Where one brand is clearly perceived as the leading example within its category, with a dominant market share, it may also shape perceptions and expectations for the whole category.
A signature hallmark of Levi’s 501 jeans is the use of metal rivets; made of copper or aluminium. Many people think all competing jeans come with rivets, but they don’t.
Dyson vacuum cleaners introduced new technologies in the sector. Consumers may believe that rival competitors have since copied many of these innovations and have began to catch up.
But Dyson own hundreds of patents that protect their investment in innovation and competitive performance. Dyson try hard to protect their difference, while creating expectations in the category. Helping their brand to justify their performance advantage and the premium they charge. Dyson Patents
Land Rover have dominated the four wheel drive vehicle category in many markets for decades. As they replace their models, such as the Defender. They focus on maintaining the distinctive vehicle silhouette, as well as the legendary functional performance off road. Other four wheel drive competitors follow the conventions, but rarely achieve the same levels of off-road performance. A car with genuine off road performance is expected to look like a Land Rover.
The Glenlivet became the most popular aged Scottish Single Malt in 2014; but the characteristics of Scottish Malt Whisky vary widely by region and ageing. The Glenlivet is hugely popular, with a light and floral bouquet. It’s often described as a whisky for ‘every day’ consumption, meaning it’s less challenging to get to like, rather than possessing some of the stronger characteristics of some malts (e.g. heavy smoke and peat). The Glenlivet also doesn’t have the expensive price tag that often accompanies aged Scottish malt competitors. Many milder tasting whisky brands are enjoying increased sales among new customers, who aren’t yet ready for a more complex, or expensive Malt.
Leading brands set the rules and create the expectations and conventions consumers expect from the category. This doesn’t mean that all competitors copy the leader. But it does mean that many consumers perceive the leading traits of a category are influenced by the heritage, authenticity and conventions established by the leading brand.
Jesper Norgaard, strategist & artist: Jesper’s Twitter Feed
I draw an analogy now, between leading brands and the Kingfisher bird. There are over 90 species of Kingfisher, but many people think of the Common Kingfisher when they describe what this family of birds are like. Even though Kingfisher species differ markedly in their colour, diet, habitat and location around the word.
But unless you are particularly interested in birds, most people default to the conventions they expect. Not only from the Common Kingfisher, but from other birds in general, when asked to describe the Kingfisher. Because most people don’t know much about Kingfishers or birds really. Just like most people don’t know that much about a brand or a category.
Just over half of the Kingfisher family live in forests. Most live away from water and eat insects, rater than fish. And most dig tunnels to nest in and don’t build nests in trees. Most aren’t coloured blue and yellow.
Our perceptions are driven by conventions, driven by what we experience more frequently. These expectations don’t have to reflect the facts.
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Tags: Brand, Brands, Consumer Perception, Dyson, Jesper Norgaard, Kingfisher, Land Rover, Levi's, Research
Originally written on 9th Nov, the day before the launch of the latest John Lewis Christmas TV ad.
Today will see the new John Lewis Christmas TV ad break in the UK.
The Christmas ads from this leading up-market department store have become a regular fixture in the UK and have prompted much social media discussion and ad sharing over the years.
The 2015 ad was watched by over 25 million people on YouTube in the last year. It’s one of the few ads on YouTube to ever rival the levels of Reach delivered from a major broadcast TV campaign in the UK. In comparison the Cadbury Gorilla TV ad took more than 8 years to achieve over 18 million views, and only achieved around 6 million in year one. Something TV buyers have used over the years to highlight how broadcast still commonly beats digital for the speed it builds Reach. But John Lewis have a formula and have applied it consistently and well.
So when the new ad breaks today, expect Adam & Eve DDB in London to dig out a forlorn soundtrack, probably sung about loss or isolation. This year something by Randy Crawford or Coldplay are popular bets among gamblers. Cue the child and the family. Perhaps throw in a cute animal or two. Reference the way gifts bring people together. It should work a treat. It has done for the last 7 years.
John Lewis are already on track for a bumper sales year, compared to performance over the last 3 years.
Weekly Sales Data: HERE
If you’d like a reminder of their previous Christmas TV, links are below.
2015 – Man in the Moon: Here
2014 – Monty the Penguin: Here
2013 – The Bear and the Hare: Here
2012 – The Journey: Here
2011 – The Long Wait: Here (My personal favourite)
2010 – Your Song Here
2009 – Sweet Child: Here
When you have a great formula, you simply need to reinterpret this annually, in order to build upon your distinctive success; creating a brand and cultural phenomenon. But in 2016, how much of the media exposure will rely on broadcast TV for this event? And will the formula change for change’s sake?
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Tags: Christmas, John Lewis, TV Ad
Strategy & Insight Library
I’ve been developing a library for Carat, as part of their School of You initiative for staff development.
