RETROWURST: In the mind of a planner (circa 2010)

 

How does a planner’s mind work?

I’ve never been a great fan of trying to map mental processes, mainly because how one person’s brain works is not necessarily helpful for the next. 

I can’t pin down when or why I would have drawn this up, but it’s definitely 21st century. 

Looking at it today, I’d say yes, it still works for me. It starts off with a sort of melting pot involving Jung’s four functions.

Then there’s that “Simplifier”. Not sure I’d call it that any more. It sounds too much like dumbing-down. And a bit patronising. Maybe “Clarifier” is better? Incidentally, I’d love to know what I meant at the time by “A4 thinking”. Obviously a buzzword that buzzed off into the great blue yonder.

Finally, there’s “Insight.” Without an “s”. Sparking Inspiration and hence Ideas and Innovation.

That’s the theory, anyway.

RETROWURST: Advertising Agencies September 2005

 

In September 2005, I indulged in a bit of navel-gazing about ad agencies, which may have seemed self-indulgent at the time. But it’s certainly fascinating to read with 18 years’ hindsight.

In this article, I referred to the “new media and internet specialists” who tended to lurk around Berlin. How quaint. And then, I was very snooty about mozzarella and cherry tomatoes on sticks.

On a positive note, I cheered German agencies' success at Cannes that year. And commented that Planning had perhaps achieved critical mass in Germany. Were the two connected? I wonder.

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Last week, I attended the “Night of the Lions” in Frankfurt; one of the German advertising industry’s yearly highlights where hundreds of advertising types gather to see creatives getting their prizes and viewing the reel of the gold, silver and bronze film winners. I say “one of” for good reason. While, in the UK, I assume this sort of thing would always take place in London, the German advertising industry has a number of centres including Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Berlin. In addition, many major (-ish) agencies have their offices in Munich or cities in the former East Germany, such as Leipzig. If there is any tendency at all to who sits where, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf tend to be the German offices of the multi-nationals with Hamburg being home to the original German agencies that grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s such as Springer & Jacoby and Jung von Matt. Berlin tends to house the newest agencies and many of the new media and internet specialists.

 

Although there has been much talk from the industry press of the revival of German advertising creativity after many years of doom and gloom, I did find my experience last week a bit like being in a time-warp. The event was held in a former tram depot all decked out in black with a bit of white, as were most of the rather earnest-looking guests. There were Caipirinhas at the bar and bits of mozzarella and baby tomatoes on sticks (which I have always considered the 1990s version of the 1970s cheese `n` pineapple). I’ve now been freelance for nearly three years and haven’t worked full-time in an agency for nearly five but it didn’t really look to me as if things had moved on much.

 

Working in advertising here in Germany (funnily enough, one never says “being in advertising” as one might in the UK) doesn’t really carry the cachet that it might in the UK or USA. Advertising is not really regarded as a profession here and certainly does not have the glamorous image that it might have in other markets. At a party, if you own up to “working in advertising”, the subject is quickly changed, rather as if you had admitted to having something to do with second-hand cars. You would be better off to try and disguise your role as a “consultant” in some way as this at least suggests better academic credentials. “Real” professions, such as being a doctor or a lawyer, are what buy you points here in Germany. So extreme is this tendency that even some of the creatives who went up to collect their gongs last week were announced as “Dr So-and-so” in a totally non-ironic way. Academic qualifications are often made much of in agency credentials presentations which came as something of a surprise to me, coming from a world where a PhD is something that a London-based creative is about as likely to own up to having as piles.

 

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that one area of the German advertising industry which seems to be on the up at the moment is Planning. From my own perspective, it does seem that Strategic Planning in Germany has now achieved critical mass. The annual Open Event of the apgd in June seemed packed full of young faces and the organisation now seems to have got its act together in offering training for young planners. Although the apgd has been in existence for nine years now (I had the dubious privilege of sitting through its inaugural constitutional meeting) it was perhaps a little handicapped in its early years by an over-intellectual, inward-looking attitude (typified by endless humourless debates about “The definition of planning” “Whether one is a strategic planner or a creative planner” and an article laying out “a segmentation of planners.”)

