planning from the outside

Social media count

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:08:00 +0000

This is fantastic

Planning-ness is almost here

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:29:00 +0000

It's hard to believe, but Planning-ness is happening and is just 5 dats away. if you haven't bought your ticket yet, head to www.planningness.com and check it out. If you need more enticement, we've added a party on Friday night (courtesy of The Talent Business and our friends at Perreira O'Dell) and great sessions like these:

How to design a successful applications
Nick Baum - Google

The best applications work without the user ever having to think about how to use them. And yet, such simplicity is almost always the result of a long and thoughtful design-process. Using Google Chrome as an example, this presentation will examine how teams at Google design products that are used by millions of users worldwide. We will discuss how to make features discoverable, intuitive and delightful, as well as how to organize a team to continuously deliver innovative design.

How to create advocacy and conversation
Frank Striefler - MediaArts Lab

People don’t trust companies. People don’t trust brands. People trust each other.

Creating brand advocacy has never been more important. We rely even more heavily on WOM during a recession and people are now empowered with the tools to communicate with each other with or without brands involvement. But brand advocacy must be the responsibility of the entire company, not just marketing. Don’t build your advocacy and social marketing programs without a plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Not only will this session gives you the reasons for this new brand mantra but also practical answers for the question on how to get your brand recommended and into the cultural conversation. We will start by sharing principles, insights, resources and tools before rolling up our sleeves for a work session on real brands: your brands. Email me at frank@mediaartslab.com if you would like to suggest the brand you work on to be brainstormed & ideated around. Warning: if your brand is chosen, you’re volunteering to lead your group during the work session.

How to Create Participation ( AKA You Can't Make me Like You)
Domenico Vitale - People Ideas and Culture

Are today’s brands really all the same? Is what we do as planners still based on the same foundation? Do “consumers” even exist any longer? Does communication work as it always has?

The world has never been more diverse in its proliferation of brands, products, channels and whatever else you want to throw in there. And, if we keep looking at all of this as scary and intimidating, or if we believe our job is still to just bring “insight” to the advertising process, we will disappear.

All of this has fundamentally changed the possibilities we have at our disposal. It has changed how we can communicate, build and create success for our clients. How our companies need to be structured and get paid. And, most importantly, it has changed the basic assumption that if you tell it, they will hear it and then they will come. Communication itself is no longer about just telling but about something much bigger, more interesting - something that can allow us to be more effective than ever. Not about changing people’s minds but embracing people’s minds – allowing them to thrive.

Maybe, this moment will make us scared enough to allow us to question the fallacies that have driven the marketing world for a long time. Maybe, just maybe, this moment will make us stronger, more valuable and more interesting. Maybe, we will truly start inspiring people on the street, every day, rather than merely trying to persuade them to do something they don’t want to do.

Great Googley...

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:26:00 +0000

A great Google presentation given at Adweek which highlights a lot of the great stuff done using their API's

Planning-ness is go !

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:05:00 +0000

After a lot of pleading, hounding arm twisting and a lot of help form many people, planning-ness tickets are on sale !!!

Please go to the site check out the speakers, sessions etc. But most of all buy a ticket and come on down

For those of you who can't wait until after the jump, here's the skinny...

When: October 16 and 17

Where: Academy of Art University, 60 Federal Street, San Francisco

What: A series of workshops over 2 days with speaker ranging from Organizing for America, the CEO of Posterous.com, Adrian Ho, an Emmy award winning documentary filmaker and more

Hope to see you there.

PS. In case any of you think this is my doing it all solo, this would not have happened if had not been for:

Cameron Maddux of Academy of Art for volunteering the space
Claire Dalton for all the legwork
Carol Weinfeld for being ready to do anything
Dylan Thomas and Rassak for the website
John Gordon for the logo
Jason Oke for the sposnorship sales effort
Gareth Kay , Adrian Ho , Lee Maicon and Ed Cotton for the encouragement

some new Kingsford work

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:16:00 +0000

Just in time for football season ...

More Planning-ness thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:44:00 +0000

After a totally insane journey to Europe (24 hours in a hotel in Newark included), I've had a chance to collect some thoughts and read some discussions on what this get together could/should be.

There's always a temptation at an event to go for a big overarching theme or way of organizing events like this, even if no one knows that topic when they show up e.g. Bar Camp. >But with many different type of people needing slightly different things from a conference, this seems to be a sure way to annoy more people than you please. It also seems a bit unnecessary - why not have multiple types of sessions for people to choose from (even if that means limiting the numbers).

