Key success factor

 
ffffound

Key success factor

ffffound

The year in numbers

 

The year in numbers

 

Post modern pepper

 

Salt or pepper shakers are usually pretty dull. Unless you can make believe it's heroin you're sprinkling on your pasta. 

 

Post modern pepper

Salt or pepper shakers are usually pretty dull. Unless you can make believe it's heroin you're sprinkling on your pasta.

Swedish Planner salary survey 2009

Here are the results from the Swedish planner salary survey. Many thanks to everybody who took part! I hope you'll find it useful. And here's a downloadable PDF. 

Swedish Planner salaries 2009

Löneenkät 2009

View more presentations from The Planning Lab.

Here are the results from the Swedish planner salary survey. Many thanks to everybody who took part! I hope you’ll find it useful. And here’s a downloadable PDF.

Swedish planners!

 
I'm currently conducting a salary survey for Swedish planners. Hopefully, we will be better prepared for next year's salary talks. So, if you're a planner working in Sweden, go here. And do spread the word! 

Swedish planners!

 
I'm currently conducting a salary survey for Swedish planners. Hopefully, we will be better prepared for next year's salary talks. So, if you're a planner working in Sweden, go here. And do spread the word! 

Entertainment is king

New Stella channel from Mother.

Technology doesn't only let us create wonderful new applications and platforms. It's also a good friend for pushing good old content. 

As technology becomes commoditized at a fast pace, there's no intrinsic value of selecting media for any other sake than efficiency. The real agency challenge is therefore not to be innovative per se, but ability to exploit innovation. 

Two of my favorites when it comes to content:

Get Your Baskeball On for Nike from Wieden + Kennedy.

The Life for Halo ODST 3 from T.A.G San Francisco.

Entertainment is king

Technology doesn’t only let us create wonderful new applications and platforms. It’s also a good friend for pushing good old content.

As technology becomes commoditized at a fast pace, there’s no intrinsic value of selecting media for any other sake than efficiency. The real agency challenge is therefore not to be innovative per se, but ability to exploit innovation.

Two of my favorites when it comes to content:

Get your Basketball and The Life for Halo ODST 3.

Child's play

How good are nine-year olds at creating ads? A colleague of mine found out this weekend when the agency hosted a birthday party. 

The Brief

Draw an ad for BMW or Mini. Write a slogan – why buy a BMW/Mini? 

Tools and Deadline

A piece of paper, pens and 15 minutes.

Ideas

1. "Buy a BMW/Mini. So much power for real men."

Planner comment: power and masculinity becomes the proposition of this ad. A clear call to action. Buy the damn car!  

  

2. "Buy a BMW. For a cheap price. Make a good choice. BMW is the safest." 

Planner comment: Price and safety is generally not the brand proposition of BMW. This is usually what happens when creatives get loose briefs. Plus for showing the different angles of the car. 

  

3. "Buy a BMW. A cosy trip for the whole family."

Planner comment: this ad focuses on consumer benefits beyond product attributes – family cosiness, visualised by two station wagons for that competitive angle that BMW is famous for. An excellent strategy in Volvo land.

 

4. "Buy a BMW/Mini!!! It's both fast, modern and cheap. It will only cost you your "pants"! Four seats and bold! For a real man!"

Planner comment: another ad that focusses on masculinity. It's also the only "copy ad". 

   

5. "BMW/Mini!!! The car everybody has been waiting for. BMW/Mini. The car for real men."

Planner comment: the creative execution of this very much like early Volkswagen ads. Simple copy and lots of white space around the product shot. 

Two things come to mind from this. First, I'm amazed that 9-year olds are so literate in the language of advertising and brand knowledge – three of the five ads included masculinity (without any outside influence). Second, a sad but true fact is that some of the ads here are actually more strategically relevant than real ads from actual advertising agencies! 

Child ' s play

How good are nine-year olds at creating ads? A colleague of mine found out this weekend when the agency hosted a birthday party.

The Brief

Draw an ad for BMW or Mini. Write a slogan – why buy a BMW/Mini?

Tools and Deadline

A piece of paper, pens and 15 minutes.