In a typically German way, the most “intellectual” of advertising’s disciplines now seems to be feeding the right stuff to the creative folks to make some damned good ads. It is no surprise to learn that some of the agencies that did well at Cannes are those with a strong planning tradition: Springer & Jacoby, who have their own Planning Consultancy, Jung von Matt, where one of the MDs is a planner and chairman (female!) of the apgd and Heimat, where another Planner has his name over the door (unusual in German agencies.)

 

So, back to Cannes, or at least to that converted tram depot in Frankfurt. Germany has done rather well at Cannes this year, 4^th overall in terms of Lions won, whereas they were struggling in the double-figure rankings just a few years ago. In fact, in the area of film, Germany achieved the joint third placing (with France) after the USA and UK in 2006 with a total of eight film Lions won.

 

It’s probably no surprise to here that many of these Lions, including the gold, were won for car advertising. The Germans are actually rather good at car advertising, just as they are rather good at cars. The gold winner, entitled “Sound of Summer” is a lovely piece of film for the Mercedes sports from Springer & Jacoby based on the visual creative idea of sound frequencies. This is a great spot that combines the German passions of cars and music, and you don’t see a single car (except in your imagination, of course). A bronze also went to S&J for their Mercedes C-Class spot and to McCann Erickson for their Astra spot where the car replaces the dog in the owner’s affections as “man’s new best friend.”

 

Another great German passion is DIY (I’m sure you’ll all have heard that here, the DIY enthusiast doesn’t just stop at a few shelves, he is more than likely to build his own house!). Another bronze lion went to the Berlin agency Heimat for their work for Hornbach DIY stores. Here, the German members of the jury had the difficulty of explaining the underlying concept of a member of a surrealist-nihilist-punk group reading the Hornbach catalogue aloud, but they succeeded, the films are a hoot in any language and Heimat deservedly won.

 

What appears to be a bit of an oddity on the prize list is Jung von Matt’s silver for K-Fee, which is a coffee product. Not a category so close to German hearts, you may think. Furthermore, the creative idea is a downright weird (if highly effective) demonstration of the product’s stimulating powers. You are lulled into a false sense of security by what you think will be a typical, clichéd advertising spot when something suddenly pops up and screams at you at a high decibel level. But here’s where the link happens. Guess what kind of cliché is used to lull you into that semi-comatose state? That’s right - a typical scene of a beautiful car driving through a rolling rural landscape. You can almost hear the “Sound of Summer” before the scream so rudely interrupts you.

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Well, Hornbach are still making great ads, eighteen years on. 

What I perhaps wouldn’t have predicted is that the ‘Dr So-and-So’ syndrome has really caught on. Worldwide. Even in the UK. Ad people desperately trying to demonstrate their gravitas to keep the management consultants after their jobs at bay. The geeks and nerds really have inherited the earth.

Back then, I said that a PhD is something a London-based creative is about as likely to own up to as having piles.

These days, I think they’d probably own up to their “lived experience” of haemorrhoids, too, in the interests of empathy and authenticity.

I’m off to make some - ahem - mozzarella and cherry tomatoes on sticks.

The proper way to the beach

 

I was taught the planning cycle at a relatively early age - not quite as early as my times tables, but I had it drummed into me in a similar way. 

Where are we now? (With our brand or business)

Where do we want to be?

How do we get there?

Are we getting there?

I have the feeling that because the whole area of marketing has exploded into so many specialisms, t the focus has slipped right onto “how do we get there” in its intricate detail of touchpoints, new tech, personas and all the rest without any consideration of where we’re going with this and why.

I recently had a brief that went along the lines of - we have to develop an app that’s going to do x, y & z - without any thought given to why, or even who this app might be for.

I’ve seen this wonderful picture recently from The Proper Marketing Club (Matt Dillon) , which gently reminds marketers of the starting point if you want to be the brightest brand on the beach.

Even if your business can’t afford stacks of ad-hoc quantitative surveys, desk research on markets and trends plus a couple of questions on an omnibus and a few intelligently-conducted stakeholder interviews are always a good start.

