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Slide 2: In order of appearance (left to right) Rik Haslam Group Creative Architect, Rapp, Ian Haworth, Global Creative Director, Rapp, Guy Murphy, Worldwide Planning Director, JWT, Nick Kendall, Group Planning Director, BBH, Adam Arnold, Managing Director, Zag, Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH, Russell Marsh, Group Digital Strategy Director, Rapp, Amelia Torode, Planning Director, VCCP, Bob Jeffrey, Worldwide chairman and CEO, JWT, Lorna Hawtin, Disruption Director, TBWA, Bruce Sinclair, Course Leader, BNU, Martin Runnacles, Former MD BMW, Dr Reg Winfield, VMC Tutor, BNU, Sarah Tate, Strategist, Mother, Ajaz Ahmed, Chairman, AKQA, Andrew Hovels, Planner, TBWA, Dr Paul Springer, Author of Ads to Icons, Stephen Maccrron< Planning Director, JWT Manchester, Aisha Shafiq – My Wife Thank you for helping me challenge my thinking...
Slide 3: Waqar Riaz December 2009 MA Advertising Tutor: Dr Reg Winfield Module Code: ADM02 Bucks New University Faculty of Creativity & Culture MA Advertising © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 4: Unless you are prepared to give up something valuable you will never be able to truly change at all, because you will be forever in the control of things you can’t give up. 1 1. Peter Fisk, Marketing genius,, 2006, Page 23 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz “ “ Andy law
Slide 5: ...the Journey I took From 2006 - 2008 I spent my time in the UK as a layman whilst trying to understand the "whats" and "ifs" of my new audience, whilst consulting MTN South Africa and USAID AED as an Online Brand Planner. At the end of 2008 I had enough ideas and understanding to begin my MA in Creative Planning at Buckinghamshire University to broaden my thinking and gain a good understanding of the industry. My journey into the realm of strategy began with a singular thought: What's Planning all about? I commenced with the next stage a few days later, travelling to the UK, having decided that I'd have a better chance of answering my questions on planning in its place of origin. The reaction on the thought was immediate. It was the result of my years of interaction with the communications industry at JWT (Pakistan) & DDB (Bahrain) as a creative and a planner respectively. My first interaction with the London ad industry was of BBH. It was great! The place taught me how to create great communication stories and how to bring integration into my thinking. Call it Innovation Planning, Engagement Planning or just Planning... It all results in one conclusion - real, simple and relevant solutions. My addiction to advertising then took me to learn and understand the digital thinking of VCCP - and how to create useful and innovative communication connections with the audiences. And then came "Mother" into my life offering her love, care and affection which helped me to understand the fundamentals of creativity and how to inspire creatives; explaining how to challenge Big Ideas with Rich Ideas... and the ways to add magic to a product to turn it into an exciting brand. I think that I should stop here at the moment and not take too long explaining the wonders and magic of disruptive thinking (which I practised at TBWA). Just to let you know, I am currently working at OMINICOM (RAPP) in Strategy & Enablement. This is a newly-born discipline which combines the thinking of Data, Creativity, Technology and Media and encourages 'T' thinking to establish useful connections with the audiences. * * T-Shape Thinking: One area of specialisation with an understanding of multiple disciplines © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 6: One can’t be practically right if one is conceptually wrong In the times of Twitter phobia, YouTube craze, Farm Ville quest on Facebook, Blogging adventures, 3D digital environments, Mobile purchases, iPhone apps, Flickr effects, Google integration, Wiki wonders, Second World possibilities, Podcast revival, Verizon Twitter and Facebook cable, Sidewiki’s threats, iPlayer’s experience, Digital data systems, Amazon’s This journey is to learn about and understand models and ideas that are great enough to trigger our thinking, and may help us to imagine what is possible with what we have. This effort has been exerted in an attempt to understand the grand concepts of planning and how it can help to strengthen Please note that I won’t certainly be talking ‘cool’ as above because if I were to do that then I would be making you aware of the stuff you already know too much, or you will know too much about by the time you prepare your next ‘trend © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz presentation’. Instead what I want to discuss in the next few chapters are the concepts which direct our actions, as I cannot imagine an action that can be conceptually incorrect and practically sustainable. commerce, iTunes distribution and so on... you would expecting me to talk digital, as I believe this is the new Mantra nowadays. One way or another we all are trying to own digital – as if digital is not a language but a territory. the future for brands, people and communication companies.
Slide 7: CONTENTS CHART © Intellectual Rights Reserved - Waqar Riaz 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 8: CHAPTER ONE PLANNING IN GENERAL
Slide 9: (Honda book of dreams) ORIGINAL Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?sa=3&q=pears+soap accessed on 12-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 10: THINKING (Charles Darwin) (Einstein) (Aristotle) Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&ei=WTkZS8PvB8-njAem76z7Aw&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=einstein&spell=1&start=0accessed on 12-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 11: © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 12: O R I G I N A L Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=innocent+smoothies&meta=&aq=1&oq=innocent+&start=0 accessed on 12-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 13: IDEAS Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=google+logo&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 12-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 14: One thing only I know, and that is I know nothing. 2, 3 Socrates 2 3 Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, January 1953, Page 6 Image courtesy of Google Images, available at http://www.entelechy-magazine.com/images/socrates.gif - searched on 21st October 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 15: Ask an expert to define a planner’s role and the chances are that you will get a very vague answer. At least, this was true in my case. I was fortunate enough to meet some of the gurus of my field. Unfortunately, none of them ever gave a clear definition of what a PLANNING IS PROACTIVE NOT REACTIVE planner was actually supposed to do. Hmm… Well, you can’t define a planner, can you? That’s the best answer I got anyway. However, I strongly believe that there has got to be a definition for the subject – everyone else has one for theirs. It’s time to challenge all those no-definitions “definition” of planners, and maybe learn something useful on the way. Let's start this discussion by giving planner a defined role. But, where to begin? First of all, planners are not just in advertising. In fact, advertising stole planning from the pre-existing services i.e. military, architecture etc. Let’s look into the finest details of the subject and understand what planning does. Planning in any industry or sector, prepares the businesses for forecast potential risk factors and then recommends solutions to counter them whilst developing new areas for them e.g. A new sector, service, category or goal. I think we are getting somewhere defining planners and planning… Do you think I would be wrong to say that… © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 16: …a planner is a person who projects his thoughts forward in time and space to influence events before they occur rather than merely responding to events as they occur? © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 17: Great planning Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=egypt+history&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 14-11-2009
Slide 18: Though it was built in around 2630 B.C.E., We can still learn some valuable lessons of planning from the great pyramid of Djoser. 4 Think big, give some space to your mind and put that seven points communications brief aside for a little while. Once you have done that, try appreciating the science and art of pyramids. Indeed, it was a mind of a planner who thought well about everything and its placement, who exactly knew what would appeal to the masses and who could add lasting beauty to clay and sand for generations to come. 4 5 Yahoo answers - available at http://www.geocities.com/athens/academy/7357/unaslayout_n.gif - searched on 26th October 2009 Image courtesy of Google Images, available at http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_year_was_the_first_pyramid_built - searched on 26th October 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 19: You could ask what architectural planning has in common with communications planning. I would say everything – The job of planning is to design solutions for potential problems and then add sense to them by making them relate to human nature. It’s not all science, but a balance combination of sense and creativity. The architect of the pyramid of Djoser could have made a simple massive hall which would have perfectly served the purpose to the given task i.e. “bury the dead king”. However, the genius thought of turning it into a brand known as... ‘The pyramid of Djoser.’ It was not just the idea which made Djoser different, but the whole experience it offers . Building a rectangular structure is not a very difficult task , but mastering it with the enclosure wall, the great trench, the roofed colonnade entrance, the south court, the south tomb, the step pyramid, the burial chamber, the north chamber, the serdab court and the heb-sed court is something not every rectangular shaped building can have. Adding all those details made it into something which holds value and recognition after all these years. 6 6 SOURCED FROM WIKIPEDIA, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Djoser - searched on 26th October 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 20: 7 PLANNING IS A STATE OF MIND NOT MERELY A DISCIPLINE Imhotep (the man who built the pyramid of Djoser), the first architect, engineer, physician in history known by name, didn’t just spend his time understanding and finding out facts on different kinds of burial chambers for the kings all over the world. He may well have done, but one thing for sure is that he didn’t just finish working at that point. The point at which planning is today is not just being creative with what we have, but totally forgetting what we know and making things different from what we already have.7 7 SOURCED FROM WIKIPEDIA, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep - searched on 26th October 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 21: Military planning Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=military+planning&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 14-11-2009
Slide 22: Let’s now look at planning from a rather different perspective, let’s now look from the eyes of great military leaders who routinely face situations or problems where they have to decide which actions to take. I hope to learn how usefully they implement planning to grow their collective successes. In a literal sense, military leaders inescapably make all decisions in advance of taking action. Therefore, military planning as discussed here refers to situations where there is sufficient time to employ a decision making process. 8 (EFFECTS BASED MILITARY PLANNING) 8 9 Source - Paul K. Van Riper, PLANNING FOR AND APPLYING MILITARY FORCE: AN EXAMINATION OF TERMS, March 2006 – Page 2 SOURCED FROM GOOGLE IMAGES http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~cvrl/EBO/ebo_files/image001.gif - searched on 268h October 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 23: When it comes to discussing strategic planning in the military and its grand concepts there could be no one better than Clausewitz to quote. Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz is widely acknowledged as the most important of the major strategic theorists. Despite the fact that he's been dead for over a century and a half, he remains the most frequently cited, the most controversial, and in many respects the most modern. In his classic ‘On War’, he wrote, “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.” 10 He was the man behind the thinking and theory of concepts such as ends, the means model, and selected terms to support more detailed and explicit planning. That is, he recognized how the methods or ways, and means are employed is important. Thus, the current ends, ways, and means paradigm. In trying to understand where to focus the available means, he created concepts such as centre of gravity and decisive points. (Carl von Clausewitz) 10 Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. And trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 579. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 24: (JWT Planning cycle) Several contemporary scholars of strategy broadened the basic Clausewitzian ends-means concept. For example John Collins (a military writer), described ends, ways, and means based on the names Rudyard Kipling provided his “six honest serving men.” Collins set them forth this way: • “What” and “Why” correspond to perceived requirements (ends), • “How, When and Where” indicate optional courses of action (ways), • “Who” concerns available forces and resources (means). 11 If we look at the diagram above which shows the planning cycle Stephen King at JWT created in 1969, then we further realise that the points he touched upon were already in discussion at a much greater level way before his time. 11 John M. Collins, Military Strategy: Principles, Practices, and Historical Perspectives, Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002, p. 3.. 12 JWT Planning Cycle – JWT Planning Guide available at http://www.slideshare.net/williamtheliar/jwt-planning-guide accessed on 29th October 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 25: In its true sense, planning is not a domain like marketing, finance or even physics for that matter – instead, it’s something universal, applicable to all fields and categories (Figure 1). A good lawyer is the one who plans his case effectively, does research thoroughly and then finally has the courage to work his magic in the court room, based on facts and findings. and the story won’t be much different for a military general , a good financial officer or a chief executive of some fortune 500. “Planning is the origin of success ”. MILITARY LAW Figure 1 - Universal Model of Planning © Waqar Riaz © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 26: CHAPTER TWO BRANDS AND PLANNING
Slide 27: Okay, too much business. Let’s talk some learni The Story of William Lever 14 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Page 52 Images scanned from The King of Sunlight, accessed on 14-11-2009
