Playing catch up

It's been good catching with all the great work and thinking that has been going on since I have been away so here are just a few of my initial favourites.

First of all is Poke's work for Orange. It's up there with their 'Spot the Bull' work they did for them over the last two years. It really is the World's First Internet Balloon Race.

Then there is Leland's new blog on Transformation Design.

In Leland's words: "When businesses look at marketing, they focus on things like integration, brand measures and ROI. While these are important, we must respond to the fact that we are now in a situation where the recipients of marketing are, at best, numb to it or, at worst, revolting against it. We must put emphasis on designing new marketing activities that engage with people's behaviors, emotions and lifestyles in ways that help them and our clients.

To that end, design thinking and techniques can help us rethink marketing systems and structures and - possibly - redesign them from beginning to end around the "user." This is genius and right on the button in my opinion.

And also Noah Brier's Brand Tags project is neat along with it's supporting blog and battle mode. It would appear that Lego is the current brand to beat.

Planning on the margins

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In my opinion one of the best traits any planner can have is the ability to understand people from all walks of life and really see, sense and feel things from their point of view. And when I say understand I don't just mean being able to describe their TGI definition. You need to have a real empathy and respect for them, irrespective of your preconceptions or what the data might tell you. It is always possible to find something endearing in any audience if you look hard and objectively enough.

Ironically our industry, despite employing interesting people, are generally from the same margin of society. And for people supposedly so open minded it's surprising how easily judgments are made. I'm blogging about this because of a free project we are working on for a local drugs working group that highlighted a really interesting transition in people's attitudes and behaviours towards an audience having spent time with them.

Under our guidance we have given this brief to all our junior members of the agency to answer. After giving them an outline brief there was the usual snap judgements about the lives and motivations of drug users and addicts. It was all very middle class and quite disappointing frankly. So in order to get them over this, open their minds and put them in a slightly uncomfortable position we set up a series of groups consisting of ex-addicts, drug workers and counsellors. It was up to the guys to ask some questions and get some real insight into the lives of drug users. After an uncomfortable start they began probing and developing some interesting relationships. I'd go as far as saying friendships. So good in fact they even went out for some drinks with them afterwards to probably ask more 'informal' questions.

By the end of the session there was a complete turnaround in how they viewed a group of people who are arguably in a completely different part of society, with vastly different life experiences. Not only did they have a real empathy for them, they developed a real enthusiasm for the cause. Well done guys, I can't wait to see the work.

Activists for the liberation from seagulls

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I'm a bit of a sucker for anything related to group dynamics and problem solving, particularly when it comes to a good old fashioned agency ding dong about processes and politics. To the annoyance of my colleagues no doubt, I'm somewhat of an idealist. I believe there should be way more collaboration, more productive conversations with smaller groups than long, pointless meetings with all and sundry.

I also get angry with pessimists, idea killers and micro managers. They are the antithesis of the kind of people you need in an agency to get ideas off the ground. In my opinion these people should realise their skills might be better suited elsewhere, like perhaps a bank, or better still a factory.

I like to refer to these people as Seagulls. They fly in to meetings squawking away without any idea of what's going on and then proceed to shit all over everything. Undoubtedly this will be repeated everyday up until there is nothing left in the team or the idea. They will then blame everybody apart from themselves and simply fly off and shit somewhere else. There's at least one of these in your agency, admit it? You avoid inviting them to meetings at all costs, or you refrain from putting yourself forward to work on certain accounts. They sap the life and enjoyment out of everything and turn the process of creation into a stressful and frustrating job, that just needs doing. That's why I find this idea of coliberation refreshing.

I try my best not to get caught up in all the politics, but occasionally it's inevitable, particularly as a planner. It might just be me, but I think the 'planning department' is often treated a bit like Switzerland. You're seen to be this kind of objective mediator between feuding nations. I believe we would all like to think of ourselves as liberators as opposed mediators and coliberation is a much more productive term than collaboration when it comes to agency group dynamics.