Planning-ness Vol. II

I have been meaning to write at least a quick recap note about the very cool and memorable experiences that I got to enjoy on day two of Planning-ness. They deserve it just as much as the experiences of day one.

Here are the highlights:

Planning deities, Jason Oke and Gareth Kay, shared their simple yet visionary point of view on Connections Planning. According to them the problem with this discipline is that, currently, it is not focused on brands or people, but on solving an AGENCY problem: the disconnect with media departments and agencies. Looking forward the key for the prosperity of Connections Planning (and this could apply to modern Advertising at large) is "to apply the New Media lens (interactive, interaction) on Advertising, and not the other way around, the Advertising lens (interruption, pushing message) onto New Media". Their presentation is here.

Flamingo, a very cool international research company, conducted a hands-on workshop on Commercial Semiotics. Through immersive, insightful and plain fun exercises we analyzed commercial advertising messages. We also uncovered Apple as the Mother ship of the Future.

Garry Tan (Posterous) shared his grasp on design and revealed how UI is a conversation and how people treat computers like people. As a consequence, in addition to design aspects, tech companies must pay attention to the human factor and human connections. He pointed out WUFOO—an Internet application that helps build online forms—who replies all customers' inquiries within minutes.

And last but not least Adrian Ho and Rob White from Zeus Jones brought the whole group together to brainstorm on how to take the leap from traditional to modern branding. We all picked our brains and came up with new and more effective marketing/planning tools to build better brands. The brilliant collective outcome can be found here. "Failure Awards," "ARG," "Act Now Think Later," and "Role Playing" are a few examples that demonstrate an interest on dynamic processes.

All of this exhaustingly stretched the limits of my perceptions and gave me a lot to think and to apply from now on.

Learnings from Planning-ness

Planning-ness, the 2 day event organized by Mark Lewis (of DDB) to fill the gap and disappointment left by the cancellation of this year's AAAA's Account Planning conference, is over. And it was a huge success. The theme was "Get excited and make things", we had amazing speakers, great energy and most importantly just plain FUN!

Below are some of the themes that resonated with me the most:

DAY 1

Grant McCracken's notion of Corporation Respiration: breathing culture in and out.

David Brown on making documentaries: the key is the story and its compelling characters, casting will be critical and spending time with the actors will dramatically improve results.

Mary Jane Stevenson and Emily Duncan from "Organizing for America" presented narrative as an organization tool in grassroots movements and storytelling as the most powerful weapon in creating connections and engaging all kinds of audiences.

Ken Eklund, creator of many ARG including "World without Oil", on the importance of the state of play, experimentation and collaboration.

I was very thankful for the opportunity to volunteer at the event and very glad to see the Academy of Art University getting involved in this kind of events. This was all thanks to Cameron Maddux, faculty and director of Account Planning, who is promoting the importance of ART in advertising, business and schools.
RIGHT: At the Barrel House photo from Cameron.

power to the people

It still amazes how the source of power has radically shifted from corporations to consumers. More and more companies are becoming increasingly consumer centric. Again this does not seem to have been possible without the Internet. Starbucks recently launched the microsite"My Starbucks Idea", where people submit their ideas for the chain and vote for other people's ideas. Some of the most interesting ones include:

1. Free Coffee on your Birthday
2. Free Wireless Internet
3. Bite size pastries
4. Coffee ice cubes
5. Shelves in the restrooms
etc. etc. etc.

Starbucks is sure to meet customer satisfaction, product development and PR efforts (along with the adoption of the new-old logo to improve their image) in a terribly simple way.

This comes to show that Advertising must embrace this consumer oriented tendency, just as corporations have done, moving past a "push strategy" to a "pull strategy", sparking people's interest, and only then offering enterntainment and information for those who are truly interested.