 

Off-the-peg strategies

Five years ago (gosh, how time flies when you're enjoying yourself) I wrote a couple of posts about crowd-sourcing: not crowd-sourcing the general public for ideas for a new flavour of crisps, or naming a boat, but going into a creative pool (I hesitate to say community) for design and creative ideas.

My conclusion at the time was that I was sceptical, especially when it came to what the creatives got out of it - and that the logical next step, which I rather hoped wouldn't happen, was a similar set-up for strategy.

Since then, I have joined one freelance pool for writers, and I must say upfront that I don't have a problem with the idea of freelance pools in general, and matching up freelancers to clients.

But it's the competitive element that I find destructive.

In theory, accessing good thinkers ("an exclusive, worldwide community of the finest Creative Directors and Planning Directors") to solve tough strategic problems sounds fine. But if this organisation (and others like them) are throwing the client brief out to a number of "the world's best thinkers" then picking the best of what comes back (in their view) for the client, then that is worrying.

It devalues the work of any one particular planner and turns strategic thinking into a commodity that can be bought in bulk.

As a freelancer, I take pride in becoming an independent plug-in for my clients for as long as I'm working with them. I take time and care to listen and learn about their organisation - how things work today, and where their hopes and vision are leading them tomorrow. I ask lots of questions. I'm a part of the organisation for the duration, but an outward-facing one.

I see that as my responsibility, and it goes far beyond the weeks or months that I am working with the brand.

I've tracked down the 1994 all-staff memo from David Abbott that talks about the dangers of "a giant ad factory where quantity is more important than quality". It's just as relevant for strategy as it is for creative: "great work comes with ownership, understanding and time."

I may be old-school, but I firmly believe that strategy is not something where you can fail fast, test and learn and all that design-thinking tra-la-la.

Aufschnitt 4: How brands are changing 1999

My latest offer from the cold cuts counter is a very special one. It's not technically a cutting, because it's one of my very own charts from twenty years ago, back in the last millennium. I apologise for the way it looks - there are no fancy graphics, cute icons or co-ordinated colours. The title is everything but snappy: How Brands are Changing - Positioning Spectrum.

The idea here was that different brands take up different positions on this spectrum when communicating. Some just shout in a loud and cheerful voice that they're here while others try and press-gang you into their mission to change the world. In the middle are a whole host of functional and emotional benefits and attributes of the sort beloved by onion-builders.

My point was that a brand doesn't need to have all of this - well, it probably does, but you don't have to sit through ten hours of Post-It deluged workshops to define it all.

I'm quite begoggled that the word "experience" is there, and that what's sitting under "mission/philosophy" could quite happily pass for a description of "purpose" today.

I honestly can't remember if I made this up, or whether I pinched it from somewhere but nevertheless:

Here you go - start planning like it's 1999.

Riding my hobby-horse

"If you're doing 'consumer safaris', your alienation from the real world is total and complete."

That's one of my favourite lines from Martin Weigel's latest blog post, Escape from Fantasy.

A lot of blog posts I read tend to approach one ear, then turn around and slink back off into the morass of jargon that is LinkedIn. But this one hasn't just stuck in my mind, it feels worthy of regurgitation so I can rapidly find it again. It would have been pinned on the wall in the old days, I guess.

It's well-written (if a little finger-pointy with its "we do this/that, we think this/that" style which I have a personal aversion against), compelling, funny and pinpoints the biggest problem of the brand communication industry today - this industry is based in a parallel fantasy world.

The evidence for this is not difficult to find and ranges from giving groups of people super-heroesque labels, through to my particular hobby horse - the aversion of a lot of planners these days to getting away from their desks and screens. "Far too many planners are no longer in constant, direct, unmediated contact and dialogue with people."

The solution - to "do what others do not, can not or dare not do to" is simple. It's about finding the truth - "the truth of real people in the real world."