So I've posted a few discussion threads suggested by various people here. They include sessions such as:

a) short sessions presenting, shaping and/or debating genuinely new ideas and approaches.

b) offering up your "trade craft" in exchange for someone else's (but all trading is done in public)

c) how to workshops on topics tangentially related to planning

d) open space sessions

This will all work if we can genuinely practice what we preach to brands - giving a little in order to get something in return.

Planning-ness 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:33:00 +0000

So it sounds like all the creative strategists want an inspiring, instructive get together - which means something nothing like a typical conference.

Great - I'm in. And from all the comments below, on Facebook and Twitter it seems like a few others may be as well.

Here are a few thoughts and outcomes from some of the discussions and comments I've seen/had today:

a) Crowd sourcing ideas for how we organize it, where we do and who we invite seems like a good idea - but it needs some kind of co-ordinating group. So I've started a Planning-ness 2009 Facebook group to help us collect feedback and comments. It just seems like a better place to get input and ideas from a big group than this blog, and I'm hoping that people will not mind being volunteered to help do the actual co-ordinating

b) The idea of making this get together instructional - teaching people how to do stuff or think about issues - seems to be interesting.

Adrian made the excellent point that we need to approach the this get together strategically - there are a lot of interesting conferences out there. how is this different?

My (very) personal criteria for success would be to walk away feeling both inspired and that I can do something new - a new skill, approach, took etc. That kind of teaching happens in a hands on way - where we all join in.

c) Having a service component.

As with all good things, it seems really obvious now. But in this economy, with this President, it would be rude not to do something for others.

I would also love to have a brand set up a problem to solve - something for us to pitch in the way Planning for Good has done in the past. Are you there Google etc. ???

d) Logistics

OK - there's not much agreement here, but we will sort that out. That being said, it seems much more interesting to do this i our own time, on a weekend, crashing in people's houses (I still haven' given up the camping idea btw)rather than making it formal.

Lee and others have also talked about creating a brief for the conference. I'm not going to deign to write the whole thing (since most a lot of it is covered in this post and the last one), but I think the objective is clear:

Create a gathering of creative strategists that inspires and engages them, mentally and physically .

The rest is up for discussion

No Planning Conference - what are you going to do about it?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:46:00 +0000

So the planning conference has been canceled - on reflection not to much of a surprise in the face of the economy. Still, I see they have not canceled Cannes this year.

It is easy to write of the planning conferences as a little bit navel gazing and repetitious, but this is probably because the conference has not caught up to the online conversation that goes on the rest of the year. But writing things off in that way goes against the philosophy we are all talking about in marketing - it's about what you do not what you say.

This is the opportunity to reinvent/supercede the planning conference. As Adrian and Gareth tweeted earlier, maybe it's not a conference at all. So here are some of my thoughts of what I/we could organize. This is not an idle post - if enough people are interested I'll put the work in....but it would be much better to crowdsource it.

So....

a) Where: an in person gathering has a real value - we all no casual unexpected conversations add huge value and can't replace online chat completely. In that case I would still suggest meeting in SF where the weather is nicer in the fall (organizing something new in August is asking for trouble). Still, using a Skype/oovoo/Facebook broadcast system with chat might well work.

b) For who: We're now pretty sure agencies are not going to pay for planners to go to a conference. So lets organize something for planners as people (which isn't that different than their professional selves). Lets make it on the weekend and make it attractive to creative/strategic minded people across industries.

c) What: the biggest question! Do we really want a conference? On a very personal level, I would like to have a live version of Howcast - people from various discplines conducting workshops teaching how to do things like run a successful political lobbying campaign, tell a story, evaluate a screenplay etc. The idea would be to start with one person's process and that have the group improve the process or add thoughts to add to the learning.

It would also be interesting to add/curate a performance component to this event - music, art and design that reflect interesting areas of cultural development.

When I step back this may be starting to sound like a bit of a planner's Burning Man. Bu that wouldn't suck to badly.

a reminder

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:35:00 +0000

In Cannes this week I would be very surprised if the Obama campaign did not win a Lion for its work during the election campaign. But it's worth remembering that they have not stopped and rested on their laurels. Ture to the edict that it's the dialogue that counts, they have continually and evolved their work to support ongoing legislation.

