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Creativity inspires people. Creativity, if guided properly, also creates immense value for companies and brands.

This is where account planning comes in. When most people separate left and right brain thinking, account planning unifies these two into a single line of thought. In other words, account planning is the perfect mix between strategic and creative thinking. This is important because advertising isn't art and because business can make money without being dull as dust.

My name is Leon. I work as a Planner at Jung von Matt, an advertising agency in Stockholm and The Planning Lab are my thoughts on advertising and branding, and everything that's relevant to it. Sort of.

Hello and welcome

My name is Leon and these are my thoughts on advertising and branding.

I believe that Account Planning is necessary for creating communications that's both creatively inspiring as well as strategically relevant. 

I'm an Account Planner and part of the senior management at the Stockholm office of Jung von Matt, an independent, creatively-led advertising agency. 

I'm also the current Chair of the Swedish Account Planning Group, a non-profit organisation (and sister organisation to APG UK) that promotes the interests of agency planners in Sweden. 

My academic background is in Economics.

I enjoy working with great brands and brands that want to be come great. Here are some of the brands that I've been working for:  

Absolut Icebar (alcoholic drinks)

Carfax (online services)

Coca-Cola Global & Nordic (FMCG/beverages)

Danske Bank (banking & finance)

Jämtkraft (energy)

PricewaterhouseCoopers (accounting services)

Royal Swedish Opera (culture)
Schering-Plough (pharmaceuticals)

Svenska Spel (gambling)

Swedish TV3 (media/television)

Swedish TV8 (media/television)

Telia (telecom)

Tetra Pak (industry/farming)

Things that I like:

Pop culture, movies, architecture, microeconomics, behavioural psychology, business strategy, moral philosophy, technology, modern art, art history, politics, standup comedy, indie bands, striped shirts, vinyl records, hifi equipment & Jack Russell dogs.

Things that I'm against:

Narcissism, stupidity, laziness, dishonesty & bullshit.

How to get in touch:

Email: leon@jvm.se

Phone: +46-76-865 18 42

Twitter: @theplanninglab

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/leonphang

Correction:

I was wrong. February Stockholm is great. Lots of snow and a tolerable zero degrees today.

The separation of logic and creativity

Creatives are good at creative thinking. Some are exceptional logical thinkers too, but most aren't. On the client end, most marketing directors are pure logical thinkers with little understanding of creativity (and rightfully so, that's why they hire creative agencies). Planners are supposed to move around freely in both logical and creative domains. So far so good. What's often a source of conflict and the reason why some good creative ideas don't pass through the client filter, or even internal filters, is perhaps not the idea itself but the decoding of it. And because people have different ways of decoding things, things will very likely to go different ways. When this happens, a good way is to try and separate creative and logical thinking in arguments, processes and deliverables. Combining both in a project group is an art, and when it doesn't work, you'll end up with shitty compromise.

Show your love!

YABA is a Swedish blog award within web, media and marketing. The Planning Lab is nominated in the marketing category. Make me happy and cast your vote clicking on the button!

Jung von Matt seeks Production Manager.

Since this blog is about account planning, my guess is that you're not working as a Production Manager (but who knows?). But if you happen to be one, and also young, ambitious, highly efficient and comfortable with all types of media channels, us at Jung von Matt Stockholm would like to meet you. 

We are a two-year old agency and currently 18 people working at Kungsgatan 17.

Our agency credentials can be found here.

If you are interested, contact Jan Casserlöv at jan.casserlov@jvm.se.

See you! 

Analysis:

We might have 1) an awareness problem, and 2) an attitude problem. 

Updated ballet case

The Ballet campaign for the Royal Opera has now been updated with results and some new photos.

Fast execution as strategy

It was the perfect new product concept for our client. It was innovative and would have created a global microtrend. We had the grand idea, it was just a matter of developing it and for the client to press the button.

Suddenly and out of nowhere a similar product concept shows up on a trend blog. Needless to say, it screws up our plans. What’s really frustrating, though, is that the initial idea has been on the drawing board for more than a year.

Obviously, we should have acted faster. Yet, as an agency it’s difficult to think in terms of “business agility” and acting-now-because-tomorrow-you’re-dead, etc. Corporate bullshit literature might make more sense than you think.

Adliterate wrote about Fast Strategy some time ago. I think that it’s time for Fast Execution. Coming up with good ideas and clever strategy is the easy part. Turning ideas into execution is the really hard part. Often it’s about money, time, resources, company structure and what not.

I don’t have the answer here, but I do think that in a global market with creative and strategic geniouses around every corner, creating temporary monopolies by acting fast is the next strategic challenge – for client as well as agency.