One small area where I'd take issue, though, is the area of "we are nothing like the people we serve." It's simply not true, if you go under the surface demographics. We are all human beings, with the same basic needs and motivations, even though these may be expressed or fulfilled in different ways. And this is part of the solution, as far as I'm concerned. Advertising, or whatever it calls itself now, is probably always going to be dominated by young people. But if those young people are worth their salt as planners and creatives, they will at least try to get into the mindset of someone older, someone different, someone who is outside their immediate experience. Perhaps by finding common ground in the way that person feels, what's important to them.

And always remember - "the consumer" only exists in Fantasy Land.

Red Spider Blues

It was with great sadness that I heard that one of my planning heroes, Charlie Robertson, has gone off to the great spiderweb in the sky. Charlie was one of the second generation of sparky British planners who worked in the London ad agencies of the early 80s - that generation which includes Paul Feldwick, Leslie Butterfield and Damian O'Malley.

Although I say second generation, Charlie was no follower. Having worked at the places to be in London in the 80s - BMP and BBH, he founded the planning department at the Leith agency up in Scotland, where he preferred to raise his family. Charlie already knew London wasn't the be-all and end-all of everything, and this led to his masterstroke - he founded Red Spider, the world's first virtual planning and strategy agency.

Why should strategy, and the bright minds behind it be confined to four walls in Soho, or Charlotte Street? This was pioneering with a capital P.

By the time I became associated with Red Spider, in 2003, the web had spread. I spent an enjoyable few years as an associate Spider, under the guidance of Charlie and George Shepherd, running training workshops on strategy tools and busily devising "Brand Redprints.". Those tools - which Charlie and Co. were generous enough to make public property, more or less (on the assumption that anyone can pick up a paintbrush, but only Picasso can create a Picasso) - are still being used around the world today. It was Charlie who urged me to join Facebook and a whole load of now defunct social media sites back in 2007 or so.

Charlie was astute, witty, sharp as a needle and humane. His hair seemed to have a life of its own. He didn't shy away from saying exactly what he thought and he was an enemy of both blandness and bullshit.

He'll be much missed. I'm grateful to have known him.

Change happens. Get over it.

One of the core questions for marketing people has always been centred around how to adapt and transform in an ever-changing world. There's an interesting and useful analysis here by two authors from the agency Flamingo, who have examined change in a wide variety of fields, and constructed a simple model showing four strategic directions a brand could choose - Guide, Translate, Create and Pivot - along with good examples of brands who have used those different strategies.

I like this analysis, although it does tiptoe into an area that seems to be, in my mind, rather over-played currently: that of the VUCA world "out there."

There can be few readers who haven't heard about VUCA from some source or another, but in case you haven't, the acronym stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

This acronym didn't come from some marketing consultant, but from the U.S. Military, in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s.

Is this really how we want to see the world we're operating in? Are our brands weapons in some kind of war?

I don't think so.

What if we thought of it this way:

For 'Volatile', read 'Spontaneous'

For 'Uncertain', read 'Surprising'

For 'Complex', read 'Diverse'

And for 'Ambiguous', read 'Enigmatic'

Because it's not us against them, there is no world "out there", "external" and "internal". We are all part of the world.

It's the role of brands not to provide stability in the sense of stasis and resistance to change, but rather to provide a clear purpose and direction as part of a wonderful, multi-facetted, animated, rich and mysterious world.

Live to work to live

I realised, with a large gulp, that this year, I'll have been a strategic planner for 30 years. I've been in this business longer than many of today's top brands have been around. There was no amazon when I started, and certainly no Google or Facebook. No one was wittering on about platforms, except for the man who told you to 'mind the gap' in the London rush hour.

I have been lucky with my work. I'm a stayer, rather than a flitter, not due to inertia, but rather due to change just happening as soon as I got itchy feet, rather as if I'd willed it. A new account, a completely different market, an international role. And then, of course, the changes in the world - through technology, which has had a huge impact on the ways of working. I remember the days when you didn't have to schedule a phone call. Yes, there were phones back then (but very few of them were mobile.)

But in terms of what I'm doing, rather than how I'm doing it, the same things are on the agenda. What makes people tick? Why do they behave the way they do? What drives them? And how can brands help to meet this infinite palette of human needs, dreams, desires, wants and hopes?