Slide 28: The man who makes no mistakes usually makes nothing. William Hesketh Lever 13 (William Hesketh Lever) 13 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Page 118 Line 11 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 29: We now know for certain that planning is a fundamental element in making solutions for any given potential problem. We have also identified that in the past, people have used planning in many different ways. Now let’s get back on track – back to the subject of communications. Let's try to understand planning from the perspectives of people as great as William Lever and of brands as unique as Lever brothers . If we try to understand how usefully they implemented planning in the early days then it may help in understanding the real meaning of the subject. Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=sunlight+soap&meta=&aq=0&oq=sunlight+s&start=0 accessed on 15-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 30: Did you know that William Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers (now Unilever) and one of the most successful and wealthy men in history, came from poor beginnings? It's true. He was born on 19 September 1851 in Bolton, a town described seven years earlier as one of the worst in Britain by no less of an authority than Friedrich Engels. William joined his father’s grocery business at the age of sixteen, starting right at the bottom, as an apprentice. He was put in charge of preparing sugar and soap. Both of the products arrived as foot-long, solid bars, which had to be sliced into manageable quantities and individually wrapped in greaseproof paper. You can imagine the tediousness involved in the process. However, William, the ever improver, couldn’t stop thinking that there had to be a better way. Soon William was moved to another department where his talents were put to greater use as he looked after the company’s accounts. 15 Eight year old William (top, sitting on the right) poses with his brother, James Darcy, and their oldest sister, Elizabeth Emma, in 1859. 15 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Page 16, 17, 18 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 31: William’s Bolton House (Left). William’s open air Port Sunlight bedroom (Right). The company’s account system was a mess – much of this was due to the old way of working. However, William saw potential problems that this system could create in the future and that this very system could become a threat to the company’s growth. He put his mind to creating an alternative, more efficient, robust and effective method of book-keeping. Creating the system was one part of what he did and selling the idea to his conservative father was another. William used all his strategic sense and before attempting to sell the idea to his father, he worked on winning the trust of his fellow clerks. Eventually, the success of his modernised system granted the son new respect and an increased voice in the company. 15 15 Images and text Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Page 16, 17, 18 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 32: By the age of 23 William was married to Elizabeth and had transformed his father’s company. However, he claimed that he hadn't done anything revolutionary. In his 1915 ‘Secrets of my success’ speech, he mentioned, “There is a general impression that in making money you have to do something wonderful, but believe me, there is much more money made in doing something better than ever it was done before than in doing something new – far more.” 16 16 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Page 27, 29, 31 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 33: He always remembered this self-created golden rule (which we discussed on the previous page) which he kept with him during his 1884 cruise. Even on a leisure tour, Lever was thinking of business ideas, remembering how successful ‘Lever Pure Honey’ was (their own patented product) – which made them loads more money than a normal honey could. I imagine Lever standing on the deck of his ship and asking himself – What’s Next, William? And it was one of those moments when he thought of the killer idea – why not make a branded washing soap? Clearly, there was a need in the market as washing clothes wasn’t as easy as it is now - It was a long, laborious task for women. And William exactly knew how to make the process easier, quicker and more enjoyable. Sunlight was born and Lever Brothers took off. 16 16 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Page 27, 29, 31 Images courtesy of Google Images, available at http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=sunlight+soap&meta=&aq=0&oq=sunlight+s&start=0 accessed on 17-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 34: Do you know what soap is made of? Me neither and frankly speaking nor did William Lever . When he founded his fortune on it, he claimed to be, “as ignorant of soap-making as baby in arms”. What William was doing was nothing normal. He was actually thinking of manufacturing his own soap and then patenting it with a brand called “Sunlight Self-Washer”. He took his stance against all odds and he began to turn his dream into a reality. He knew his audience would want his product and so he leased a soap works in Warrington and started to produce his own brand of soap, the ‘Sunlight Self-Washer’. 17 Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=sunlight+soap&meta=&aq=0&oq=sunlight+s&start=0 accessed on 15-11-2009 17 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 35: Gone were the days of the foot-long soap bar. Sunlight (William’s biggest Invention) was cut at source and each tablet was wrapped individually in bright, colourful packaging. William was a unique man. There was no part of the business that he wasn’t directly involved, even advertising – especially ‘Advertising’. He specifically told his staff to let children inspect the brightly coloured Sunlight Boxes as they would then insist their parents to buy the product. Things as small as closing the house gate after a sales pitch were part of William’s staff syllabus. He created cookery books, direct marketing material, story books for children and so on. He was the first man to think of railways as a medium for advertising in his age and entered into a £50 contract with London and North-Western Railway company as part of Sunlight’s first advertising campaign. He then personally selected the spots where the ads should be displayed and he even wrote the slogan himself. It read, ‘Sunlight Self-Washer: See how this becomes the house’. 17 17 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=sunlight+soap&meta=&aq=0&oq=sunlight+s&start=0 accessed on 15-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 36: In doing what he did, William actually solved all the communications problems many companies still struggle with. He didn’t go to a media house to buy a big ad space; he didn’t even visit an ad agency for creative inspiration. He simply did what we all forget to do today – he followed the 17 audience. Very soon people across the UK loved Sunlight and by the end of 1888, just after two years of the product launch, they were producing 14,000 tons a week. Sunlight boxes soon started to advertise a common phrase ‘has the largest sale of any soap in the world’. 17 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=sunlight+soap&meta=&aq=0&oq=sunlight+s&start=0 accessed on 15-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 37: (Port Sunlight) Lever brothers was now a business generating £50,000 profit a year. This made Lever more conscious of what he was doing, He started to think that he had the same works, the same soap boiler, the same manager and the same staff. The question he asked himself was ‘whose is that money?’ In answering his own question he totally changed the concept of how businesses would run by building a town for his employees and named it as ‘Port Sunlight’. Much of the architectural credit of ‘Port Sunlight’ goes to William Lever as he paid attention to detail with the look and feel of the town and its social values. He introduced the concept of large houses for communities with gardens, he built cafés, gyms, pubs and restaurants within the town, and school for the children of his staff. 18 18 Text and Images Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 38: This may not be the right place to highlight William’s every success and achievement. However, by the time Lever died in 1925, the company had evolved from one brand to several, it had 187,000 shareholders, and 85,000 staff ‘living and working in almost every country in the world’. Lever Brothers issued capital was some £57,000 million and 18,000 of his staff were co-partners.18 18 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=sunlight+soap&meta=&aq=0&oq=sunlight+s&start=0 accessed on 15-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 39: The key to William Lever’s success was his unique approach to things in general. He always tried making sense of the processes and their surroundings. Be it a sales boy selling soap to a lady at her doorstep, a retailer taking stock for the local market, the opened. Established there and making money I opened up in and elsewhere, and covered the United Kingdom.” This was the strategy William used for his impressive success. He involved planning in every stage of his selling channels. He used strategic techniques for every single business process he went through. Whether it was launching a new system for managing the company accounts, growing a happy door-todoor customer base, selling his products by the power of a brand called ‘Sunlight’, or leading Lever Brothers successfully from challenging times, he never stopped adding creativity to the subject. Maybe Lever wanted us to know something. Maybe he was trying to tell us to think rich and instead of creating integrated systems, to become integrated individuals. 19 William Hesketh Lever London, Scotland mayor of Bolton representing his people, a wholesaler opening his doors to the international market or an employer living in ‘Port Sunlight’, William was focused and useful for everyone around him. In his 1915, Secrets of my Success speech, William said, “I started locally and when I got it established there and making money, I ventured forth to Liverpool and Manchester. Established there and making money I ventured as far north as Newcastle and as far south as Plymouth with the intervening country more or less 19 Adam McQueen, The King of Sunlight, 2004, Images courtesy of Google Images available at ; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=william+lever&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 20-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 40: (Fig 2) PEOPLE (CUSTOMERS/BUYERS) C O M M U N I C A T I O N S MANUFACTURER William Hesketh Lever DISTRIBUTOR RETAILER The times of Lever were simple and focused. Every system was totally integrated. Thanks to Lever’s command everyone was working for the people, without creating unnecessary additions in the process of manufacturing the product to selling it to the end user (Fig 2). The benefits of the services and products were communicated exactly when, where and how people required. The thinking was totally integrated and everyone involved in the process, knew exactly what the business was doing. 20 Fig 2 © Waqar Riaz 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 41: Just five years after the death of William Lever, Lever brothers became Unilever as a result of an international merger. Whilst the merger brought benefits for both parties, it also had negative implementations. The biggest of all was ‘disintegration’- not so much in the way things worked, but in the thinking of the business. Then started the war of share, one way or another everyone wanted to own the end user. However, in doing so they totally misunderstood the William’s secret; it wasn’t about owning the audience in different domains, instead understanding their life in general and addressing their different needs by introducing products, services and useful interactive communications. Nobody understood. It wasn’t about segmenting people as if they were a species from another planet; rather, considering yourself as part of their community and addressing the needs of your community. William Hesketh Lever 1935 – LUX Ad (Ain’t the William Way) 1932 – Sunlight Soap Ad 1932 – LUX Ad 21 Image courtesy of Google Images, available at http://www.adclassix.com/images/35luxsoap.jpg , accessed on 8-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 42: (Fig 3) William Hesketh Lever However, instead of continuing with integration what we got was ‘champions of consumers’. I hate that word ‘consumers’. Anyway, no matter what you were selling, these were the guys you had to go through (Fig3). Because apparently they knew everything about the customers. They created a universe which was more like this; The Manufacturer is on planet Zoron, the Customer is on Planet Delta, and these geniuses know the secret portal that the seller (Manufacturer/Retailer/Distributor) can take to get closer to the buyer and eventually make a happy sale. What 22 Fig 3 © Waqar Riaz 2009 a strange concept – I wonder where this portal was when William was selling millions of tons of soap without consulting these consumer-geniuses? © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz Think...
Slide 43: The point is... Planning has no limits © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 44: COMMUNICATIONS AND PLANNING CHAPTER THREE
Slide 45: “Obviously everybody wants to be successful, but I Sergey Brin Peter Fisk, marketing Genius, Inspiration Google, 2004 want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big William Hesketh Lever difference in the world.” © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 46: “In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream, and in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.” William Hesketh Lever Michael Jackson Image scanned from the book, Micheal Jackson – Life of a legend, accessed on 8-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 47: Some people want “Somehappen. it to happen, some wish it would happen, others people want it to make it happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” Michael Jordan Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=micheal+jordan&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 13-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 48: William Hesketh Lever “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=charles+darwin&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 13-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 49: Let’s stay loyal to our subject Ahhhhh.... It has been a long and jump straight into the and intensive journey. Though, 1960’s. Oh yes, the time when I hope that it was enjoyable Stephen King and Stanley and worth experiencing – we Pollitt had their ‘Planningstarted from understanding Wars’. The time, because of the grand definition of which I am able to write and planning and how in different you are able to read all this. fields and times people have Let’s discuss those precious used it. Then we fast moments when Planning was forwarded to the times of sticking its neck out in the ‘Sunlight’ and learnt that planning is not just about William Hesketh Lever Communications industry, ‘by name’. Let’s make an finding the target attempt to understand all audience and effectively those intelligent concepts communicating to them, but King and Pollitt introduced designing the whole business and if we are lucky enough to around people. On our way, cover them, then we’ll try to we analysed Planning from understand the current different perspectives and disintegration and the myths points of views. However, I am of specialisation in the glad that there was one thing subject. Let’s learn the common in all our ‘relevant’ and delete the endeavours: Sense and ‘stupid’ (from our memories). Creativity. PLANNING IS NOT ABOUT WHAT’S ANSWERING RIGHT OR WHAT’S WRONG, BUT RELEVANT © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 50: ‘It’s all in the brand, brand, brand’. The mantra every marketer was singing. I am afraid, but in order to understand King’s and Pollitt’s effort we have to go a little back in the evolution of brands. Before the Fifties or even the Forties, ‘Marketing’ as a department had no existence as far as companies were involved. However, when companies started to realise the importance of brands and sensed the increased control of advertising agencies on their businesses, they immediately thought of a counter strategy which was to open a marketing department within their corporations. Thus, the marketing department was born in companies as a ‘second wife, married to the husband (Client) of development of planning department is directly linked with William Hesketh Lever time – as the much specialisation right and wrong advertising’. The second possible reason could be too in the communications discipline. It communications partners because also made it difficult for the brands to decide between everybody was saying the same thing – ‘I am the consumer-genius you need’. Therefore, brands needed a neutral voice within the company (FIG 4, 5). 