the fruits of imagination

San Diego

I'm going to be at the AAAA Planning Conference in San Diego next week. I get in on Sunday, and was going to situate myself in the hotel bar on Sunday evening if anyone wants to join. Would be nice to put some faces to all virtual relationships beforehand - at least it'll give us all someone to sit with on Monday morning. Maybe Faris will even let us borrow the "Beersphere" moniker for an evening.

There's a rooftop bar at the Hyatt called Top of the Hyatt. I hear the sunsets are quite nice. Say around 8pm? Any takers?

No more pencils, no more books

I spent the weekend back in school, teaching the "creative briefs" segment of the Account Planning course at Miami Ad School Minneapolis. Here are some of the students:

They're much less blurry in real life.

The class was great. They were all really smart and eager and interested and full of questions and ideas. And it was a fun experience.

I'm not actually sure how useful I was, because I was trying to be honest that there isn't really a proper planning process. Any appearance thereof on agency websites and case studies is a bit of a fiction. We pretend that it's neat and tidy, but it isn't. In my experience the best stuff comes from happy accidents and random connections and odd last minute inspirations. I guess the closest we can come to a process is to be open to things when they do happen and seeing where everything takes you. But I'm not sure that makes for great lecture material.

That said, here are a few obvious things that I tried to get across:

1. Believe in the potential of every project. Every project has a tension, a challenge, or a mystery in it. The biggest part of your job is to inspire, and if you don't see potential no one else will.
2. Don't do it alone. Good strategies and briefs tend to come through a process of iteration and collaboration and false starts and different perspectives.
   
3. Write the brief last. There are a lot of good questions on a creative brief, and you need to be able to answer them, but filling in boxes has a way of limiting thinking. So don't start with the brief, finish with it. I try to figure out what my story is and what my ideal briefing is, and then go back and fill out the creative brief form. Starting out by trying to fill in boxes on a form is a recipe for disaster.
4. Briefings are more important than briefs. I used to think of the briefing as a way to add to the brief and bring the brief to life. Now I look at the briefing as a way to compensate for the weakness of words to express what's really important.
   
5. A briefing is not a meeting. It's a conversation and a relationship that starts long before the brief is written, and continues long after the work starts.
   

Noticed in our traffic stats

One of the benefits of having an agency blog is regularly showing up in searches for stuff like "creative briefs" and "agency philosophy."
But I particularly like that someone showed up here on this search:

I take small comfort that at least they went from us to W+K London.

Minneapolis calling

I'm going to be in Minneapolis this weekend teaching a segment of the Miami Ad School's Account Planning course (if that sounds geographically confusing, the Miami Ad School now runs programs in several cities around the world). Any readers in the Twin City neighborhood feel like meeting up for a time-of-day appropriate beverage? Shoot me an email or leave a comment.

Friday's coffee

We had a great turnout on Friday for the Toronto edition of likemind. There were about 15 people for coffee & chatting & the inevitable 30 minute discussion about the merits of Facebook.
Pictures can be seen here and here. Thanks to everyone who came out.

How to watch people do stuff

I just stumbled across a great 10-year old article on observational research - watching people do stuff. I feel like we don't do as much of this kind of research as we should. Maybe it's because we're in such an age of ROI and measurement that simple observation seems unsubstantial or something. Which, of course, it isn't. Observing people can be very revealing because it removes any need to rely on people's often mistaken memories, opinions and beliefs about how and why they do things.

But, of course, it's also tricky and subtle and you need to know what you're looking for. Which is where this article comes in handy. It's called Seven Rules for Observational Research, and despite being 10 years old it's still well worth the read.

Here are a few choice bits:

Whatever you saw could have happened differently. Your shoppers could have taken more time to get their bearings, or less time. They might have gone down a different aisle. They might have picked up more items, or not as many. They might have sought help from an employee. They might have, but they didn’t. What they did needs to be explained...

Once you recognize that everything people do is the result of something, you can begin looking for that something. Maybe it’s something about them. Or the people they’re with. Or the environment they’re in. Or something.