The picture above is from the President's work to gather support for health care reform By curating stories of the desperation people feel without healthcare, his organization has not only created a huge amount o content that will pop up in search, but also a banquet of stories that both feed the press and make people feel heard.

Maker Faire

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:15:00 +0000

The DIY trend is well and truly re-established in America. And by DIY I don't mean all of us who go down to Lowe's or Home Depot every weekend in an attempt to save money on home projects (that end up costing us more half the time anyway). I mean the art/skill of building, hacking or re-constructing things - anything - your self.

Its an art that started with shade tree mechanics and in fact most people who owned a car in the 1950's. In fact, the ethos of self-reliance, responsibility (for keeping one's own things working well) and invention are core American values (think how far lewis and Cark would have gotten without them). Now, with the help of media like MAKE and Howcast they are being pushed into technology and art - but in a way that is more accessible than at any other time.

As a man with two self confessed left hands one of the things I enjoyed about the Faire was that they were projects Aidan and I could feasibly do. OK, maybe the robot ones were a bit far fetched but the 100 bottles of Diet Coke and 600 Mentos were well within our reach. But that, after all, is the promise of the web - open learning, knowledge sharing and the ability to mess with stuff. Which means if there is a maker Faire near you - you have to check it out.

Playcrafter is a website where you can build your own gmes, level by level. Best of all, it's free (or at least the basic level is). They provide the tools - you sequence the action and build the challenges.

Orbiting Eden make handbags with digital photo frames embedded in them. Perfect for mums who like to show off their offspring (or pets) at a moment's notice.

Moto Development Group displayed a huge flat, touch screen sensor table. They had set it up for Blackjack and it worked fairly well (after you got used to how hard to press it. Everyone was wnet nuts when Microsoft showed a prototype of somethign similar - this was just ok. Has te iPhone just made us used to touch screens?

Apart from this were some fantastic sculptures and of course, 2 guys, 102 botles of Diet Coke, and 600 mentos!!

This was a fully working giraffe robot - very cool piece of work but crap photo by me.

Stop H Commerce

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:13:00 +0000

One of the most common strategic tricks is to create or name an enemy. Giving them a face or a persona gives your consumer something to compare you against or gives your company a target to exercise their vision against.

McAfee's enemy is/are hackers. But most people don't ever think they will be hacked. So DDB is helping McAfee put a face on hacking and show them what is really going on. Rather than spend money on advertising, the agency have filmed a series of webisodes unveiling that world to everyone out there.

The first episode is above, produced with Moxie and directed by Seth Gordon (King of Kong, Four Christmases). You can find more at www.stophcommerce.com

twitter serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:30:00 +0000

I've written several times before about the power of randomness and serendipity to provide new information about a brand. Now that serendipity has made its way to SMS. Secret Message Service is a way for people to share secrets anonymously via text - sort of a PostSecret crossed with Twitter. Most of the responses have been in French (the site is run by a blogger in Paris) but one could easily see it spreading to English.

While not using the Twitter platform currently, this type of site brings up an interesting question - is it valuable to people in some situations to follow those they don't know, even if just out of curiosity?

Brands that will die

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:37:00 +0000

GM have announced that they will shutter the Pontiac brand. Obviously, the company needed to shutter some of its operations in order to survive and Pontiac's cars have always been lacking. But, then again, that is true of many of the GM brands. Which makes the choice of Pontiac a little surprising. Pontiac is the one of the strongest muscle car brands because it was accessible. People in the 1970's could go an get a Pontiac, work on it themselves and make it better. Not something that was ever true of Buick.

Pontiac will surely not be the last well known brand to die in this recession. in fact, here is a list of 12 more that financially, are about to topple.

Any other nominations?

go data go

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:17:00 +0000

If you haven't seen it, go check out the new Visa site . Its a nice little example of not only bringing in external user data and visualising nicely, but it adds utility in a category where the baic function of the product is often taken for granted (do you really expect a payment card not to go through unless your credit has been zapped?).

This is just one of the many data visualization related pieces of brand utility being designed today. But the point here is not so much the design or coding capabilities involved (great as they may be). Sites are no longer siting as isolated entities with no connection to other functions or places consumers spend time. We have moved from thinking about conversational as about a two way transaction between the consumer and the brand, but towards a two way transaction between the brand and the web as a whole. Perhaps now the strategic imperative is how brands add to the functionality of the web as a whole (since where the consume plays on it can be somewhat random and ever changing).