23 23 Henrik Habberstad, The Anatomy of Account Planning, accessed on 10th November 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 51: (Fig 4) Research (Fig 5) Research Brand ATL BTL Brand MARKETING DEPARTMENT ATL BTL MEDIA MEDIA William Hesketh Lever The example of the birth of marketing department scares me a lot and forces me to think. The specialisation/disintegration in the Advertising / Communications business forced clients into having a marketing department, so maybe the same thing could happen to planning. In recent years we have added too much irrelevant material to the subject. There’s just too much disintegration in planning – We have taken ‘P’ ‘L’ ‘A’ ‘N’ ‘N’ ‘I’ ‘N’ ‘G’ out of planning and started to call it whatever we like it to be. And still we complain, why don’t the clients trust us? The other reason that made King and Pollitt introduce planning as a department is obvious: the disintegration within the advertising industry started to take media away from the large advertising agencies and other jobs e.g. production and printing. In order to recover from this situation, a common bridge was needed immediately to help integrate the systems and make things make sense for everyone i.e. agency and client. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 52: Before we advance with our discussion, we must understand that the birth of planning in advertising doesn’t, by any means, mean that advertising before Planning was not planned. Good advertising has always been planned and campaigns have always been post-rationalized. People like James Webb Young, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach were all superb planners. What was new was the existence in an agency of a separate department whose primary responsibility was to plan advertising strategy 24 William Hesketh Lever Bernbach is a good example to consider. The campaign was delivered before the times of Planning. Yet it had all the ingredients of planning that any brand could ever have. It helped the company to develop a philosophy around the brand and business whilst achieving all the business objectives, both in terms of volume and value. and evaluate campaigns in accordance with this. The revolutionary Volkswagen ‘Think small’ campaign by Bill 25 24 Henrik Habberstad, The Anatomy of Account Planning, accessed on 10th November 2009, Page 4 Images courtesy of Google Images, available at http://mootee.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/01/11/1113.jpg, accessed on 10th November 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 53: Officially, the origin of account planning occurred at about the same time (in the mid to late 1960s) in two of the leading British advertising agencies, and was in each case the product of a single, dominant thinker. The agencies were the J Walter Thompson (now JWT) London Office, and the new, very small agency Boase Massimi Pollitt (BMP), now BMP DDB, also in London. It is also worth mentioning that the two dominant personalities involved were JWT’s Stephen King and the late Stanley Pollitt of BMP. Apart from a shared emphasis on the consumer, the approach of these two agencies was very different, representing two distinct ideologies. However, both were useful and have had a profound influence on subsequent advertising 26 practice. Inevitably, there has been some dispute about which William Hesketh Lever came first, and which was the better. 24 26 Henrik Habberstad, The Anatomy of Account Planning, accessed on 10th November 2009, Page 5 Images courtesy of Google Images, available at http://mootee.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/01/11/1113.jpg, accessed on 10th November 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 54: Okay – now briefly, let’s look at the development of account planning in JWT and BMP. William Hesketh Lever The Thompson T Plan (today widely known as ‘The Planning Cycle’ and recently strengthened by ‘The New JWT Planning Model’ by Guy Murphy, Worldwide Planning Director, JWT) was developed in early/mid 1960s. However, in 1968 the agency realised the potential of The Thompson T Plan working, and thus decided that the approach should be integrated in agency thinking which gave a reason for the birth of a new department (which was later named as Account Planning). The reason for setting up Account planning and the responsibilities of an Account planner, as defined by Stephen King, were (FIG 6). © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 55: FIG 6 – JWT ACCOUNT PLANNING Implications for the Agency Account Planner Responsibilities Integrate Campaign and Media Objectives Develop specialist skills in research and planning Link technical planning and its information sources Set objectives for creatives, media buying and scheduling, merchandising and help develop objectives into action Plan commission and plan advertising research Plan advertising experiments William Hesketh Lever Account planning Evaluate advertising and experiments 27 Extract from Stephen King’s Internally Circulated Document, 1968 Present work to account groups and clients © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 56: Ultimately, this system became the reason for a new kind of working and team setup. JWT created an integrated, new, three person team for each of its accounts (fig 7). William Hesketh Lever Guy Murphy, Worldwide Planning Director at JWT, defines JWT planning by quoting Stephen King “strategic imagination on the grand scale”. By definition, this sounds impressive and highly appealing. However, it seems as though this ideology has been somewhat compromised in the formation of this team structure, which has been in practice at JWT since 1968. We suddenly realise that the job of a planner at JWT, who in theory works as a grand business consultant for the client and agency, is actually working as a logical connection between creativity and sales. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 57: However, this doesn’t mean at all that JWT didn’t benefit by the introduction of this discipline. Of course, there are plenty of campaigns where planning played a very significant and important role and actually made things happen for both the client and the agency. But unfortunately, the influence of planning has never on anything beyond campaigns Nevertheless, I wondered why the role of a planner has always been limited to a communications problem solver? What Stephen King introduced was a business consultant, a grand strategist; someone with the ability to take a holistic view of every single business process and then design solutions around success. Someone who could see all the potential problems and address them before they occurred, rather than simply responding to problems as they occur. As an industry, we are not currently encouraging the kind of thinking that we need – every single brief has a very dominant ‘what’s the problem?’ part. Why are we always addressing problems and why can’t we stop being so negative? I wonder when will we start thinking of brand opportunities instead of brand problems? (Example of JWT Creative Brief) William Hesketh Lever © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 58: From 1965, Stanley Pollitt, then at Interpublic Group agency Pritchard Wood & Partners in London, drew similar conclusions to his contemporaries and friends at JWT. His legacy to the advertising industry would be a new agency structure revolving around a set of principles which also attracted the title ‘account planning’. There’s the potential of Pollitt’s ideas blossomed when, in 1968, he helped set up Boase writing a complete book all Massimi Pollitt and established what he called a ‘consumer about the magic of King alliance’, openly adopting the phrase from JWT. The new account and the superiority of JWT, planning department at BMP was quite different from that at the London office of JWT. BMP was a tiny agency with no international but I guess that’s not the connections at that stage, but it was soon to develop a reputation point of this primer. So let’s for good creative William Hesketh Leverwork, thanks to the efforts of the young and very look at the other side of talented John Webster. The aim of BMP was to show that its advertising was both accountable and effective. Martin Boase was planning – Pollitt’s way, once quoted as saying that he did not accept that there had to be which took place at a very a choice between strategically relevant and creatively original small agency, BMP (now advertising. This remains something of a mantra at BMP DDB. Planners at BMP mainly got involved in the following principles: DDB). - Advertising research, and often fieldwork. - Working with creative teams and researching rough creative ideas. - Using consumer research to clarify the issues and enrich the advertising development process. 28 Henrik Habberstad, The Anatomy of Account Planning, accessed on 10th November 2009, Page 7 28 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 59: (Example of BMP DDB Creative Brief) FIG 8 – NEW BMP TEAM STRUCTURE William Hesketh Lever © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 60: To conclude, BMP and JWT both realised the importance of planning in the advertising process and introduced a new department into their agencies. However, the role played by planners at BMP was more focused on the development of ‘creatives’ while JWT encouraged its planners to look at the bigger picture ‘The Grand Concepts’. To better understand the relationship between planning and communications, let’s study some brand communications. We’ll look at examples where agencies and brands used planning (intentionally or unintentionally) and benefited from it. Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=charles+darwin&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 13-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 61: It all started with “1984”, the groundbreaking Super Bowl commercial that introduced the Macintosh and is still talked about two and half decades later. Director Ridley Scott paid homage to George Orwell’s classic tale by creating a vision of a bleak conformist world, in which a lone heroine rebels against the automatons by throwing a hammer. The ad only ran once, but it helped change the world of computers, and of advertising. Big brother voice-over: For today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification directives. We have created, for the first time, in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusion truths. Our unification of thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. William Hesketh Lever We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail. Announcer voice-over: On January 24th Apple Computer introduce Macintosh. will And you’ll notice why 1984 won’t be like “1984”. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 62: William Hesketh Lever © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 63: Long the pacesetter in the business machine sector, IBM had become the company for Apple to beat. Before IBM entered the personal computer market in 1982, Apple had more than 40 percent of the sales. By 1983 IBM had gained first place, capturing 36 percent of the market, while Apple's share had fallen to 25 percent. Industry analysts were not sure how Apple's Macintosh would fare against IBM. The Macintosh could not run programs written for IBM personal computers, and most new programs on the market adhered to the standards set by IBM. The Macintosh would be a test of Apple's ability to compete head-on with IBM while remaining true to its own design criteria. The new product would sell only if Apple could convince users that IBM compatibility was not all that important when a big enough company was behind the computer. 29 William Hesketh Lever It first happened a little over two decades ago, on a Sunday afternoon in January of 1984. no one expected it, which was part of what made it so powerful. As millions of people sat before their television sets, watching a football game and shifting their attention to snacks and conversations when the commercials came on, something round about the third quarter – a kind of tremor. But it was above ground and right on the TV screen, in the form of a woman charging full speed, wielding a hammer and preparing to fly. Once she did that a lot was shattered the way people thought about big business and entrepreneurial brands, the way people thought about computers, and most of all the way people thought about a company named Apple. 30 Macintosh, welcomed people to a new age of computers. 29 30 Robert Schnakenberg, Apple Computer, Inc.: 1984 campaign, Encyclopaedia of major marketing campaigns, Volume 1 2000 Warren Berger, Disruption Stories, 2004, Page 16 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 64: Commissioned to provide the advertising strategy for the Macintosh launch was advertising agency Chiat/Day. The creative team William Hesketh Lever Apple was actually following a time-honoured rule of advertising—grab the consumer's attention. The company was aware that whenever a new product is introduced the first thing its maker must do is make people aware of it and its brand name. The Apple ad did so in a fashion quite innovative for its time. Also part of the marketing strategy for the Macintosh was a partnership with Microsoft, the Richmond, Washington-based personal computer software company. On the same day Apple unveiled the computer, Microsoft introduced five new programs for the Mac in ads in the Wall Street Journal. "Apple's new baby has our best features," read the copy. "It's called Macintosh. And it has our brains and a lot of our personality." The one-time-only ad was created by Microsoft's ad assembled in the ad shop's San Francisco office consisted of executive vice president and creative director Lee Clow, vice president and associate creative director Steve Hayden (who wrote the final spot), vice president and associate creative director Brent Thomas (who served as art director), and producer Richard O'Neill. These people worked for more than a year—"65-hour weeks, without vacation," according to account director Paul Conhune—to produce what would become one of the most talked-about spots in the history of advertising. The spot, entitled "1984," began a six-day ran in January 1984 that concluded with its final airing during ABC's telecast of Super Bowl XVIII. In foisting the elaborate "1984" on an unsuspecting public, Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=mac+mouse&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 13-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 65: agency, Keye/Donna/Pearlstein (KDP), which worked in tandem with Chiat/Day on the project. The ads went on to describe the five new programs that Microsoft planned to release for the Macintosh over the first few months of 1984. As a result of “1984”, early sales of the Macintosh were brisk. Industry sources estimated that in the first six hours on the product's launch day 200,000 consumers visited the country's 1,500 Apple dealers. The dealers reported selling $3.5 million worth of Macs and accepted cash deposits for another $1 million. In the first two months of the new computer's availability, an additional $8 million in deposits was taken. 31 Thirdly, the communication strategy for the new Macintosh, which insured the presentation of the machine as different as the company representing it and as innovative as the product itself. From the selection of media channels to the inspiration of creative theme from controversial novelist George Orwell, it was made sure that nothing looked, sounded or felt like anything people had experienced before. The most fascinating thing of the story of “1984” is the consistency in the overall transaction of Macintosh for the Apple Business i.e. from the making of the product to its actual sale. Of course, the credit of Macintosh success goes to many minds, however, if I have to select the ‘Grand Strategist’ among those, then that would be, without a doubt, the inventor, the strategist, the thinker, Steve Jobs. Fast forward to 2009, and you can’t name a single thing used in “1984” that didn’t have the rules of planning embedded in it. Jobs didn’t just think of the product proposition to be the machine ‘For the rest of Us’, but also carefully built the brand world around the idea. As a Grand First of all, the product was designed with the user and their needs in mind. Thanks to Steve Jobs, intensive planning work took place in actually creating and designing the machine. It featured a fast processor powered by a Motorola 68,000 chip and had 128,000 characters of memory. No computer jargon was needed to operate the machine. To carry out a particular function, the user simply moved a pointer, or mouse, to a symbol on the screen and pushed a button. The screen could also be broken up into windows, thus allowing several functions to be handled at the same time. Secondly, the penetration strategy adopted by the product. A smart move of including Microsoft as a technology partner, which insured the superiority of the machine, both in its looks and working. 