Planning by Numbers

I hear so many complaints these days from all walks of life that essential elements of doing a good job - from personal contact and discussion with colleagues to thorough problem-solving thought - have been taken over by form-filling.

And often the completion of a form means "job done" - end of story. To used that horrible phrase, all the boxes have been ticked.

In the marketing world, there have always been companies who have been more keen on forms and templates than others, but the disease seems to be rampant.

The internet is packed with templates and forms to "enable" you to write a marketing plan, or a communications strategy, or whatever.

And for most of these, you just need to follow the template, copy and paste your own info and - job done.

I'd like to see less dumping and more thinking. More small groups of people sitting in a room together and working out an overall structure. Less delegating of "OK, you guys do Section 3.1.4 to 55.6.3" and more discussion as to the overall picture.

And, once that part of the job is done, to put it into action while there's still time - and stick to it.

Nous is More

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is a little weary of the trend forecasters and their oh-so-witty portmanteau designations ("Flawsome" et al). Here is a super post with a link to a very sharp presentation from Richard Huntington of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Mr H is calling for less trendspotting and more real insight - which he rechristens revelation. And I am all for that, but I make one plea. Can we stop talking about "generating insights"? A generator, like this chappie above, churns out something basic, a commodity, in mass, untouched by human hands, let alone emotion.

Real insight is about those uniquely human abilities - intuition, intelligence, empathy. It's about nous, the difference between understanding and information.

I hope, this year, I'll have less cause for Richard Huntington's "guaranteed free of insight" rubber stamp.

All I want for Christmas is...

I was going to post something deep and meaningful about insights as my last post this year, but then saw this corker on a friend's Facebook wall.

For my non-German-speaking friends, Father Christmas replies to Kevin as follows: "I've no idea what you're talking about. You're getting a book."

Wishing all readers a happy Festive Season and hope you all get what you wish for!

Drinking around

If you are anything like me, your wallet is probably bulging with silly little loyalty cards from the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the hairdresser, the chemist, the sandwich shop...

Now, here's an idea that I've seen before, but something about it tickles me. In Singapore, the Be Disloyal card has been introduced to benefit the city's independent cafes. The idea is simple - instead of slavishly frequenting one of those plastic corporate coffee places, you get the opportunity to visit 8 different coffee shops, then go back to the first to claim your free cup (or whatever.)

It's encouraging drinking around, which must be a Good Thing.

And it makes me wonder - which other old marketing chestnuts can I subvert next year?

Beg, steal or borrow - and share

These days, market research agencies devote a lot of interview time to establishing the potential "buzz" value of a piece of branded communication in their pre-testing as well as tracking studies.

How likely would you be to "share" this on social media?

Would you "like" this on Facebook?

As well as the old standards about "this is an ad I'd talk about with friends."

Sharing, these days, is big business. On the Unruly Media list of "most shared" commercials, The Force for VW has had 4.8m shares - over twice the number of its nearest rival - and 46m views. That's about the size of the population of Spain.

In the Top 5 were also DC Shoes, T-Mobile (twice, with Angry Birds Live and Royal Wedding) and Kia, with Party Rock Anthem.

If you look at the Top 20, and think about the "share" factors of entertaining, informative or useful, it's obvious that entertainment wins hands down. And, sifting through the usual internet suspects - cute kids, celebrities, music, dystopia, cars, apes & gorillas, laser swords and furry creatures - something striking emerges.

Almost everything in the Top 5 is borrowed: from movies, theme parks, games or real events.

Perhaps "borrowed interest" is not such a dirty word any more.

Curiosity killed my free time

Curiosity, at least in its form of Openness to Experience, is said to be one of the Big Five factors of human personality.

I do wonder sometimes, though, how much of the time I while away chasing information is genuine curiosity and how much could be classified as some sort of morbid addiction.

Years ago, I didn't spend hours in the library poring over encyclopedias unless I had to, for an essay or an exam. Yet, these days, a substantial portion of my day is taken over by googling and Wikipedia-ing, chasing after useless facts and confirming half-lost memories.

I do it because I can. And I don't always feel any better for knowing whatever it was.

Sometimes it feels like a food addiction. It's so easy that it's difficult to stop and, the more you eat, the less satisfied you get. Rather like chomping your way through a packet of Pringles instead of preparing a healthy meal from scratch, laying the table, sitting down and eating in company.

The more I know, the less satisfied I am.

I just hope that there won't be a Pandora- or Bluebeard's wife- style nasty surprise at the end of it.

The dustman and the supermum

Planners in Germany have a regular spot in the trade magazine New Business, under the title Strategy Corner. The last two articles have interested me, as there seems to be a direct connection between them.

In "The Dustman as Role Model", Bärbel Boy discovers that the public standing of people who work in advertising in Germany is on the bottom rung, below that of politicians and bankers. Cheery stuff. And, what's more, our reputation has worsened over time. Cheerier still is that the dustman is the rising star - well, cheery for dustmen, at least.

And, this week, in "Women - the real economic power", Anne Brit Maier shows how the portrayal of women in advertising has shifted all of a mm or two over the last 50 years. The cliche of Supermum with her baby and laptop is every bit as unrealistic as the perfect Hausfrau of the 1960s.

I think it's telling that both of these women have founded their own Planning agencies and don't work for any of the multi-nationals. Because I'm convinced there is a direct connection between these findings. I expect half the people that were interviewed about reputations were women. As Bärbel Boy points out, there is sometimes a feeling of living in a navel-gazing hermetically-sealed capsule when it comes to German advertising agencies - not all, but many - rather like living in "2nd Life" (what was that?) and about as relevant and interesting to the outside world.

So, come on, German agencies! Over on YouTube, the John Lewis Christmas Commercial from the UK has over 3m clicks and is hotly debated all over Mumsnet and beyond. It's about time we stopped churning out yet more cliches for the dustman's bin.