The agenda has widened for me - on top of this, what is the relation between brand and business? What role or responsibility have brand - and business - in society? These questions retain their fascination.

Back in my college days, I think I did one of those vocational questionnaires that guided me towards suitable fields of work. I seem to remember the legal profession and HM Inspector of Taxes being high on the list. Here is another kind of work-related questionnaire, and rather a good one, from The Book of Life. Rather than suggesting specific careers, it highlights what is important for you in your work, more in terms of what moves you.

I'm pleased to say, that for me, it was creativity. Some things don't change.

The Artist-Scientist

In my mid-teens, I'd already come up against the rigidity of the British education system which force-fits young people at an early age into boxes labelled 'scientist', 'artist', 'linguist' - or whatever. I rebelled against this in my own quiet way by adding Art to my science A-Levels. I wrote a post earlier this year bemoaning one effect that this force-fitting seems to produce - the 'I'm crap at maths and not ashamed to say it' syndrome.

I'm asked, on occasion, what makes a good planner. I rarely look to academic qualifications, and in the past, have been as likely to choose someone with an obscure degree or even no degree at all as someone with a business degree. In fact, the business degree people I often give a harder time to as they may already have been taught to think in a certain way.

My ideal planner would fit the artist-scientist archetype. By this, I mean someone for whom thinking or intellect is not the only way of revealing 'truth', but who is equally at home with other modes of perception. The artist-scientist is a creator, inventor, dreamer and thinker simultaneously. Their focus is discovery, not prediction and pinning down 'facts.' They are people driven by wonder and curiosity. It may have killed the cat, but it's what keeps the artist-scientists going.

These people are the source of change, the people who question, the people who keep their minds open and don't always go with the flow. From Leonardo da Vinci, to Nikola Tesla, to C.G.Jung, these people feel uncomfortable with the narrow designation (which includes all those 21st century prefixes to the word planner.)

To finish, here's Joseph Campbell on the figure of Daedalus, the archetypal artist-scientist:

Most curiously, the very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. For centuries Daedalus has represented the type of the artist-scientist: that curiously disinterested, almost diabolic human phenomenon, beyond the normal bound of social judgement, dedicated to the morals not of his time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of thought – singlehearted, courageous and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.

And, maybe I'd want that too - 'the hero-heart at hand' - as much as this person is beyond social judgement, they should have a feeling, connectedness, empathy with their fellow human-beings.

Not much to ask, eh?

Mental Jerks

When I was running a department and recruiting new planners, I was usually more interested in how they thought than what they knew. Of course, an interest in advertising, brands and people as well as a reasonable level of numeracy and comfort with statistics were basic essentials. But what really made people stand out was their ability for fresh thinking: analysis, synthesis and creative thought in general.

I recently saw a list of super tips on the Account Planning Facebook page to get your brain ticking away, thinking like a planner. The list comes from Mark Pollard, who is an Australian planner working in New York:

Career secret - if you think for a living, here are ten easy ways to practice thinking things:

1. In your mind, re-caption the first 10 photos you see in your Instagram feed. Give the photos new meaning.

2. In one day, eavesdrop on 5 conversations and write down 1 interesting exchange from each.

3. Watch your favourite Ted talk 3 times and break it down into sections on index cards - understand the 3-act arc and techniques at play.

4. Take two disconnected things - your favourite dessert and novel - and force yourself to write down 5 things they have in common.

5. Ask a barista to tell you something about the world that you probably don't know.

6. Watch stand-up comedy or read a poem and write down 3 insights.

7. Take a recent presentation and challenge yourself to only use pictures to make the same points - find the pictures.

8. Open your favourite novel, write out the first page then rewrite it in your own words.

9. Interview a stranger.

10. Read relevant research then go for a two-hour walk without writing equipment and devices and think about the 3 main ideas you found in the research.

These have obvious application as workshop warm-ups or interview tasks, but I think they can also be applied to cracking a brief or writing a strategy or solving a business problem. I have the feeling that good planners do a lot of this kind of thinking intuitively, without the formal 'oh, let's look in the toolbox and see which trick I can use ...'