Ideas

1. "Buy a BMW/Mini. So much power for real men."

Planner comment: power and masculinity becomes the proposition of this ad. A clear call to action. Buy the damn car!

2. "Buy a BMW. For a cheap price. Make a good choice. BMW is the safest."

Planner comment: Price and safety is generally not the brand proposition of BMW. This is usually what happens when creatives get loose briefs. Plus for showing the different angles of the car.

3. "Buy a BMW. A cosy trip for the whole family."

Planner comment: this ad focuses on consumer benefits beyond product attributes – family cosiness, visualised by two station wagons for that competitive angle that BMW is famous for. An excellent strategy in Volvo land.

4. "Buy a BMW/Mini!!! It's both fast, modern and cheap. It will only cost you your "pants"! Four seats and bold! For a real man!"

Planner comment: another ad that focusses on masculinity. It's also the only "copy ad".

5. "BMW/Mini!!! The car everybody has been waiting for. BMW/Mini. The car for real men."

Planner comment: the creative execution of this very much like early Volkswagen ads. Simple copy and lots of white space around the product shot.

Two things come to mind from this. First, I'm amazed that 9-year olds are so literate in the language of advertising and brand knowledge – three of the five ads included masculinity (without any outside influence). Second, a sad but true fact is that some of the ads here are actually more strategically relevant than real ads from actual advertising agencies!

Success is all about statistics

This TED talk by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi about creativity and flow made me think about what actually determines greatness in life, both from an individual perspective and from a agency perspective. 

It all comes down to one thing: experience. Intelligence and talent is one thing, but becoming super-skilled is all about doing things many times over. After ten years of doing something, you will fully master it. So, it's all about statistics. Nassim Nicolas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness, has an even more extreme position: he argues that success is totally random – people who have reached exceptional wealth have been the right people at the right time in the right environment. 

I'd say the outlook for somebody who believes only in statistics is rather gloomy, and I believe there's one way to beat the system: productivity (not really surprising, most exceptional people I know also happen to work a lot). So, if you're twice as productive as the average person, you will do twice as much and instead of ten years, you'll master a subject after five years. If you're lazy, things will take longer – unless you're a lucky bastard, that is. 

Success is all about statistics

This TED talk by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi about creativity and flow made me think about what actually determines greatness in life, both from an individual perspective and from a agency perspective. 

It all comes down to one thing: experience. Intelligence and talent is one thing, but becoming super-skilled is all about doing things many times over. After ten years of doing something, you will fully master it. So, it's all about statistics. Nassim Nicolas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness, has an even more extreme position: he argues that success is totally random – people who have reached exceptional wealth have been the right people at the right time in the right environment. 

I'd say the outlook for somebody who believes only in statistics is rather gloomy, and I believe there's one way to beat the system: productivity (not really surprising, most exceptional people I know also happen to work a lot). So, if you're twice as productive as the average person, you will do twice as much and instead of ten years, you'll master a subject after five years. If you're lazy, things will take longer – unless you're a lucky bastard, that is. 

Better creativity (updated)

The credo of Account Planning Group is Championing in creative excellence sounds vague, but the task of the planner has always been rooted in guarding creativity from bad stuff (like client research). And while this is still relevant in many ways, the pressures AND opportunities for delivering relevant creativity has never been greater. 

The most efficient solution for advertising agencies to adapt to a changing macro environment has always been to remodel and reinvent itself. But is this survival strategy the best one today when communication trends have a lifespan of 12 months? I'm not sure. Reinventing an advertising agency takes lots of time, and time is money. 

I don't have the solution, but I'm not sure the future of the advertising agency lies in capitalising on specific expertise/resources to gain short-run competitive advantages. Rather, it may lie in the capability to deliver creative thinking over the long-term.

At an extreme this would mean that the things we call planning tools are pretty useless for getting ahead (not per se, tools are still good for efficiency). Instead of being focussed on WHAT ideal are going to achieve, planning would in this alternative reality be focussed on HOW we will achieve our ideals. 

Just a thought. 

Footnote: planning guru Russell Davies wrote a piece on The Planning Lab about the greatest planning challenge not being brands but organisations here.