Daddy, what's a planner?

Whenever there’s been a bad day at the office our creative director has got a great leveller/motivational line:

“It could be worse; we could all be doing real jobs.”

And although it’s meant as a light hearted gag I’ve always thought he’s right, to some degree. Now whether what we do counts as a real job or not is a bigger question. The problem for me is that whilst I find it unproblematic telling my mum the bits about work that make it not a real job, I struggle to actually explain the real job that I do! It’s easy to wax lyrical about the crèche-like atmosphere, table football, well-known brands and boozey lunches, but really difficult to explain what a planner does.

Now, as a planner you’d think this would be easy – a vaguely abstract idea translated into an easy to swallow thought piece. But it’s not. I don’t really know how to explain exactly what I do. It’s a bit like a doctor being the worst patient.

I even looked for advice from the APG and got an even more complex answer listing the variety of characters a planner can play – social anthropologist, brainstorming facilitator, data analyst, think piece polemicist, and so on. None of which are very ‘mum facing’.

I’d like to think that I know what I do (or am at least meant to do), and to be fair there are different types of planners that specialise in different types of fields and that work in very different ways. Yet this is a very ‘inward-facing’ explanation – you get it if you work with planners. However, outside of adland all I end up with is “I do thinky stuff and google a lot” or something vaguely attempting humour (side-stepping the question).

Whilst this plagued me for a while, I’ve decided to give up trying to explain it and have taken a different tact. Rather than think about “What a planner does”, I’ve gone for “Who a planner is”. And I found this (thanks to my boss):

I don’t know who wrote it or where it’s from, but I like it. And in true planning style it distinctly resemble a beer induced back-of-a-fag-packet solution.

So if the client asks, I’m not a planner, I’m an explorer.

What every marketer SHOULD know

I'm constantly trying to read 'insightful books' on marketing, extend my skill-set through various courses, create routines that keep me looking for anything and everything vaguely interesting, listen to the gurus of the industry, etc etc...

However, this short list hits the nail on the head for me. It's Seth Godin's guide to What Every Good Marketer knows - a simple, concise list of marketing wisdom:

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
• Marketing begins before the product is created.
• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
• Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not.
• Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
• Products that are remarkable get talked about.
• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
• You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
• If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
• People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
• You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
• Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
• Good marketers tell a story.
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world. Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
• Good marketers measure.
• Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
• In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
• Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
• There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
• Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
• You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
• You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
• Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

He rounds this off with "Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it".

This is a valid point, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Irrelevant of whether you agree with Seth's approach, how many people do you know that even think around these areas let alone know or do? He's right, doing is the hard bit, but having an opinion is the first step in the right direction. The next is trying to use your outlook as a basis for everything you do. Actually achieving it... well that's a tricky one!

For me, it's not the knowers and the doers that I want to work with, but the thinkers and the triers.

The silver lining to the cloud

It was my birthday this week and the usual “you’re past it” gags came out (despite only being 25 I might add!), so it somehow seemed fitting to write a bit about “The Recession”.

Yup, the economic downturn is now officially being mooted as the start of a recession and the conversations on what will happen to advertising/marketing spend have already begun.

Marketers were predicted to decrease spend by 3% at the start of the year whilst the latest Bellwether Report (Q1 2008) reveals that, for the second successive quarter, Q2 marketing budgets have been downgraded. Original estimates of a 3.2% increase in 2008 ad spend are looking ropey if reductions continue and this positive prediction is largely due to continued online investment counteracting reductions in more traditional media, especially below-the-line. (In fact, online spend has already overtaken press and it’s predicted to overtake TV by 2009.)

Now, I’m no economic analyst but I understand the logic that positions our friend the ‘marketing budget’ as one of the first victims of money-saving cutbacks. But, I’m going to stand by him – leave him be. In fact, feed him some more if you can!

The latest Brandz report from Millward Brown suggests that investing in a brand is actually one of the best courses of action during a period of economic turbulence:

“Strong brands generate superior returns and protect businesses from risk. Our data shows that strong brands continue to outperform weak ones in terms of market share and share price during recessions” says Joanna Seddon, CEO of Millward Brown Optimor.

Strong words, but there are also strong supports:

• Reports suggest that only 10% of consumers are motivated exclusively by price
• There are strong links between Share of Voice and Share of Market – invest and increase your share of voice whilst others are decreasing theirs and snatch their share of market as well
• Companies that have brands in the BrandZ Top 100 have performed significantly better in the stock market when compared to the S&P 500
• Loyal customers stay confident in a strong brand when the going gets tough. Confident customers are less likely to switch brand
• Potential customers, staff and shareholders are more risk averse during a recession. A strong brand alleviates risk in the shareholder’s mind
• There is a greater chance of a company’s value remaining buoyant in an economic downturn if supported by a strong brand

And there are cases to point to: P&G claim to have a “When times are tough, you build share” philosophy; Dutch retailer Albert Heijn tried to compete on price in 2003 only to trigger a price war that resulted in them losing share to competitors; and so on.

So could a recession become an opportunity? Perhaps, but it’s not just spend spend spend. As Millward Brown rightly points out, each industry requires its own recession strategy as each will be affected differently. Offensive or defensive, value focused or product focused, weather the storm, etc. Either way, a strong strategy utilising marketing spend is essential.

As for my own recession… well, 25 isn’t that bad at all. Really…