There was some criticism on the Facebook page along the lines that this is 'fluffy' and not impressive in the boardroom, but surely the point is that you don't need to bore people with your working as to how you came to your brilliant idea. And you can back it up with all the statistics and technical tricks that you think people need to buy into it.

Empathy by numbers?

A few years back, I invested in the heavy tome above: The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World of Crisis. I started reading the book with good intentions, and I did get a good way into this history of human civilization, the evolution of empathy and where we might be going. Can we achieve global empathy before we self-destruct and take the planet with us? An even more pertinent question today, perhaps, than when the book was published in 2010.

I'm ashamed to say that I got stuck, and stopped reading. I wasn't bored, nor was it too much for me. Blame it on my 21st century attention span if you like. Other things simply took over. It's not to say I won't take it up again someday, but for the moment the heavy tome remains on the shelf.

Since then, empathy has become a marketing buzz word. Even more so in the last year, when marketeers have become aware of their filter bubbles and we're seeing initiatives such as that of Ogilvy: Get Out There. Nothing wrong with going back to the roots of what market research and planning is all about, I suppose, but the article at least is phrased in some most non-empathetic terms. 'Planning in the wild' - suggesting that the people the planners are going to talk to would rather tear them limb from limb and gobble them up than give them their views. 'Real people' - as opposed to - what?

There is now an agency dedicated to 'transforming the world of business through empathy'. They are called The Empathy Business and are an evolution of an outfit known as Lady Geek, who championed women in IT and technology.

They define Corporate Empathy as follows:

We define corporate empathy, not compassion or sympathy, as the emotional impact a company has on its people -staff and customers- and society-the next generation.

And true to the new business tool requirement these days (as in Meaningfulness Index, Simplicity Index, Sustainability Index) they have an Empathy Index, based (I assume) on a model with the convenient but slightly cringeworthy acronym EMBRACE which lays out the aspects of Empathy.

This does make a lot of sense, but I do wonder whether empathy should be a pre-requisite for anyone working in communications rather than something that we have to discover and learn.

Surely the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and see the world - or just a brand - from their point of view is simply the starting point of what makes a good planner - or creative?

Useless, hopeless, rubbish and crap

I've commented before about this rather annoying tendency, and I'm going to comment again.

Why do so many people in the creative industries boast about not being good at maths? Or something like physics, come to that. It's not even - oh, I was better at English/History/Art and my maths was OK - oh, no! To do the true boast you have to say you were useless, hopeless, terrible, rubbish or totally crap at maths. And add a little grin or chuckle.

How many people in those professions would want to own up to being bloody dreadful at reading or writing? And, apart from slinging a few insults at the duller and more obscure aspects of grammar, who wants to boast about being a complete dud at English? Not many.

This tendency has long been commented on, for example in C.P.Snow's lecture The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. In this passage, Snow remarks on the (literary) intellectuals who bemoan the illiteracy of scientists:

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?”

I would certainly never employ a planner who claimed to be crap at maths. Or an account manager, brand manager or even a creative. Except in a few rare cases, everyone can be OK at maths. It just requires a bit of work, like everything else. I wouldn't want anyone working for me who had no feel for numbers and statistics and what meaning one can find in them. Or who was deliberately clueless  about how much of our world today works - money and markets, algorithms, Google - you name it.

Quite apart from the fact that maths trains the mind in puzzle-solving, in a particular way of thinking.

Having said all that, there is hope. A lot of those 'useless at maths' people can be spotted solving Sudoko puzzles. And not being so bad at it at all.  

Pioneers of Planning

I've just finished 98% Pure Potato by John Griffiths & Tracey Follows. Was it pure genius? Or 98% Rotten Tomatoes?

Here's my review:

The curiously-titled '98% Pure Potato' is the history of the origins of advertising account planning, taking us from the beginnings in the mid-60s in the UK up to 1980. In addition, the authors take a look at the 'state of the art' of planning today, and a glimpse into the future. I started my career in advertising in the 80s, so many of the contributors to this book were known to me by name if not in person.