Is the new metric brand contribution?

Truth in advertising is funnier than you think...

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:54:00 +0000

.. so why not get at the real truth. Sure, there may be lots of sites that look at the State of Creativity and Big Idea Thinking, but none that look at the really "important" questions. Besides, the site has a cool way of visualizing the data and sharing results. Nice work by our DDB/Tribal combo team - check it out at clio50.com

Machines come alive

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:48:00 +0000

Opertus Lunula Umbra - Choe U Ram - Stary Browar Poznań
Uploaded by blubry

Really interesting art pieces by artist U-Ram Choe that bring The Matrix of machines to life

via Flavorpill

branded

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Artist hank Willis Thomas has a new exhibit in NY which is a cross between ad-busting and nailing the ad industry for cultural exploitation.

Thomas uses the langauge of advertising in his work and is "in awe" of its power. But at the same he uses that language to make a comparsons between the way African Americans are were treated during slavery and the way they are treated today - especially by advertising.

The interesting thing to me is that advertising is the language be used here. Much as a lot of Crispin Porter's work for VW uses advertising as both he mechanism and the plot/narrative/dialogue as a way to connect to its hyper aware audience, can we perhaps take this further and not just use it on the hyper cynical?

Twitter is prioperception

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:31:00 +0000

Clive Thompson has published a great article about what using Twitter is really like. In short,he argues that although Twitter is a very 'rational' tool, it gives you a feel for people's lives in a depth that Facebook cannot. the pure frequency of contact means you capture the idiosyncrasy's in someone's life. It's these details that, whle on the face if it may seem unimportant, that actually better capture who we are and what we experience. More proof of the power of small?

Is time for "brands" again?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:17:00 +0000

Back in January Mark Earls suggested we all give up the word brand for New Years. Well now that Lent has arrived (I think), I'm going to suggest we give it a reprieve.

Not that I disagree with Mark - quite the opposite. What Mark and a ton of other people have been saying for a while, in an overly simplified nutshell, is that companies have (and should) create brands by doing things, creating great products, continually innovating etc. rather than by bombarding people with ads.

But how do you transform a company to this way of thinking? Going back and giving a company or (harder still) a brand in a multi-brand (e.g. CPG) universe a purpose is no small thing. Adrian wrote a great blog piece on this last week: organizational culture is what defines that drive in a company and should be the foundation of what a company does to build its image. Re-igniting or creating culture is a multi-year process and something companies are loath to do. This is more true in mid to large size organizations: they don't "get" culture in many cases or it's outside of their purview.

But if you talk about these same issues in terms of their brand they do get it. And companies are more and more willing for their agency to come in and talk to employees about the brand, what it means for them and help shape it into things that actually happen in the company. Changing the company culture, on the other hand, means hiring McKinsey.

Frankly, this approach also makes it easier when the teams you work with do bring work that isn't an ad into the room.

So while this is a nefarious scheme to create bigger, cultural, meaningful ways of doing things for companies, its also one way that agencies can begin to help clients through this transition. Lets not throw out the word, lets just change how we do it.

Design, film and beauty

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:36:00 +0000

McKinsey Quarterly has a great interview with houseware designer/entrepreneur Alessandro Alessi. It has some really fantastic quotes about how he sees research and design - something good for new planners but also a reminder to those of us ho have been doing this for a while

Firstly, he talks about the fact that good design is intuitive and that the research and knowledge you need to create it has to be as well.

When a car company sets out to make a new car, what do they do? First of all, the top person asks for market research to understand what the customer is thinking. So market research people go around asking the consumers, “What would you like?” And what do the customers do? They look around at the existing cars and say, “OK, I like this part of that car,” or, “I like this part of another car.” And so on. The research people put all this together in a shaker. They shake. Then they pour out the recipe for the new car design and give it to the car designers.

Our way is closer to the way of Pablo Picasso. Imagine Picasso waking up in the 1920s on a nice, sunny morning in a village on the Côte d’Azur and feeling strongly the wish—the need—to start painting. So he starts painting. But he’s not asking himself, “To what target customer will I address my new painting?” Picasso shows us a completely different approach: starting from yourself, as a creator, and using your sensibility and your intuition in order to touch other people’s hearts or sensibility or intuition.