31 Robert Schnakenberg, Apple Computer, Inc.: 1984 campaign, Encyclopaedia of major marketing campaigns, Volume 1 2000 Strategist, Steve Jobs made sure that everything went according to the product idea, his focus was on building a long-term personality for the Apple, by delivering consistent, innovative solutions for people in need, than merely executing what technology was offering at that time. The point which differentiated Macintosh from the rest of the competition was its ability to have a balance combination of logic and creativity. Without a doubt, Steve Jobs realised that it was possible to defy convention and put forth a completely original vision, and to create the machine that was designed to adapt to the user (instead of the other way around). © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 66: William Hesketh Lever The point is... Businesses and Brands need deeper logic and more creativity to succeed amidst complexity. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 67: Peter Fisk, in his book Marketing Genius wrote, ‘the blurring of boundaries, of virtual and real worlds, and fusion of previously unrelated industries, is a daunting challenge but also a fantastic opportunity’. With a doubt, the modernisation within the technology discipline introduced countless opportunities to the business world. Today, it’s possible for any brand to work with or against any other. It’s no more about finding what the technology has done, instead it’s about realising the potential it has for us. It’s an open book, easily accessible to those who have the dreams, brains, confidence and persistence to benefit from it. In Google doing what it does, it truly understands the following; • Customers: "They only want what they want." • Advertisers: "They want low cost and low risk." • Media/Publishers: "They need to engage customers and they want to do so at a low cost and with low risk. In a traditional world, for each to get what it wants, someone has to sacrifice. If a publisher wants to make more money, an advertiser has to pay more. If an advertiser wants lower risk and still get out in front of customers, the customers may not get what they want. However, this is where Google differentiates itself from the rest William Hesketh Leverby coming up with a ‘Grand Solution’, something Very similar to this was the realisation of Larry Page and Sergey of the world, Brin back in 1995, when they created Google in their Stanford University bedroom. What Google did was not a one off magic performance, but a simply a case of focusing the business around people, and not the other way around. Within five years, Google had started to deal with 100 million internet searches every day, and made Brin and Page multibillionaires in less than a decade. Similar to this is what Steve Jobs did for the Apple brand. For Google their vision is simple, ‘ to be the perfect search engine’ or, ‘one that understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want’. Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=google+logo&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 on 28-11-2009 which only the brains of Page and Brin could realise. In the case of Google, the searcher types in a query; advertisers, in advance, bid on a click because they assume a click translates to interest; and, with each click, publishers presumably make money. This model of working is something all three want i.e. (People, Advertiser, Publisher): Something is exchanged at a price that's market-determined. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 68: FIG 9 – Google Search Model of Working PUBLISHER ADVERTISER USER RECEIVING RELEVANT CONTENT GOOGLE DIGITAL/ONLINE RESOURCES OF THE WORLD In reality, Google’s (search) model of working is extremely simple (FIG 9). Google as a brand understands the value of keeping the audience ‘on your side’. In all its operations what brand and publisher is looking for and Google makes it sure that everybody gets what they really want. In simple words, Google is the web’s library: archival, organized and oriented around research. Now you must be thinking, what on earth this all has to do with Communications Planning? But if you look deeper, you will find Google as the champion of planning. As planners we stand for ‘champions of people’, we celebrate the fact that it’s the end user whose voice is heard and listened, at all levels in designing a business proposition. Google sells ultimately is, ‘You’. You, ‘the audience’ that every In whatever Google does, it’s always the ‘searcher’ who is given utmost priority. Whether it’s an advertiser using Google William Hesketh Lever AdWords to promote its products and services on the web with targeted advertising, or a website manager taking advantage of the Google AdSense programme to deliver ads relevant to the content of his website, the whole Google system works around customer democracy. Google search rankings are determined by the most popular sites amongst global internet users, assisted by those sites that encourage more open networking, linking one to another. It’s no accident that Google’s New York office has more humans than servers. This conviction in the power of people is also truly reflected in how Google creates awareness for its brand. Until recently, no one had experienced a traditional piece of advertising from Google. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 69: In terms of its value, Google stands at number one in the world, above Coca Cola, Microsoft and many others who spend millions of advertising dollars in creating their brand value. But for Google, the case is different. Anyone who uses Google products automatically becomes its advocate. And if my memory serves me correctly, then it wasn’t very different when Google revolutionised the e-mail world with the launch of Gmail. Okay, so how do you launch a global communications campaign for a global brand, that caters to all cultures and markets, whilst using the power of single idea and then broadcast it to millions of people – with just one condition , that you don’t have any advertising budget? It sounds ridiculous, I know William Hesketh Lever – tell it to an advertising agency and they will think you are crazy, and would like to stay as far from you as possible. But then try asking Google, and they might tell you how successfully they did it when they thought of promoting Gmail. The month was August, the date was 28th and the year was 2007. This was the day when Google broadcasted their Behind the Scenes video on YouTube, which to date has received 5,634,302 views – not really a bad reach for an advertising piece that lasts for two minutes and nineteen seconds. The video was created by Gmail lovers from all around the world based on a simple communications idea, ‘Help us imagine how an email message travels around the world’. The execution platform was © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&sa=1&q=top+10+brands&meta=&aq=f&oq=&start=0 on 28-11-2009
Slide 70: William Hesketh Lever © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 71: even simpler, ‘Take a look at the collaborative video we started, and then film what happens next. We'll rotate a selection of the clips we receive on this page, and add the best ones to the video. The final video will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide’. And there it was – all the world out with their video cameras and letter ‘M’. Hats off to the thinking of Gmail Labs. If we look at this activity from an advertising effectiveness point of view, then we come across some amazing results. Thousands of blogs across the world wide web, started to talk about Gmail’s clever stunt – it reached a worldwide audience of millions, and represented the multicultural, global outlook of the brand in its communications. All this at apparently zero media, production and advertising budget. It is indeed a very innovative case study, but also a bit scary at the communications on their own and then have the ability to execute So, what was actually that thing which made people so interested in doing what they did for Gmail? In my opinion a good product is a same time. If advertisers are able to produce such effective ‘product’ of focused thinking. Thinking, that is planned and actually William Hesketh Lever brings benefit to the people, is more effective for any business, than doesn’t sell dreams – it simply brings utility to all of us. And that’s why we believe that whatever it does, it’s doing for our benefit. The product ‘Gmail’ has been bombarded with utility, whilst using a very commercially viable model – which again satisfies the three point criteria that we discussed for Google Search earlier i.e. • Customers: They only want what they want. • Advertisers: They want low cost and low risk. • Media/Publishers: They need to engage customers and they want to do so at a low cost and with low risk. The advertising within emails is targeted and focused, and there won’t be any advertising displayed that is not relevant to the email text. Image accessed through taking screenshot of personal email account – accessed on 22-11-2009 them successfully, then I wonder what need for an advertising/media partner will they have in the future? selling people dreams and hopes, without a tangible benefit. Google © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 72: Google doesn’t say how many Gmail users there are, but comScore estimates unique monthly visitors. According to the latest stats, the number of people visiting Gmail grew 43 percent in 2008 to 29.6 million. 32 Communications, on the other hand, is the end result of brand thinking, and there’s no way on earth that can make that end result relevant to what people are looking for, unless the business isn’t designed to work in the way that people think. As Planners, it’s important for us to understand that we are moving realise this and start showing it in what we do, then soon brands might not have any need for us as we now know that some brands are actually very good in planning total solutions for their businesses. Without a doubt, every planner must indulge in learning how to analyse data about brands, the ways to use research usefully and how to bring human insight into the communications process. However, if one stops here, then everyone’s in trouble, because as a Grand Strategist, our job is not to just create useful digital strategies, guide the creatives and agency in developing television commercials, or introduce a cool way away from an era of monitoring to an age of engagement. If we don’t William Hesketh Lever I will discuss this point in detail in the later chapters. Nevertheless, the challenge for the future brand planners is not fixing the creative brief. Rather, it’s thinking of ways to increase the utility of a brand. This opens a whole new paradigm for all of us because when we as brand partners start thinking neutrally towards brands then the situations will also demand to enhance our knowledge beyond traditional approaches of working relationships. From supply-chain issues to retail innovation, from financial strategies to product innovation, we must prepare ourselves to deal with everything and anything. As strategists, we should only have one objective – to make successful brands by integrating our thinking across all processes, markets and channels of business. to communicate over the mobile; most importantly it is to guide the total brand experience that an audience gets from a company. 32 TechCrucnh, available at; http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/14/gmail-grew-43-percent-last-year-aol-mail-and-hotmail-need-to-start-worrying/, accessed on 20-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 73: THE POINT IS... Brand Planning (digital, traditional, direct or whatever) should enhance your offering appropriately, and not simply be there as unnecessary glitter. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 74: A PLANNING CASE & OTHERS CHAPTER FOUR
Slide 75: Everybody is different, and that’s what keeps us all competitive towards each other. It’s due to this difference, that we are able to prove things right or wrong, better or worse. Similarly, different groups and agencies have different points of view on different topics. In the case of planning, this manifests itself in different ways. fact, we need William Hesketh Lever old things more– things which have sustained evolution whilst enhancing utility, usability and value. For example, laptops are big and net books are handy. They both belong to the computer family. 2G is good, but 3G iPhones are perfect. Once again, they share the same family (Apple). There are thousands of examples of brands and products out there, We studied the concepts of planning and its models.Now it’s time for some great planning stories. Tales about the use of planning amongst various communication agencies. The idea for the next few pages is simple, ‘integrate what’s disconnected’. Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi once said, ‘You only get something new when you do something different’. So true, almost. The thing is we don’t always need new. In 33 Image available at http://ohheyandreeuh.tumblr.com, accessed on 20th November 2009 which are successful – not because they keep doing new things, but because they never stop evolving their thinking. The next few pages will help us understand how planning in advertising is considered in JWT (in detail) and in some other advertising agencies (briefly). We will then examine the definition that they apply to it, and how they implement it. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 76: William Hesketh Lever ACCOUNT PLANNING © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 77: William Hesketh Lever At JWT, Planning is not just limited to analysing focus groups, writing creative briefs or studying research reports. They often try to jump out from their traditional boundaries, to explore the benefits that Planning as a subject can offer. In 2007, when Guy Murphy, joined JWT as a Worldwide Planning Director, planning at JWT went through a huge change. In principle, for the first time in industry, JWT introduced a central approach to planning, with the launch of JWT planning blog. The blog serves as a central point for all planning communications, which then helps planners to think at a much broader level. According to Guy Murphy, the purpose of the blog is, ‘to provide a greater sense of community and learning amongst our Planners. At JWT, Planning has truly evolved with a global outlook in mind which seems an appropriate step for a giant like JWT to take. Stephen King’s ideas on planning are still very much alive. The focus on theory and knowledge sharing is extremely critical at JWT for the grooming of its planners. With these thoughts in mind, JWT further launched the Stephen King Library, which is an online portal for all the best practices, brand books, planning case studies, planning models, pitch presentations, planning theories and much more from accross the JWT world. It will contain a mixture of news, comment and opinion from me about JWT Planning’. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 78: In recent chapters we have touched upon the area regarding the team structure at JWT with Account Planner in mind i.e. Account Director, Account Planner and Creative Head. We have also discussed that how carefully JWT’s Planning thinking is web around ‘T’ Plan or Planning cycle, which helps JWT to materialises its thinking around five key Questions. In explaining the role each question plays, Stephen King, writes in one of his essays, ‘one way to provide disciplines and controls for our advertising planning is to establish a regular sequence of work and thought’. In principle, JWT Planning revolves around five thoughts, which form the basis for any further planning action; WHERE ARE WE? Where does our brand stand now (compared to competitors) in the market and in people’s minds? If a new brand, come from? In what direction are we going? WHY ARE WE THERE? What factors have contributed to our brand’s strengths and weaknesses? WHERE COULD WE BE? Realistically, what could be the position of our brand in the future? Is it a new position or maintaining our present position? HOW COULD WE GET THERE? What changes to what elements in the marketing mix could achieve it? What role and objectives for advertising? What campaigns could achieve the advertising objectives? 34 Steohen King, JWT Planning Guide, 1974, page 18 ARE WE GETTING THERE? Does the advertising achieve its objectives and is the result effective? If an area test, which area did it better? 34 In theory, the areas, Stephen King explained for the development of planning thoughts, seems to be very effective, and we will further explain it why? The point which excites me about this process is that its not a method, but a series of questions, which allows you to think beyond limitations. of The other interesting – element every is the combination logic and imagination question encourages the person on task, to think both logically; using data research etc. and also to think creatively; imagining the possible and rewarding. The approach is more like the one used by the philosophers, scientists and mathematicians. Have you ever questioned how Einstein came up with E=MC 2 . I am certain that it was definitely not a magical predetermined step-by-step logical method which he used to came up with that, as if this were to be true, then certainly he won’t be needing all the time he used, or someone else would have done it, using that same step-by-step method. In my opinion, most scientists, mathematicians, architects and physicians, have certain feelings in advance about how things work, or how they should work. That’s the area where they use William Hesketh Lever can have, to offer something new, interesting myths the brand where do the competitors or substitutes stand? Where have we © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 79: creativity. However, they always tend to, when presenting the results of creativity, to neaten what actually happened and to suggest that it has been a sensible, logical, step-by-step process – because that seems a more responsible and professional way of working. In analysing the key questions coined by Stephen King, the chart below (FIG 8) clearly shows the benefits this combination of creativity and logic brings to the advertising process. FIG 8 – Benefits of the Planning Cycle Planning Cycle A True Marketing Mix (Medium Free) William Hesketh Lever Continuous Cycle Clear Roles for Research Feedback Disciplined Creatively Free Feedback Comprehensive © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 80: FIG 9 – Planning Cycle – Process Explained In order to better understand the five commandments, it’s worth further exploring the king’s questions. This time, we will look at each question from the eyes of Stephen. Planning Cycle Let’s investigate the thoughts he had in mind for this process – the thoughts which removed the barriers between creativity and logic and opened a new era of advertising. Where are we? Background: Information as a context in which to look at brand’s competitive situation Comparative Map: Against the background, check how the brand stands; in relation to selected competitors and substitutes Answering the Questions: the questions have to be considered in relation to key competitors, whether hard information is available or not Market Size & Nature: How big? Growing how fast? Containing how many brands? What sort of manufacturers? How profitable? Rate of technological Change/ External Issues (e.g. Legal, consumerist)? The Competition: Who really is the competition? Has it changed? Is it major brands, private label, substitutes, social change, apathy? Who are the key competitors for the purpose of this analysis? Research: The nature of contribution of research is dictated by the questions themselves. For instance; Buying Patterns: Who buys the product type? How often? What sort of buying decision (compulsive V. Impulsive V. Routine)? Who influences buying? How and where bought? Company Position: What are companies strengths in production/Services, Finance, R & D, Marketing? Weaknesses? Policies, hopes fears, aspirations? Constrictions (e.g. For individual brands in a multi-brand company)? Company style, personality? How do all these compare with key competitors? Brand’s Market Position: Sales? Share? Distribution, type and level? Prices, pricing policy? Number of range variants, line extensions? Regional variations? Market Size and nature: Shop Audit, consumer panel, published statistics, company reports. Using Patterns: Who uses the product type? How? For what purposes? How often? Relationship between buyer and user (e.g. Giver/receiver, server/eater)? Buying Patterns: Consumer panels, ad hoc surveys, observation research Using Patterns: what are buyers’ / users’ needs wants, desires in product type? What motivates them to buy / use? What makes them discriminate between brands? What sort of language do they use about the product type? What are the substitutes for the product type? What system of behaviour does the product type fit into (e.g. Washing powders into a clothes cleaning system)? Using patterns: ad hoc surveys, consumer diaries Marketing activities: Breakdown of marketing expenditure? Sales force, size, character, methods? Advertising expenditure, media mix, creative content? Packaging structure, style, naming policy and practice? Direct V. Indirect contribution of advertising? Promotions, expenditure and type? How do our activities differ from key competitors? Motivations: Large scale attitude research, plus small scale qualitative research Product: What does the product do? What is it made of? What services it offers? Laboratory analysis v. Competitors? Buyers/Users:: who buys, uses, knows about our brand? How do they differ from buyers / users of other brands? How often, how, where, under whose influence do they buy our brand differently from other brands? Buyers’ / Users’ responses: How do people respond to our brand? Sensually – what do they notice about our brand, when buying, using, serving? Rationally – what do they beleive about our brand, its purpose, performance, contents? Emotionally – what do they feel towards our brand, its style and personality? How do all these responses differ from responses of competitive brands? Buyers’ / Users’ responses: Sensual: Rational: Emotional: product tests (blind and named) Structured attitude research large and small scale attitude and motivation research, brand personality research
Slide 81: FIG 9 – Planning Cycle – Process Explained Planning Cycle Why are we there? Influencers: Which of the factors – either under the business’s control or not – have led to our brand’s and competitor’s positions? Which are the most important factors? How have they inter-related? How has the balance between them changed over time? Examination of trend data: -What factors appear to have moved parallel with success and failure? Possible causes: -Products / services: formulation or performance -Packaging / design: structure, sizes, style - naming: type, style -Advertising: amount, media mix, content -Distribution and display: amount, type, style - Pricing - Promotions: amount, type, style - word of mouth: retailers or consumers -Maker’s / providers policies or reputation: real, assumed, influence of other brands - history: past reputation (e.g. Orientation as me-too brand) -Competitors: activity or inactivity - attitudes: gap between reputation and reality -Other associations: times, places, surroundings, accomplishments - Any combination of the above Internal analysis of current data: -What specific beliefs about our brand do the most committed users or the most generally favourable people have which the other do not? - Do people who buy it at less price buy less frequently than those who buy it at cut price? - Are our current sales related to distribution levels? - What do people think are the most important factors that affect their buying? - did our increase in market share coincide with the change in our brand’s formulation or price? - Is there a relationship between share of advertising and share of market? -Does the belief in one particular attribute of the brand seem to go up and down in line with brand share? -What seem to have been the results over time of specific marketing experiments? Answering the questions: There are two ways of tackling the questions on the left and analysing the most important factors affecting the brand’s current position.
Slide 82: FIG 9 – Planning Cycle – Process Explained Planning Cycle Where could we be? This stage requires the first important act of imagination. It starts with all the facts and the analysis of causes. It ends with a first statement of a proposed strategy for the brand and a new or modified brand positioning. But it’s not a deductive process. The strategy does not spring logically and inevitably form the data. No analysis will directly reveal opportunities. Role of Research: Research is used in two entirely different ways at this stage. Research as Stimulus: Key questions: The basic question is: where could the brand be in relation to its key competitors in the future? In exactly those terms that were analysed at the Where are we? Stage. The word “could” implies not only Where would it be desirable and profitable to be? But also where is it realistic to expect to be? And when? This gives birth to three main terms in which the answer should be found: Position in Market: Where could our brand be in the market? Market leader? Second brand? What share? In a different sector? Opening up a new sector? More profitable? Less reliant on price cuts and promotions? Buyers / Users: could it get existing users to use more? How much more? New users into the product field? How many? Hold onto existing users? Draw people away from specific brands? Regain former users? Get people to use for a new purpose? Could people be attracted who are currently unaware of or indifferent to the brand? Which people? Any reasonable rich and detailed audience/customer/buyer/user research (such as the quantitative research used up to this point) can be a means of setting up a train of thought. It is mainly a matter of the frame of mind with which one approaches it – ideally with openness, curiosity and optimism. Research as hypothetico-deductive process:: This process evaluates the hypothesis of the brand strategy against the research already done. Is there anything in the previous research – buying patterns, brand loyalties, product experience, for instance – which invalidates the hypothesis? If, say, all the previous research shows that no brand in the market has ever had more than 10% of its users as solus users, then a brand strategy based on getting 60% of our brand’s users to use no other is very unlikely to be valid. Responses: where could the brand be repositioned in relation to competitors? What difference in the responses to the brand could we get? What might people notice in the brand different from now? What new beliefs might the hold about it? What new feelings might they have towards it?
Slide 83: FIG 9 – Planning Cycle – Process Explained Planning Cycle How could we get there? This stage involves the main part of the creative work in an agency and most of the detailed planning. It is a continuous process of development, learning and adjustment. It gradually takes rough ideas to finished form. There are four main elements in it. 2. Deciding the role of advertising and the creative strategy: Direct Role: in the new circumstances, at what stage in the thinking about/ choosing/ deciding/ buying/ using spectrum is advertising intended to have a direct effect? And how important is this effect in relation to the indirect effect? Indirect Role: which responses to the brand from which people should be changed in what way by advertising in order to contribute to the total brand strategy. 3. Developing campaigns: The end product of this stage is advertisements and media plans; this is where specific campaigns begin to emerge. 1. Assessment of the means of achieving the objectives: the basic question at this stage asks what changes are needed in the various stimuli under the business’s control in order to get the proposed new responses from the proposed target group? The changes could be in: Product – formulation, size, added features or services Design – Structure, size or style Price Distribution and display – methods, type, style, amount Advertising – expenditure, media, creative treatment Promotions – expenditure, type, style Creative: it’s the true creative process of starting with a defined challenge: developing theories, ideas, hypothesis; taking them to experiment form; judging them against known data; trying to invalidate then by testing; modifying the ideas, and on through the cycle again. 4. Feedback Throughout this process of creative development there is continual modification, based on common sense, judgement and research. In principal there are two sorts of feedback; - Modifying the objectives, if necessary. - Aiming to invalidate the latest experimental work against the objectives The attempt to invalidate comes from both judgement and from research. Media: The media selection (inter-media) decision is in fact part of the whole campaign planning process, and is affected by three main factors; - Creative/Media relationships - Coverage - Cost, size, length v. frequency Judgement: this mainly comes from; - Account group as a whole. - People outside the project group, who still have knowledge of the brand and its objectives; most valuably, review boards. Research: this is also used in mainly two ways; - To stimulate ideas, particularly through creative people taking part in or observing group discussions among members of the target group. - To cast doubt on or invalidate an advertising idea.
Slide 84: FIG 9 – Planning Cycle – Process Explained Planning Cycle Are we getting there? The final stage in planning is really an extension of the feedback process, which provides new information for the cycle to begin all over again. As campaigns are taken to a finished stage, with detailed material produced and media schedules built, there is a review of whether the advertising is helping to achieve the brand’s objectives, before it appears. 1. Pre-Exposure: In trying to answer “Are we getting there?” before the campaign appears, what we would ideally like is to measure achieving accurately the whether we it will have succeed set for in it. objectives 1. Post-Exposure: After the campaign is exposed to public, what we need is data directly comparable to that used in answering the first question – Where are we? That is, a new comparative map of the position of all brands in the market and in people’s minds Unfortunately, there are several reasons why this will never be possible. What we can do instead, is expose members of the Then over a longer period, there is measurement of how the marketing mix as a whole is performing, in the market place. target group (in inevitably artificial circumstances) to advertisements, and make the best judgements that we can of the way in which they respond to them. Research Questions: -Have the people that we specified changed their responses to the brand as we hoped they would? - If they have, has this resulted in the changes in behaviour aimed at in the marketing plan? - If the responses have changed but the behaviour has not, are our brand and advertising strategies wrong? Research Questions: - As a result of seeing these advertisements, did the target group notice what we wanted them to notice about the brand? - Do they now believe what we wanted them to believe? - Do they feel towards the brand what we wanted them to feel? - If the responses have not changed, is it because the objectives were too ambitious? - Or is it because the advertising is ineffective? - Have we allowed long enough? -If the advertising seems to have worked, precisely how has it worked? - What is the model of the process in the market? - How does it relate to the role we set for advertising?