The book starts with some scene-setting - the context of the advertising industry in the 60s as well as the social and cultural background of the time. Next, the creative leap in thinking about advertising and its effectiveness (less about what message/s we put in and more about how people respond) that inspired the birth of planning at the agencies BMP (under Stanley Pollitt, pictured above) and JWT (under Stephen King) is introduced. The bulk of the book is about the first planners and the contribution they made at those agencies in the late 60s and 70s. Finally, changes and developments in planning since 1980 are discussed.

It seems fitting to the topic that the research for the book was qualitative in nature - the authors conducted depth interviews with a number of those early planners as well as friends, family and associates. In addition, the theme of collaboration carries through into the way the book was published, via crowd-funding and Unbound. The tone is very different to most business books - informal, anecdotal, reflecting those early planners who 'made it up as they went along.' The over-riding feeling about account planning that comes through is that it's about a mindset, not a process, and it all starts with people, not with data points.

While I appreciate that the authors didn't aim for a LinkedIn-style '10 Lessons We Can Learn From Planning Pioneers' approach, the anecdotal nature of the book means that it is very wordy - at 350 pages plus. I did sense rather a lot of repetition, and I felt that the text could have benefitted from further editing. Perhaps a few more specific examples of contributions to individual commercials and campaigns would also have been of interest.

It was good to see the photos of some of the cast, and the book token and book mark from Unbound were a nice touch. A round of applause to the authors and contributors for bringing all these fascinating anecdotes together.

Creating Cuddly Commercials

I'm currently reading a book with the intriguing title 98% Pure Potato , which is a history of the origins of Account Planning through interviews with its pioneers - the early planners in the agencies JWT and BMP in London in the late 60s and 70s.

So far, it's a fascinating, if rather wordy, glimpse into the past, with plenty of quotes from those who were there. I started my career in the 80s, so many of these people were known to me, by reputation if not personally.

One theme that comes out strongly in the book is the belief that those early planners had that advertising should connect, human to human. This is described by Leslie Butterfield as follows: It was a kind of 'cuddle up to you' model of how advertising works and I think that advertising was something that could win people over through affection, through charm, through nudging, through cuddling ... put your arm around the consumer, entertain them, involve them, engage them, persuade them, but do it gently, do it with charm, do it with panache, not a bang over the head.

I sometimes think that as advertisers, we have forgotten this. Our attachment to data means that we've become detached from the human side. The early planners crunched plenty of data, but they also talked with and listened to hundreds of people in sitting rooms over sandwiches, biscuits and cups of tea - or even wine in the evenings. In a flood of nostalgia, I dragged out one of the first contacts I had with advertising as a potential career, in the form of the Oxford & Cambridge Careers Guide - this is from the early 80s.

I remember clearly reading the piece by another Lesley - female this time - Lesley Nevard, who was an Account Planner at BMP. What is fascinating to read here is this, unlike the book, is not coloured by decades of hindsight - this is as it was back then.

I hope it's readable - it definitely inspired me in my career choice. I do wonder what Lesley Nevard is doing now.

Artificial vs. Intelligence

The APG UK's forthcoming conference to be held on 25th May, is entitled 'Strategy vs. Robots'. The publicity features the clever idea of a Top Trumps -style card, comparing a robot with a human strategic planner. The robot (slightly) out-trumps Ms Mills on intelligence and processing power while our human hero wins hands down on creativity and sense of humour.

It promises to be a good event, with such people as Kate Fox (of 'Watching the English' fame) and Steve Hilton (whose has published a book entitled 'More Human'). I'm not sure who is going to be representing or sticking up for the robots, but maybe they will invite a special guest from Japan.

Apparently, McCann Japan have appointed an AI robot as a creative director. This new employee will be 'mining and analysing creative databases of adverts to find the best commercials for products and messages.' I am still not entirely sure this isn't a wind-up, as the 'new employees meeting' where AI-CD ß was due to appear was April 1st, which seems a bit fishy to me. However, stranger things have happened.

I've blogged a couple of times about where I stand on the planning - or even creativity - by AI and algorithm debate, here and here .

I'm old enough now not to worry about my own job being taken over by a robot. But I guess in the end, there always has to be someone human working to design and build the robots.

Or does there?