And this:

The "whole activity" is the key to what the consumer is trying to accomplish. Think of activities as rings of context. Pumping gas takes place inside the "driving somewhere" ring, which takes place inside the "going home from work" ring, and so forth. Most research projects involve single activity units like pumping gas, or kitchen clean-up, or visiting a fast-food drive-thru; but these aren’t generally whole activities. The whole activity is a set of behaviors that includes these small units plus at least one layer of context. It’s "what’s going on" from the consumer point of view, and it may be very different from what you (and your client) think is going on.

To get clues about a whole activity, look at how people enter the activity you’re trying to observe, and how they exit. What’s going on just before and just afterward? How do they get to the point you’re interested in? What and who do they bring with them? What mental state are they in? How do they leave? What do they take with them and what do they leave behind?

Article found via the UT-Austin account planning site. Photo via DCE.

Social networks and presocializing

I had a nice lunch the other day with Felix Yip, a planner at R/GA in NY, while he was in Toronto for a few days. We've been virtually connected for a while but had never actually met in person. But we launched into conversation like we'd know each other for years.

I've been thinking about something for a while, and over the course of lunch it got clearer. The best part about all the Twittering and Facebooking and other social networking platforms is that they're not an end in themselves - it's how they are changing real life interaction.

Now of course they're doing this in the obvious way that we are exposed to new people outside our immediate social circle. Felix and I wouldn't have known each other were it not for the plannersphere. As of this week, now we have a face-to-face friendship as well. That's also the lovely thing about all the various coffee mornings that have sprung up around the world - making the virtual physical. But you already knew that.

Social networks are also changing real life interaction in a more subtle way that is more important and interesting, I think. It's changing the dynamics and flow of our in-person interaction. There's now a shared social foundation, which has removed the need for a lot of the superficial pleasantries of conversation.

With a new face-to-face relationship, there's no longer a need for an introductory 'getting to know you' talk, since you already know their background and social circle and what they've been up to recently. That 'getting to know you' talk has always served a purpose of easing in and establishing trust. It's a mutual feeling out process to ensure common ground and comfort before divulging more of yourself. But now that trust and comfort and common ground is pre-existing. Social networks lay that foundation for us.

It's not just with new people either, with existing friends I've been noticing there's no catching up - nobody says "so what have you been up to?" anymore. I know how your vacation was (and have seen the pictures), what mood you were in this morning, how your big meeting went last week, etc. So conversations become less about details and more about getting straight into the meaty stuff. And given we usually only have a limited amount of time face-to-face with people, that's an important shift. 

So I wonder if one of the real benefits of social networks isn't socializing, it's pre-socializing. They allow us to keep up with the factual details (where someone is, what they're up to) of someone's life in an unobtrusive, easy way, and then when actual socializing happens it makes it much more interesting and fulfilling.

Canadian Marketing Blog Rankings

Good stuff is in the works in Canada (apologies to all the international readers for the nationalist interlude; normal service will resume shortly).  July is Canada month, our chief social networker Sean Moffitt is rounding up the troops, and a new likemind Toronto coffee morning is about to kick off. 

In keeping with all this Canadian-ness, it occured to me the other day that there's no ranking of the top Canadian marketing blogs, like Mack Collier's Top 25 Marketing Blogs or ToddAnd's Power 150.  Of course, both of those lists carry Canadian blogs, but no one (that I could find) has ever compiled a Canadian ranking. Which is a shame, because there are some great Canadian discussions going on out there.

So I've taken a stab at it.  If you're so inclined, henceforth the Canadian Marketing Blog Rankings will live on their own permanent page here.

Likemind

A really fun new business pitch, and some less fun but nonetheless renumerative existing business has gotten in the way of posting for the last week. But I did want to remind our Toronto-based readers of Friday's likemind coffee morning.

8am - 10am
Over Easy
208 Bloor Street West (across from the ROM)
Here's a map.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in person.

image via Betti

Inspiring briefs

I'm looking for examples, wondering if you all can help me out.

What's the most inspiring creative brief or briefing you've ever seen/done/heard of/been a part of?  In particular, what made it inspiring?