Slide 85: I think that it would be wise for me to stop here for the purpose of highlighting some of the critical roles of a Grand Strategist. Stephen King has already clearly explained and established the important the role of a planner, and how it should be considered. Stephen King thinking across the JWT network is something which hasn’t truly been implemented. However, the focus of JWT on planning and the value that it has given to subject since 1969 remains unchanged . As time passes, it brings new challenges and evolution in approaches. This occurred at JWT earlier this year when its London office launched the new JWT Planning Model. Keeping in mind the importance of Global ideas, channel opportunities and local implementations. In principle, the new JWT Planning Model is a simplified version of King’s thinking. However, at the same time, the model emphasises a lot on the importance of creative thinking in strategic processes. The aim of the model is to bring back JWT’s leadership positioning in brand building. Guy Murphy puts it, ‘We must regain our leadership position in brand thinking and brand building’. The highlights of the model are its focus on big thinking, ideas that can inspire execution in many channels and provide coherence to all the communications and markets, brand ideas versus campaign ideas, and stimulus versus Response. To me, the most interesting bit of the new planning model is its linking with the creative development process. As it uses the ‘scorecard’ system to validate its ideas. The scorecard system was launched in 2005, to help create better creative output, by judging the initial creative work against a series of statements ranging from one to ten. The system was developed in accordance with JWT’s ‘Time is the New Currency’ philosophy and positions JWT as agency which creates ideas that people want to spend time with. Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl= on 28-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 86: Despite of JWT’s efforts to make planning central to how they approach their business, sadly, it’s still very much fragmented. There are countless tools, methods and approaches used by JWT planners across the world – there are more than 30 different formats just for their creative brief only. We can still see JWT struggling with planning and its grand implementations. In explaining how JWT goes about its planning, Guy Murphy adds; ‘No clear or consistent answer to that at the moment. Answers vary by country, office, and account. Worst case, we go about our Planning in the way our specific Client goes about their Planning. Some will remember Thompson Way and Thompson Total Branding. Truly excellent systems of Planning for but now sporadically used. So we have a fragmented and splintered answer’. Despite the fact that how many tools, methods, approaches JWT uses for its planning worldwide (Fig 10), one thing is still very much there, and that is its determination and passion for giving the true meaning to planning, as defined by King. I believe the ‘New JWT Planning Model’ will bring the missing integration into the thinking. However, it’s a different story, whether the value of share price, financial pressures or senior level management lets it do that or not. William Hesketh Lever Discoveries JWT Planning Idea Card James Webb Young – 5 step process FIG 10 – Planning at JWT © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 87: William Hesketh Lever Image courtesy of Google Images, available at; http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=bbh&gbv=2&aq=f&oq= accessed on 28-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 88: Of course, being one of the pioneers of Account Planning, JWT has a strong and long association with planning. However, at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily means that this is the only way of how planners work, across the industry. Every agency has developed a slightly different definition of planning to those of Stephen King and Stanley Pollitt. For example, though at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Planners work in a similar fashion to those at JWT. However, for BBH the skill set a planner should have is apparently more like this: FIG 11 – Planners at BBH BBH BBH Planner William Hesketh Lever Research: Appreciating the pros and cons of research as a tool Drive: Continually leading the debate Strategic vision: Appreciating the central attributes, definitions and behaviour of client brands, helping the account team Creative vision: Improving the likelihood of producing highquality advertising by focusing the account team’s thinking so that it is relevant and useful to the creatives. Planners must be creative catalysts. 36 Figure 11, The Anatomy of Account Planning, Henrik Habberstad, Page 29 Knowledge: Understanding the layout of the market, a brand’s (and its competitors’) position within it and the state of distribution and trade relations. The account team must be made aware of any information which could improve performance. Relationship management: Generating confidence in colleagues and keeping the account team motivated. understand them and aiding the formation of brand strategy. Communication: Conveying ideas clearly, constructing reasoned and well-supported arguments and listening to others. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 89: Another interesting element of Planning at BBH, is its integration into the complete agency system. For example, the UK chairman of BHH, Jim Carroll, is from planning background. Planning involved at the management level, clearly shows that how important, planners are considered across BBH network. The point which inspires me about Planning at BBH, is the definition it enjoys. For BBH, planning at a senior level, actually contributes in the development of the agency structure. And it’s due to planning and its grand implementations, that BBH has managed to develop such a strong independent communications network (FIG 12). Despite of the agreement fact, BBH is also investing in opening specialised fields of planning, and the recent efforts include Engagement Planning, Innovation Planning. For example, in order to reach effective solutions in innovation planning, BBH uses ‘Brand Compass (Fig 13)’. FIG 13 – Brand Compass FIG 12 – BBH Grand Structure BBH AGENCY BBH RETAIL William Hesketh Lever ZAG ENGAGEMENT PLANNING INNOVATION PLANNING Brand  Idea BBH SECOND LIFE LEAP MUSIC BBH LABS 37 Figure 12, WAQAR RIAZ presentation to Jim Carroll, Chairman BBH UK, March 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 90: William Hesketh Lever © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 91: For TBWA, Planning is all about creating stories, challenging the norms and triggering positive “disruptions” for the brands. Warren Berger, in his book, Disruption Stories says, ‘The story of a brand should never become stale or static. It should not dwell only on heritage and history and it should not repeat itself. Unfortunately, brand advertising is often used in a limited manner – to reinforce the status quo. But the reality is that every brand is in transition, or should be. As the world changes, and as markets change, and companies change, so, too must a brand and its “story” must evolve. From time to time, the very essence and meaning of a brand must be re-examined, in the context of a changing world. Everything must be questioned, all assumptions challenged. After which, the brand’s story must be told – with new twists and unexpected turns. If the story is big enough, important enough, groundbreaking, relevant and powerful enough, then the 38 Disruption Stories, Warren Berger, 2004, Disruption Introduction result can be... Disruption’. In further explaining how disruption occurs, Berger writes, ‘Disruption does not result from mere slogans, nor from anything that doesn’t resonate as true. We found that what was required was harder and more complex: it involved helping a client to unearth and rediscover the essence of their own company and brand, the deep, hidden truths that make it unique’. 38 I can’t help myself from appreciating TBWA for not keeping all this ‘Disruptive’ philosophy close to their chests. In fact, if you are smart enough, you can find the information on Disruption, the tools TBWA uses to master it, and a lot more, by simply Googling the right words. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 92: CONNECTIONS ZONE For example, ‘Connections Zone’ is one tool through which disruption can be achieved. It also gives birth to ‘Connections Planning’ a term coined by TBWA. According to TBWA, ‘connections planning In essence, Connections Planning is the combination of scientific calculation, creative deduction, and technological expertise to arrive at the best possible mix, use, and construction of connections to achieve the client’s business objectives across all target audiences. To achieve the desired disruptions, by establishing useful connections, TBWA practices several methods i.e. Connections Wheel, Brand Audit In defining connections planning, TBWA puts it as, ‘a new discipline, designed to inspire, amplify and leverage total communication ideas’. For example, Connections Wheel is used as a symbol of connections In a broader sense, Connections Planning informs the selection, use and construction for clients’ communications across all marketing 39 Connection Wheel, Image available at; http://brandpalace.typepad.com; accessed on 25-11-09 disciplines: public relations, direct marketing, advertising, action marketing (events and promotions), design and original content. determines the most relevant, cost-effective and advantageous points of contact between clients and their existing or potential customers; then arrives at the best possible mix, use, and order of connections to change consumer behaviour to achieve the agreed business objectives, through the use of results-based, multidisciplinary planning’. Wheel, Brand Audit Clock, Customer Relationship Migration Matrix, Connections Scenario and Persuasion Sequence. planning theory. It represents all connections that communicate a brand’s reputation, relationship or identity to the consumer. 39 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 93: I guess, we can spend ages in discussing planning definitions and different methods, in use at various advertising agencies. However, I believe, that would be getting off the track, so, let’s rewind... and go back to what we were discussing in the earlier pages. Let’s open our eyes and ears to the philosophy of King and Pollitt, who (despite of their differences in the approaches they took) realised the recent years, we as an industry, totally split their thinking and the meanings of their efforts. We imagined, as if, it was a cool thing to introduce something new back in 1960’s, and started to put our efforts on creating new forms of planning, rather than understanding what King and Pollitt were trying to communicate. importance of planning in communications design. However, in In its true essence, whatever we have discussed about planning from the point of views of various agencies, are the fundamental standards of planning. Without a doubt, planning should deliver engagement, connections, values, research, creativity, innovation , disruption and a lot more. William Hesketh Leverday we are trying to come up with a new form of However, every planning. I fear a lot about the future of planning. It’s time for us to stop thinking of planning, as merely a selling tool, which sounds cool in pitch presentations, and take it as a subject which can bring us a whole new world of opportunities across all communication disciplines. It’s time for us to look at planning from the eyes of Clausewitz, In recent chapters we have discussed, how successful planning was for other industries (i.e. Pyramid of Djoser, World War II, lever Brothers ‘Unilever’ 1880s – 1920s ) and how it helped them in gaining a competitive advantage. However, Unfortunately, today we are repeating the same mistakes, which were part of communications curriculum back in 1930s – we are not taking planning as seriously as we should. It’s time that we stop confusing our clients with a new name for Planning everyday, and stick to the original ‘Planning’. Imoteph, William Lever and Steve Jobs. And that is; designing business processes around the value of planning and not inserting parts of planning within individual business disciplines. Planning in its true form, must answer all the business challenges and therefore create a sustainable connection between people, organisations, markets and channels. Unfortunately, this is not what’s happening today and Figure 14 clearly shows how unkindly we have disabled the subject to work ineffectively. Images sourced from the earlier part of the dissertation © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 94: FIG 14 – The Disintegrated Model of Planning William Hesketh Lever © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 95: I will end this chapter with a classic example of disintegration by Stephen king and leave the rest for you to imagine. In his essay ‘What is a Brand?’ King wrote; ‘Sharpening up on planning methods is going to be necessary too in improving a going brand or developing a new one. It can be like the sad parable of the man rich enough to have an entirely custom-made car. He decided that nothing but the best would do, so he went to the best people regardless of expense. He himself was very keen on spending up the M6, so he went to Jaguar for the engine. He knew his wife would found parking a bit of problem, so Fiat seemed the best people to go for the chassis. William Hesketh Lever And he felt that Volvo could deal best with accommodating his three children, two retrievers, au pair girl and beagle in the back; so they did the bodywork. The curious thing was that when the car was assembled, it never seemed to work very well. And when in the end he decided to sell it, he had quite a lot of trouble of finding a buyer at all’. Image courtesy and story of Stephen King, available inside the chapter What is a Brand - 1971? © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 96: ‘Planning’ is a universal subject (by nature). It works best when its value is delivered at the heart of a business and its outcomes are not treated individually for different business scenarios. THE POINT IS... © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 97: CHAPTER FIVE IDENTIFYING THE OPPORTUNITY
Slide 98: And believe you me, I am certainly not planning to lose yours (if I still have it). Before we move forward, I want to admit something – a realisation on my part, or a success of our collaborative effort; From researching through all these great inspiration stories and the working style of extraordinary people, I think I am beginning to learn something new. For example, when I mapped out the content chart for this primer, I categorised this chapter as “Identification of the Problem”. However, having travelled on this research journey, I realised it’s not worth looking at the world with evil eyes. Instead, it’s worth exploring potential for opportunity in everything. For now, I know for certain that every situation (good or bad) brings a world of exciting opportunities with it. Usually these 40 Quote: Simon Andrews, Branded Utility Essay, Published on WARC, accessed on 25-11-09 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz “ “ If you have managed to get someone’s attention you can’t afford to waste it. Simon Andrews opportunities are ordinary changes / modifications / improvements to things and concepts we already have. However, sometimes the next big thing is the result of a change, that is so small in scale and implementation that we tend not to believe it, except those who have the brains and the desire to keep challenging the world with ‘simple logic’ like Lever, Jobs, King and Serge. The reason for taking you through this chapter is extremely critical, as it is here that we will make an attempt to understand the opportunity that the current situation of communications offers us for the subject, ‘Planning’.