Our job is to be part of that intuition for creatives - to know in our guts what is right and what could be interesting. Some of that may be through research, but most is by observation.

Alessi has an open innovation model of design and so they see themselves somewhat differently...

We consider our core activity to be mediating between, on one side, the best possible expressions of product design from all over the world and, on the other side, the final customer’s dreams....deep down, I feel that my activity as an artistic mediator in product design is not very different from the role of a museum director or even a filmmaker—putting together and organizing talents in different fields to get to a result, which is not a mass-produced product in the traditional sense, but a product that’s trying to speak to the masses in a new sense, like a well-made film

It is not surprising then that Alessi's formula for success (yes, he does have one) revolves around things filmmakers would value. What separates success and failure for him is firstly, whether people say "oh what a beautiful object" about his product and secondly, is "the use that people can make of an object in order to communicate with other people" - are people able to fill it with meaning and use it to say something without speaking.

This is possibly the best definition of success in communication - in any form - I have seen. A new measure for brands anyone?

Family Anthropology

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:40:00 +0000

After my grandfather passed away last year we went through the always morbid process of going through his things and seeing who wanted to keep what as a memory/keep sake. When the box of things I had picked out arrived from London last week, I had totally forgotten about claiming this book, but it seems like a really nice anthropological gem.

My grandmother wrote down many of the meals she served to guests in this book. Not only did she write down the menu (always 3 courses)and the wine, but also what she wore, the flowers on the table (every meal) and where everyone was sitting. It certainly didn't cover every meal but it stretches from 1965 to 1983 (just before she passed away). It absolutely fits with my "posh" memories of her, but even more, it's a picture of Englamd that 9from a distance) seems to have disappeared.

Augmented Reality

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:08:00 +0000

If you haven't done so already, check out the new site that GE launched as part of its super bowl campaign. It features some nice augmented reality: essentially a technique of combining of real-world and computer-generated data, effectively blending computer graphics into real footage in real-time. Essentially the site asks you to print out a pipece of paper then hold it in front of your web cam. When you the site combines its grpahics with your camera input to make it seem as if there is a 3D projection coming out of the paper you are holding - a projection sensitive to your movements.

Props to Sosia who produced it for Goodby (and who I can only claim to know through Skype as Reid Evan's (one of our planners) girlfriend)

devil in the details

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:43:00 +0000

Creating uncertainty or having hidden clues or questions is not something normally associated with a great TV spot. But in his video Jimmy Smith, CD at TBWA Chiat/Day talks about how creating complexity and "unknowns" in ads gets people to come back and watch them again. Smith learnt about this when doing Nike ads at Wieden - he found that putting more stuff in and including unknown athletes actually increased interest in the ads.

art old and new

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:15:00 +0000

I met this artist - Favianna Rodriguez - when Aidan and I went to the Mexican Day of the Dead festival in Oakland last year. Her art is very much grounded in the Chicano style but has change and protest at its core. She is also a well known stencil maker - check out the portest stickers available for download .

In total contrast is this piece of work by Jennifer Steinkamp entitled "Dervish" which uses projection to simulate reality - yet never trying to be to real.

I love both pieces of art in different ways. But Rodriguez's pieces - while being less "modern" in a technical term - are more modern in an engagement sense. It is strange to think that traditional methods of street protest can be seen as more current marketing thinking - but we are coming back to the time when ccessibility has more effect - even in art.

Turning over a new leaf

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lewis) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:35:00 +0000

How hard is it for a brand to change today?

The current economic crisis has left lots of brands looking decidedly past it. But even before this, not every brand has kept up with the huge changes in the way brands behave and how they/we interface through media.There is the obvious argument that not every brand should keep up (I don't want Morton's salt on Twitter). But what if that brand does not have a choice - that in all of this change a traditional brand loses so much momentum it loses ground?

It used to be that a brand turnaround story, while done with difficulty, wasn't that uncommon. In this era though, when authenticity is paramount, these stories seem to be coming more slowly (what's the last good one you heard?). It's harder to move to conversational marketng (the kind consumers may actually want to have) when few people see a reason to talk to you or see you doing things. It takes a more remarkable change to this - most likely a change in the product or a rediscovery of the brand by a key audience.

If this is true, I think we are going to see a lot more brands heading for the scrapheap. Private equity never had the patience (and now doesn't have the money) for this kind of work.