Planning for Good

There's been some exciting fallout from the AAAA Planning conference in San Diego last week. As I mentioned, several of the speakers not only inspired us to change the marketing industry, but challenged us to use our marketing talents to change the world as well. So over drinks one night with Piers, Gareth, Mark and me, BSSP's Ed Cotton posed a question: how can we get planning to do some good? The worldwide planning community has shown a lot of energy, openness and generosity over the past few years, maybe it's time to direct some of that to social change. And Planning For Good was born.

To quote Ed:

The basic idea is to use social networks to reach out to planners. Every month a new brief would be sent out to solve a specific communication problem for a non-profit. Planners could then work individually or in teams to attack the problem. A collection of this thinking would then be presented back to the non-profit and planners who want to get more involved in helping implement the ideas would be given the opportunity to do so.

I'm excited about this. It's still early going (day 5), and we're only just working out the specifics, but 50  120  350 people have already put up their hands to help. That's amazing; lots more are welcome so help spread the word. Since it's very much in development, any suggestions or ideas or feedback would also be great. A website is in the works, but for now it has a home on (where else) Facebook.

Comments

[Drew Neisser]

We've been compiling cases of marketers hoping to do well by doing good over at marketingforgood.net for the last year. Perhaps you'll find some inspiration. Account planning should play a critical role in the process, making sure that the program is insight driven AND comes from a fundamental brand truth (we aren't big fans of brands who slap on a cause without a genuine commitment to the issue at hand.)

[Drew Neisser]

We've been compiling cases of marketers hoping to do well by doing good over at marketingforgood.net for the last year. Perhaps you'll find some inspiration. Account planning should play a critical role in the process, making sure that the program is insight driven AND comes from a fundamental brand truth (we aren't big fans of brands who slap on a cause without a genuine commitment to the issue at hand.)

[Drew Neisser]

We've been compiling cases of marketers hoping to do well by doing good over at marketingforgood.net for the last year. Perhaps you'll find some inspiration. Account planning should play a critical role in the process, making sure that the program is insight driven AND comes from a fundamental brand truth (we aren't big fans of brands who slap on a cause without a genuine commitment to the issue at hand.)