Slide 99: When I lose the sense of motivation and the sense of to prove something as a basketball player, it’s time for me to move away from the basketball. Michael Jordan 41 Image courtesy of Google Images; available at; http://shoeminx.com/nike-air-jordans-turn-23-is-his-airness-finally-ready-for-some-hang-time accessed on 26-11-09 “ “ © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 100: So, let’s move away from planning for a little while and focus on marketing / advertising in general and maybe it will help us to understand the underlying opportunity. Niall Fitzgerald, Unilever Co-Chairman, once said, ‘if somebody asked me rather than one of my distinguished predecessors, which half of my advertising was wasted, I would probably say 90 per cent of my advertising was wasted but I don’t know which 90 percent. Our marketing advertising and marketing support budget 42 is over £4billion. It is by far the biggest of costs in this business’. agencies convince the clients that they will generate the maximum return on their investment. They try inspiring them with great personas of the audience or a piece of research. Sometimes they try shaking up the boardroom with an inspiring creative idea. Beneath this façade, however, most of them are selling either an expensive media plan, a super-big retainer fee, or an extraordinarily overcharged hourly rates. The story doesn’t end here – big ideas are sold with extremely complex creative executions to increase production budgets. And of course, as all advertising agencies know very well, there is a lot more money in producing a television commercial than making an iPhone app or launching a video on YouTube. What all marketers need to understand, and it’s extremely important that they should is that advertising is not an art, it’s just a business like many others. More important than that, is the shift in people’s attitudes. Today, people demand utility and usefulness over anything else. They want creativity in the product and not how the product is been advertised. We are now moving from an age of entertainment to an age of engagement and usefulness. We have analysed in the recent chapters that products can be advertised with extreme success without the use of expensive marketing campaigns, if the focus is on adding creativity to the product and its design. Gmail, YouTube, Google Search are just And that is so true, as most advertising agencies would have their clients believe when selling them their creative and unique ideas. They make them believe, one way or another, that it is their expensive magic bullet they need, which can spur renewed demand, whilst generating incremental sales. Otherwise, how on earth could all these agencies have made so much money? For example, it was recorded in 2008 that the value of AMV BBDO London was £386.1 Million, McCann Erikson London £287.1 Million, M&C Saatchi London £262.8 Million, BBH London £259.4 Million and JWT London £256.8 Million. And these figures are only for London – you can imagine what would it be like for New York or the advertising world at large. 43 Without a doubt, marketing is increasingly adding more cost than value to producers and users alike. At every pitch, the marketing 42 43 Alan Mitchell, Right Side up, Chapter 4, Page 41, 2002 Campaign, available at; http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/785296/Top-10-ad-agencies-2008 accessed on 26-11-09 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 101: a few examples. The point for the brands to realise is critical, people no longer want to perceive the product creatively; they are more interested in knowing what they can do with it. This is the age of information and no one can control the audience, away from thinking of attractive communications. In my very own personal opinion, the job of a communication partner should be to increase brand value, not by testing one creative advertising idea after another, but by analysing the client’s Brand Value v. Agency Value FIG 15 – My Imagination of the big London agencies just by sharing creative stories. In marketing, we are moving away from the age of entertainment to an age of engagement, productivity, sharing and utility. In Fig 16, Of course, all the blame for this declining brand value can’t go to the advertising dinosaurs, but at the same time, it is important to understand that advertising has hardly moved FIG 16 – Brand Value V. Agency value business and the challenges it faces beyond marketing. This could even be an issue of staff training. But why would agencies do that when they don’t see their economy beyond media or creative earnings? 44 45 FIG 15 – Image available at http://dinosauria.tripod.com/Allosaurus.html accessed on 26-11-09 FIG 16 – Data Sources Milward Brown Optimar 2007, top 100 Brands © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 102: However, it doesn’t mean at all that advertising has always been ineffective. I guess that’s not the point here either. The point is that advertising has been working as the sales window at the train station, selling expensive tickets to the people at the counter and not encouraging them to book over the phone or online to save costs. Though giving the same service in a much more basic manner way would mean one paying much lower price, it would be in a much nicer way otherwise. If we look deep into this marketing regime we find even more concealed evils. The whole system has been designed in a way to support the mighty. For example, in order to prove to the clients and marketing industry at large that advertising actually produces effectiveness, the industry created an official body by the name of IPA. IPA introduced effectiveness awards to establish and argue the effective side of advertising. Every year, the IPA issues case studies of the best brands and how advertising agencies turned their fortune around. It all looks very nice – so long as we don’t use our mind. Did you know that Thinkbox UK TV advertising body is the main sponsor of IPA Effectiveness awards? If we delve deeper, the face of evil reveals that in 2008 seven IPA Effectiveness awards winners (including the Gold Winner) were those who used TV as their main medium of advertising. In total 80 per cent of all submissions used TV as the main medium. Or put it like this, 80 per cent of the advertising agencies that participated in the 2008 IPA Effectiveness Awards encouraged their clients to spend on TV, the most expensive medium of advertising. To prove the clients that they are doing the right thing, IPA awarded them with the socalled most prestigious award in advertising.46 46 47 Laura James, The four key media trends from the 2008 IPA Effectiveness Awards, WARC Online Images courtesy of Google Images available at http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enGB353GB353&um=1&ei=upIOS-bMNsnpQbcjLyrCA&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=ipa+effectiveness+awards+logo&spell=1&start=0 & http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enGB353GB353&um=1&sa=1&q=UK+TV+Thinkbox+logo&aq=f&oq=&start=0 ; accessed on 26-11-09 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 103: This system is just perfect for everyone; the jury judging the awards, the body sponsoring the awards, the agency getting the award and the marketing director approving the campaign as it makes them all happy and prosperous on individual level. Except the brand, that pays them all (directly or indirectly). After a couple of years, the brand realises, it was not just the magic bullet of TV that brought them this newfound prosperity, as there has to be a reason for its declining sales problem five years later, in another IPA case study, when it was using the same channels and an even bigger ad spend on communications. Perhaps all that TV did was just to create awareness. Now I would ask, that in the age of Web 2.0 when people spend more time in front of online consoles and building online communities than anything else, is it worth spending millions of pounds on TV, just 48 to create awareness? Please don’t imagine that I am trying to establish TV as a medium that is not useful anymore. However, the point I am trying to make is that the new shift in the behaviours of people necessitate new ways for brands to engage people. For example in the 18th Century, the wealthiest of all men bought the best of all horse breeds for travelling. However, in the 21st Century, the same man would probably buy the best car and keep the horse for his stable. The reason for this 21st Century man buying the best of all cars in 21st Century is not that the horse is not useful for him anymore. Instead it symbolises that the horse is more effective for use in country lanes and fields, and the car for travelling within city. Unfortunately, in advertising we are still using the same formulas, practices and techniques which are too old to be effective. Images courtesy of Google Images available at http://akumono.deviantart.com/art/Rolce-Royce-Phantom-Drophead-81009885 & http://www.nakasendoway.com/178thtra.xhtml accessed on 26-11-09 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 104: Are agencies interested in having a relationship with brands and people or just sex? Apparently, most o f the times the answer seems to be the latter, and it all makes sense for the agencies. It’s quick, pleasurable, and without any long-term commitment or responsibilities. On the other hand, having a relationship means something, as relationships demand going through tough times to get to the good times . They seek understanding and love – relationships are connections beyond reason. Without a doubt, agencies are realising the shift of control to the people. However, instead of actually understanding this new state-of-mind of the people, brands and agencies have started to use it as another selling technique. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that the customer has all grown up – they know how unkindly communications have betrayed and ripped them off in the past. They can actually spot the difference between advertising slogans ‘positioned on you’ For example, the new campaign by Yahoo, focusing on the fact ‘You’. The $100 Million campaign as described by Recently, I have been observing some rather depressing advertising examples. Every other brand holding the ply card showing ‘you (customer) are the king’. It’s quite funny, when brands and agencies start to communicate as though the customer is a baby who will listen to them no matter what they say. Times have changed, people have changed and it’s important for our attitudes as marketers to change too. It’s not enough to communicate pleasing statements to the people unless we don’t mean them. Because, you know what? People know about mass manipulation. and companies actually working for them. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 105: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is something like this, ‘What we want to do is show (people) what the new Yahoo is about so they come (to the site) all the time’. All this powered by the unique advertising bullets expressed in the form of images and taglines “It’s time to get personal” and “The new Yahoo lets you do it your way every day.” “The Internet is under new management. Yours,” “Now the Internet has a personality. Yours.” The television film heaves with images of dancers, Dalmatians, soccer and kids blowing bubbles, and highlights Yahoo’s array of services and customization options. 49 wants to be a tremendous asset to all of you,” she said. “The ‘You’ is also you.” Now hang on for a second and let’s focus on what this $100 Million campaign is actually trying to communicate. To my understanding, all it is doing is pretty straightforward, ‘pleasing the audience’, by making statements which communicate Yahoo as a company designed around people. But hey, do you actually need to say that to people if you are working for them? Advertising agencies and brands, please try to understand, if you are working for the people, they will know it. You won’t need to tell them by wasting millions of dollars. Learn something from Google - they do useful things for people, rather than just saying so all the time. Google doesn’t In further explaining the campaign’s philosophy Carol Bartz adds, ‘Yahoo is an asset to our users out there, and Yahoo 49 50 The Wall Street Journal Blogs, available at http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/22/yahoo-debuts-its-you-marketing-campaign accessed on 30-11-2009 Images courtesy of Google Images, available at ; http://trak.in/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/YahooYouCampaignAd.jpg accessed on 30-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 106: waste all its money on telling people that it’s useful for them. Instead, it focuses on improving its product and when people use it, they automatically know the difference. This simple focus on work and not emotional lies is what makes Google the world’s number one brand in terms of its value. Yes, there was a time, when it was possible for companies to create perceptions about brands which actually were not included in the offering. But this is a different age. People can now cross check the utility of the products and services with the Whole Wide World. The communication between user groups have immensely increased, and what was 51 before the opinion of a few people on a product or service has now become the sharing between thousands of people. Today, it’s practically impossible for brands to win people’s hearts, without bringing utility into their products and a change beyond just advertising. How great would that be if Yahoo’s communication partner had used that $100 Million dollars to think, create and communicate what people find useful, rather than telling them how they should feel about the brand? Images courtesy of Google Images, available at ; http://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/article_pics/you-and-yahoo.jpg accessed on 30-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 107: Of course, the ‘prosumer’ challenge faced by brands today demands a change of thinking from client’s as well as from the agency’s side. It is fundamental for all the brands to change the way they plan and execute their processes. This makes the job of a Planner more interesting and even more challenging, as the planner of the future has to be an expert thinker of every link between the Brand, Audience and the Agency. Russell Marsh, Group Digital Strategy Director at Rapp London while explaining the role of a planner of tomorrow says, ‘The planners of the future now have too many options to plan all of the possibilities and so now have to find ways to use data and probability to map the future – The future is going to look more like the stock market with automated systems and traders predicting market changes based on data rather than a paper plan based on 6 month old insights’. On the other hand Lorna Hawtin, ‘Disruption Director’ at TBWA, while discussing the future of advertising agency business models replied, ‘I think planners have a massive role to play in creation of value’. 52 Jim Carroll, Chairman of BBH London carefully explains the hardships of past, ‘I think we knew fundamentally that most events were precipitated by complex systemic pressures and relationships. But our limited power to disentangle the many elements in one system reduced us to characterising most strategic problems in rather monochrome ways’. All of these insights leads us to a point of understanding that the change in our environments, necessitates a change in our thinking as well. However, it’s not necessary that the change has to be a product of something entirely new or a set of new crazy proprietary tools. The change mentioned here refers to bringing capabilities in one’s thinking which are more appropriate to the situation in hand. In my journey of the world one thing has emerged quite clearly. That is that everything is a by-product of something else – there’s nothing new in this world. Therefore, success comes to those who evolve their thinking not by status, but by need. Sometimes, in order to bring about change we simply have to go back to something pre-existing, as is the case in fashion. Nick Kendall, 52 53 Images cortesy of Google Images available at http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enGB353GB353&um=1&sa=1&q=russell+marsh+rapp&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 2-12-2009 Discussions and interviews with Lorna Hawtin and Russell Marsh – August 2009 and November 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 108: FIG 17 – Changing role of advertising agencies BI CB A A RM TV D P&P Etc. Past Present Group Planning Director, BBH, in a reply to how we should tackle brand planning and communications in the future said, ‘So... we have to reverse the process’. Thirty minutes after that discussion, an email popped up in my inbox, containing ‘Soap Wars’ from ‘The King of Sunlight’. 54 us to think beyond client briefing and sit at the end of the advertising funnel and instead of creating solutions that suit desired advertising choices. Our job is now to create ideas big enough to engage the audience (employees, vendors, partners, users, buyers, management) against any business challenge. This modified role of advertising demands extraordinary people who can think logically and implement creatively, whilst considering and strengthening the growth for the agency’s and the client’s businesses. Figure 17, above, presents Jim Carroll’s view of the changing role of advertising (as he sketched it) and further strengthens the argument. 55 In understanding this wave of change, it’s fundamental that we also consider the changing role of advertising agencies. There was a time when the role of advertising agency was to take the client's brief through the available communication choices within the advertising funnel. However, this has changed in recent years. The situation now demands from 54 55 Interviews with Jim Carroll and Nick Kendall, BBH, March 2009 Jim Carroll’s view on the changing role of advertising – interview March 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 109: THE POINT IS... The age of broadcasting is over and the era of engagement and value has begun. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 110: “ If you can dream it, you can do it. 57 56 Peter Fisk, Marketing Genius, Page 257, 2004 Image courtesy of Google images available ; http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tEZc1tH3HdU/SduLV__YReI/AAAAAAAAABQ/YkYShN5H3a4/s400/walt-disney-logo.jpg accessed on 1-12-2004 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz “
Slide 111: Richard Branson is the epitome of an entrepreneur, thinker, planner, best known for the Virgin brand that he founded and still leads. Born in 1950, he has never lost his love of adventure and innovation, his curiosity of what might be, and his passion to make new things happen. While other leaders might care most about finances and governance, Branson focuses on the customer, a walking incarnation of his brand, working with people across his many businesses to engender the same entrepreneurial spirit and brand values that have served him so well. His passion is for the customers, much more than the 58 financial, ‘I never get the accountants in before I start a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the Mickey out of the customer’. He first reached notoriety with Virgin Records, a record label that started out with the unusual Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield and then introduced bands like the Sex Pistols and Culture Club to the world. Known for his wacky exploits used to promote his businesses, Branson is keen on playful antagonisms, exemplified by his ‘mine is bigger than yours’ slogans that marked the arrival of Virgin Atlantic’s new Airbus A340-600 planes. Images courtesy of Google Images, available at ; http://www.virginlifecare.co.za/assets/images/AboutVirginLogo.jpgaccessed on 30-11-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 112: On a Virgin America flight, a passenger Tweeted about not receiving a meal they had ordered. Virgin America saw this Tweet and called the cockpit to have a flight attendant bring the meal. 60 59 Image courtesy of Google Images, http://www.therefinishingtouch.com/blog/uploaded_images/Virgin-Atlantic-Plane_March-16-732829.jpg accessed on 30-11-2009 60 Story available at http://brandtwist.com/?p=982 accessed on 1-12-2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 113: He is famed for his heroic failures as well as successes, having made several unsuccessful attempts to fly in a hot air balloon around the world. ‘Virgin Atlantic Flyer’ was the first hot air balloon ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and was the largest ever flown. Such escapades almost cost him his life on more than one occasion. Yet the PR value was immeasurable. He became Sir Richard Branson when he was knighted by the Queen in 1999 for his business prowess and contribution to UK society. Meanwhile, he has guest starred, playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, 61 Baywatch and Only Fools and Horses. He was also the star of a reality television show called The Rebel Billionaire where sixteen contestants were tested for their entrepreneurship and their sense of adventure. 59 Images courtesy of Google Images, available at ; http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enGB353GB353&um=1&sa=1&q=Virgin+brands+logo&aq=f&oq=&start=0 accessed on 30-11-2009 62 Peter Fisk, marketing Genius, Page 400 – 401, 2004 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 114: What is your role as a planner, strategist, creative planner, digital strategist or innovation planner? Indeed, what is the role of Imagination with that of implementation? THE POINT IS... 1. What’s the essence of your role? Clarify the added value of the  Planner, accountabilities and  how personally adds value to  collective performance 2. What are your goals and metrics? 3. How can you inspire people with your vision? 4. How can you connect best ideas together? 5. How can you best support your client, agency and the audience? Make time to set transparent  goals and metrics for the benefit  of yourself and team, as much as  your audience Thinkers inspire; individuals  follow... Inspire your team ,  audience and the business with  your personal vision Add value by connecting ideas  from across business disciplines,  and other business functions Engage and enable people, taking  on a coaching more than directing  role, building capabilities and  confidence 6. How can you champion great thinking? Be the champion of great ideas and  thinking in your team, business, and  market. Build respect and reputation  by delivering on your promises © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 115: Planning is beyond supporting creative sales – it must encourage growth in the total business environment. Inspired. I feel like thinking planning now, which agencies usually find pretty interesting for selling their creative stuff. They consider it as a ‘thing’ to shut their client up, and make them sell their ideas easily and consistently. Unfortunately, this attitude of agencies has put limitations on the role of planning – and the sad part is, that even our expectations from it are limited. Jon steel, Planning Director for WPP, in one of his papers published on WARC mentioned, ‘“So what exactly do you do?” I recently asked the same question of the planning director of one of America's most famous creative agencies. (I knew the agency's founder had a deep, unflinching loathing of account planning and research.) He told me it was his job to “look cool, be smart, and hang out with the creative department”’. would it be for people like lever to imagine that. 49 I remember reading in the chapter two , ‘planning has no limits’. I also remember studying the lives and businesses of great planners or Grand Strategists i.e. Lever, Jobs, Branson, King, Pollitt, Serge, Imoteph, Clausewitz. of course the following were very obvious in all that; - They never restricted their thinking. - They never confused their thoughts between left and right sides of their brains. - Their thinking was totally integrated with their actions and imaginations. I believe that unless we integrate our thinking into our agency’s and client’s ‘total business’, it’s hard for us to see planning that can last for decades and centuries which can actually bring value for everyone. How sad 63 Jon Steel, Jon Steel on planning – The last of the handloom weavers, Published on WARC in November 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 116: It is important for brands as well as agencies to consider planning as a central point for all of their business activities. Instead of having dozens of communications partners – strategic planning must come from a single point, whether the brand is facing an issue in ATL, BTL, product penetration, packaging, production, retailing, digital or whatever. It is also very important to differentiate the role of Grand Strategist from that of a Management Consultant. The management consultants only show the directions, but Grand Strategists must excel themselves to set directions and implement and execute solutions. For brands and agencies in order to reach from point A to point B of their business lifecycle, they need integrated individuals (Grand Strategists) – who can think solutions and create experiences with an unbiased approach to the given challenge. For us as planners, the journey to our ‘Grand Strategist’ is an ongoing and continuous process. It is vital that we never stop challenging what has never been challenged before. We have to become more effective by understanding all the different touch points between any business and its audience whilst developing specialisation in determining and identifying the opportunities for all. Figure 18 illustrates the area of opportunities for a Grand Strategist. People Grand Strategist Agency Brand Business / World in general FIG 18 – Opportunities for a Grand Strategist © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 117: The challenging role of the Grand Strategist (discussed on the previous page) demands a new working structure within advertising agencies. The old model of creative teams, account management and planning cycle is too old to cope with times. The current way of working within advertising agencies is not very different from that of King and Pollitt purposed back in 60s. Few agencies such as Mother have tried to evolve the advertising model and they have eliminated account process. However, where it is important that the thinking of brands is single minded and not divided between dozens of communication partners, it’s also inevitably necessary for the origin of that thinking to be single minded. The reason for introducing this new model of working is obvious. The traditional structure of advertising doesn’t allow the freedom a Grand Strategist should have. Roles are handling from their advertising the needs of modern defined and limited, for example, account management has to favour managing and growing agency’s business and maintaining New challenges demand modified solutions relationships , creative teams to execute the best thinking based on the brief they receive and Planning to bring the audience and brand into the advertising subject to make communications more effective and relevant. This way of working only focuses on one side of a client business, ‘Marketing’. It doesn’t support value input in the brand’s overall business environment. Brands and agencies, in order to truly benefit from Planning need to consider it as the starting point for all of their business movements. This approach puts planners at the top of the thinking process with a pool of solution resources available to them use when, where and how the businesses need them. Figures 19 and 20 explain the between the current and difference purposed method of working structures. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 118: FIG 19 – Current advertising team structure © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 119: FIG 20 – Purposed Model of Working Supply chain solutions Product/ service Innovation TV, Press, Radio Experience Business solutions Retail strategies Pricing Strategies Digital, social, Mobile Third party relations Retail comms Any other relevant solutions Brand Grand Strategist Agency A fusion of business, logic and creativity Access Solutions Support Pool Traditional Digital Media Production Research Interactive Etc. Key benefits: - Financially sensible - long-term and sustainable - Rewarding for everyone Fig 20 – Developed with the help and input of Nick Kendall, Group Planning Director, BBH and Stephen Maccrron, Planning Director, JWT Manchester, meeting took place at the JWT Manchester & BBH London offices in March and August 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 120: When I presented the concept of ‘Grand Strategist’ to the Planning Director of one of London’s big agencies (that recently got famous for putting animals in cute costumes), she questioned, ‘And where will you find these super humans?’. Without a doubt the question was very interesting. I spent weeks upon weeks searching for the answer with no results, until I met Stephen, Planning Director for JWT Manchester. He made a very simple point but resolved a very complex problem. In his opinion the best way to make sense of the ‘Grand Strategist’ thinking was to imagine the role of an Architect. Once he said that, it all started to make sense. 61 An Architect has no technical skills in sewerage control, electrical wiring, fixtures and fittings, making of pillars and other things that are needed in the construction of any building. Nevertheless, it’s impossible for labourers, electricians, engineers to do anything without the instructions from Architect. What an Architect needs in order to be the master in his subject is the knowledge of everything that connects with his subject whilst having a being able to specialise in designing architecture. Similarly, the job of a ‘Grand Strategist’ is to design solutions whilst using the resource pool for the execution of the recommended strategies. 64 65 Images courtesy of Google Images; available at http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enGB353GB353&um=1&q=blueprint+of+a+building&sa=N&start=18&ndsp=18 accessed on 3-12-2009 Stephen Maccrron, Planning Director, JWT Manchester, meeting took place at the JWT Manchester office in August 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 121: If brands and agencies don’t change the way they think, then it would be like the tale of five people, who all were the perfect drivers on planet earth. One fine day, they received an invitation to a motoring exhibition. They all decided to use one car to reach the destination. However, once they made themselves comfortable inside the vehicle, they all wanted to show off their knowledge of driving. After a long and heated debate about who should drive the car, they all decided to split the driving between them. So it was decided; The senior of them all took the steering wheel, the second to the senior controlled the accelerator, the third to the senior took charge of the brake pedals, the fourth to the senior was made responsible for keeping eyes on the road, and the fifth to the senior started to control the indicators. Sadly, it took them ages to get to where they wanted to and the worst of all they never made to their destination, as none of them could understand what the other was shouting. Finally, on a turning sharp and steep they all ended up driving down from a cliff thousands of feet high – and that’s how they all disappeared with a ‘CAR’ strong and magnificent. It wasn’t their driving skills that got them killed and the car destroyed. Instead, it was the car designed to driven by one person. They lacked a single mind, able to take responsibility for all the procedures and techniques to drive the vehicle from Point A to Point B. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 122: With this example, I will end this chapter and paper here. However, it doesn’t mean that I am also ending the discussion we started and the areas we highlighted before starting our journey. Consider this abrupt end an academic limitation which I have to respect. Nevertheless, there are three more episodes still waiting to be explored. We still have to explain what makes a ‘Grand Strategist’ so important for everyone, by sharing one person; one brand world model. We also have to analyse the job areas, responsibilities and the necessary training methods one would need to apply Grand Thinking. Last but not least we yet have to investigate the world of a ‘Grand Strategist’ and the monetary, competitive and utility benefits it can offer to the brands, agencies and the audience. Good luck with our thinking and stay in touch! © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 123: THE POINTS ARE... We are witnessing a breathtaking evolution of new forms of challenges. More than witnessing, we are facilitating them. All of this is unfolding so quickly that we do not have time to pause and reflect on what is happening. Instead of having integrated systems, it’s time we have integrated people who can seize opportunities for all of us, whilst thinking deeply, broadly, creatively and logically. © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 124: Account of Sources: Reading / Text The King of Sunlight – Adam Macqueen, Corgi Books; New edition (2 May 2005) A Master class in Brand Planning – The Timeless work of Stephen King , Judie Lanon, John Wiley & Sons (26 Oct 2007) The Invention of Air – Steven Johnson, Penguin (29 Oct 2009) No Logo - Naomi Klein, Flamingo; New Ed edition (15 Jan 2001) Ads to Icons – Paul Springer, Kogan Page; 2nd Edition (3 Aug 2009) The Anatomy of Account Planning – Henrik Habberstad , White paper, 2004 Politt on Planning – Stanley Politt, Paul Fledwick , NTC Publications (29 Feb 2000) Hitting the sweet spot – Lisa Fortini, Copy Workshop (April 1992) Lovemarks – Kevin Roberts, Powerhouse Cultural Entertainment Books; Revised edition (2 Feb 2006) Right Side Up – Alan Mitchell, HarperCollins Business (20 Feb 2001) Action Research – Peter Reason and Hillary Bradbury, Sage Publications Ltd; Concise ed edition (13 Dec 2005) Truth, Lies and Advertising – John Steel, John Wiley & Sons (16 Mar 1998) Operational research – T.A. Burley and G. Sullivan, Palgrave Macmillan (15 Aug 1986) The Advertising Budget – Simon Broadbent, NTC Publications (May 1989) The visual display of Quantitative Information – Edward R. Tufte, Graphics Press USA; 2nd edition (31 Jan 2001) Marketing Genius, Peter Fisk, Capstone (24 Feb 2006) Michael Jackson -Life of a legend, Michael Heatley, Headline (17 Jul 2009) A Guide to Creating Great Ads, Luke Sullivan, John Wiley & Sons; 2nd Edition (15 April 2003) The Lovemarks Effect, Kevin Roberts, Powerhouse Cultural Entertainment Books; illustrated edition (8 Mar 2006) Creative Advertising, Mario Pricken, Thames & Hudson; Revised edition (26 May 2008) The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant, Simon & Schuster; Revised edition (20 Jan 1999) The Online Advertising Playbook, Joe Plummer, Steve Rappaport, Taddy Hall, Robert Barocci, John Wiley & Sons (18 May 2007) © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 125: Account of Sources: Interviews / discussions Guy Murphy – Worldwide Planning Director, JWT Nick Kendall – Bartle Bogle Hegarty - Director Strategy BBH Group Martin Runnacles – Former Marketing Director BMW and now Managing Director Ultegra Consulting Jim Carroll – Chairman, Bartle Bogle Hegarty Stephen Maccron – Planning Director, JWT Manchester Amelia Torode – Director Planning, VCCP Rik Haslam – Group Creative Architect, RAPP Ian Haworth – Global Creative Director, RAPP Russell Marsh – Group Digital Strategy Director, RAPP Lorna Hawtin – Disruption Director, TBWA Andrew Hovells – Planner, TBWA Sarah Tate – Strategist, Mother London © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 126: Account of Sources: Webography Russell Davies Blog - http://russelldavies.typepad.com/ The Account Planning Group - http://www.apg.org.uk/ Google – www.google.com Amelia Torode Blog - http://ameliatorode.typepad.com/ Planning Sphere - http://plannersphere.pbwiki.com/ IPA - http://www.ipa.co.uk/ Fallon Trend Point Blog - http://fallontrendpoint.blogspot.com/ Planning Blog - http://www.planningblog.com/ Account Planning Net - http://www.accountplanning.net Another Planning Blog - http://www.simon-law.com/ Gareth Kay Brand New Blog - http://garethkay.typepad.com/ Adliterate Blog - http://www.adliterate.com/ The Staufenberger Repository - http://staufenberger.typepad.com/ WARC – http://www.warc.com Contagious Magazine – www.contagiousmagazine.com Premier Mintel – www. Premier.mintel.com What the trend? – www. Whatthetrend.com BBH Labs – www.bbh-labs.com RAPP Blog – www.livinginadigitalworld.com Twitter – www. Twitter.com Google – www.google.com Slideshare – www.slideshare.com Admap – www.admapmagazine.com Punk Planning - http://www.charlesfrith.com © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz
Slide 127: Account of Sources: Industry Presentations - Workshops BBH London – February 2009 AKQA London – March 2009 EHS Brann London – March 2009 M & C Saatchi London - April 2009 Mother London – August 2009 AMV BBDO – August 2009 Rapp London – August 2009 London 2012 Olympics – March 2009 © All Rights Reserved Waqar Riaz