While the library is much more extensive. The following books are recommended for readers interested in marketing, strategy, consumer insight & psychology.
______________________________________________
| 98% Pure Potato: The Origins of Advertising Account Planning | John Griffiths & Tracey Follows |
| The Advertised Mind | Erik Du Plessis |
| Advertising Media Planning | Jack Sissors & Roger Baron |
| The Anatomy Of Humbug | Paul Feldwick |
| A Beautiful Constraint | Adam Morgan |
| The Big Idea | Robert Jones |
| The Black Swan | Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
| Blink: The power of thinking without thinking | Malcolm Gladwell |
| The Brand Innovation Manifesto | John Grant |
| Brand Manners | Hamish Pringle & William Gordeon |
| Brand Spirit | Hamish Pringle & Marjorie Thompson |
| Buyology: Everything we believe about why we buy is wrong | Martin Lindstrom |
| Contagious: How to build word of mouth in the digital age | Jonah Berger |
| Copy, Copy, Copy: How to do smarter marketing | Mark Earls |
| Crowdsourcing: The power of the crowd in driving business | Jeff Howe |
| Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy | Phil Barden |
| Eating The Big Fish | Adam Morgan |
| Emotional Intelligence & Working With Emotional Intelligence | Daniel Goleman |
| Engage! (Measure success on the web) | Brian Solis |
| Excellence in Advertising | Leslie Butterfield |
| The Future Of Value – How Sustainability Creates Value | Eric Lowitt |
| Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators | D. Gray, S. Brown & J. Macanufo |
| The Global Brand | Nigel Hollis |
| The Growth Drivers – Marketing Transformation | Andy Bird & Mhairi McEwan |
| Grow the Core – focus on core business success | David Taylor |
| Herd: How to change mass behaviour | Mark Earls |
| Here Comes Everybody – social media & digital revolution | Clay Shirky |
| How Brands Grow (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) | Byron Sharp |
| How Brands Grow Part 2 (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) | Byron Sharp |
| How We Know What Isn’t So: Fallibility of human reason | Thomas Gilovich |
| Inevitable Illusions: How mistakes of reason rule out mind | Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini |
| Information Is Beautiful | David McCandless |
| Irrationality: the enemy within | Ben Goldacre & Stuart Surtherland |
| Knowledge Is Beautiful | David McCandless |
| Likeable Social Media (create an irresistible brand on Facebook) | Jonah Berger |
| Listen First! – turning social media conversations into advantage | Stephen D. Rappaport |
| The Long Tail | Chris Anderson |
| Made To Stick – Why some ideas stick and others come unstuck | Chip & Dan Heath |
| A Masterclass In Brand Planning – Stephen King | Multiple Contributors |
| Nudge | Cas R. Sunstein |
| Ogilvy on Advertising | David Ogilvy |
| One Plus One Equals Three: A masterclass in creative thinkin | Dave Trott |
| The Organised Mind: Thinking straight despite info overload | Daniel Levitin |
| Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell |
| Paid Attention: Innovative advertising for a digital world | Faris Yakob |
| Paid, Owned & Earned | Nick Burcher |
| Pitch Perfect: The Art Of Selling Ideas & Winning Business | Jon Steel |
| Positioning – The Battle For Your Mind | Al Ries & Jack Trout |
| Predatory Thinking: A Masterclass In Out-Thinking The Competition
The Social Media Bible |
Dave Trott
Lon Safko |
| Socialnomics: How social media transforms our lives & business | Erik Qualman |
| Start With Why | Simon Sinek |
| Thinking Fast & Slow | Daniel Kahneman |
| The Tipping Point | Malcolm Gladwell |
| The Truth About Negotiations | Leigh Thompson |
| Truth, Lies, And Advertising: The Art of Account Planning | Jon Steel |
| The Ultimate Book Of Business Thinking | Des Dearlove |
| Where Good Ideas Come From: The 7 Patterns Of Innovation | Steve Johnson |
| Wikinomics | Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams |
______________________________________________
My personal top 10 recommendations within this list, in alphabetical order:
The Anatomy of Humbug
Eating The Big Fish
Excellence In Advertising
How Brands Grow
Irrationality: The Enemy Within
A Masterclass In Brand Planning
Outliers
Paid Owned & Earned
Start With Why
Thinking Fast & Slow
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Tags: Books, Carat, Insight, Library, Strategic Planning
The Apple Pencil Launch: More power to the user, or another device to worry about the charge for?
The new Apple Pencil.
$100 and it requires charging.
Are you convinced this is better than a plastic stylus and a well designed OS interface? Or does charging (both monetarily and electrically) for yet another Apple device really make a positive difference to the consumer?
Because of limited battery life, you already need to worry about a charger for your Apple iPhone, Apple watch and new iPad Pro. Does this new stylus accessory really need to be a chargeable device too?
Samsung have demonstrated how well a simple plastic stylus may work on their Note models, particularly on the new Note 5. Although there has been some controversy caused by the design flaw in this new device. As the Note 5, unlike previous Note models, allows the stylus to be inserted accidentally the wrong way around. This may leave the stylus stuck and wedged into the device when stowed for storage. This is certainly a practical design flaw. But in terms of how easy the stylus is to use on screen, this non-powered stylus and OS work well together. Leaving me currently unconvinced by the Apple Pencil’s powered implementation.
Think Different?
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Tags: Apple, Apple iPad, Apple Pencil, iPad, iPad Pro, Note 5, Samsung, Samsung Note, Samsung Note 5
98% Potato: The Origins of Account Planning – an interview with John Griffiths
Just before Christmas I had the opportunity to catch up with John Griffiths and discuss his new book, co-written with Tracey Follows, and some themes around account planning. It doesn’t take much to set both of us off on a passionate discussion about planning and insight, so we covered a lot of ground. I hope you will enjoy the highlights I’ve written up below. I hope John won’t mind that I’ve distilled much of our 90+ minutes of conversation into much less than half of the words actually spoken.
First a quick bio on the two authors
John Griffiths
John is perhaps best known as an integrated account planner who leverages advertising and the brand well within a broad channel mix. John is also an accomplished Qual Researcher. I’ve had the opportunity to work with him and discuss planning and insight with him previously over the last decade. He also inspired me to start my own blog, back in 2007. John also provides training, this has included course sessions for the IDM and digital marketing MBA for the IE Business School. He has won multiple awards and is also well known for his account planning blog; planning above and beyond.
Tracey Follows
Tracey is a thought leader and experienced leader of account planning departments. The former Chief Strategy Officer of JWT and Executive Planning Director of VCCP; she is the current chair of the Account Planning Group in the UK. Like myself, Tracey has both agency and client-side experience, as well as quantitative research expertise.
A synopsis of their new book
98% Potato: The Origins of Account Planning
Account planners are the part of advertising agencies tasked with getting inside people’s heads. From the late 1960s they brought the consumer into the process of developing advertising.
Based on face-to-face interviews with 20 of the industry’s pioneers, 98% Pure Potato pieces together the real story of advertising account planning. It traces the rise of the planning discipline, and the work of the people who first forged this path: Stephen King at JWT, and Stanley Pollitt at BMP are legendary figures in the creation of advertising account planning, but they were not alone.
They helped create some of the UK’s most famous brands and brand icons; from the Andrex Puppy, to the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster, and who could forget the Smash Martians?
The book analyses the true beginnings of the discipline as told to the authors by 20 of the first ever planners, and contrasts what planning was and how it was done with the challenges and opportunities faced today.
Interviewees include Jane Newman, John Madell and Jim Williams who were the very first planners ever hired at BMP. Jane is also the person responsible for exporting planning to the United States. Ev Jenkins, described by many of those interviewed as the best planner they had worked with, helps us understand the very beginnings of the iconic Persil, Oxo and Andrex advertising campaigns at JWT.
A little known fact is that there were lots of very senior women at the vanguard of planning: Christine Gray and Lee Godden were two of them, and their stories reveal exactly what it was like as a women operating in the intellectual realm of agencies.
The book provides a unique, untold history of the men and women that pioneered the industry, and a guide for those working, or hoping to work, in advertising planning today.
The book is being crowd funded and due for launch in 2015. Please support the publication by ordering your copy through Unbound: HERE. There are several pledge options available.
Having read the summaries John has kindly shared on some of the interviews, I recommend it to everyone interested in account planning and marketing insight. There is a lot of digital content too, in the form of videos of the original interviews. So please do show support and order a copy.
The Interview with John Griffiths
Thanks for the interview today, maybe our discussion will inspire me to complete some more writing after this. I recently visited Mark Earls and he reminded me not to be too British about asking planning people to get behind the new book, as we planners are often too polite and gentle about it!
As the book is about the invention of planning itself and the first planners, rather than the usual published fare on planning craft skills, it’s genuinely a new idea. There hasn’t been a book before that helps planners understand our origins and about planning itself. So the book is a new idea that’s very useful for the current generation of planners.
The Origins Of The Book
The genesis of the book had two beginnings. In 2004 I had just started recording a series called ‘In their own words’, where I interviewed other planners, creating audio files. I managed to get hold of an email address for Stephen King, the original founder of account planning. And I thought, wouldn’t that be the greatest, if I could interview him too. But I didn’t contact him immediately. And then he died. And I remember thinking I am never going to let that situation happen again, where I don’t seize the opportunity. Then the second origin of the book was when I was at an event for The Marketing Society and I met David Cowan and he handed me a business card with the business name FORENSICS, which is such a plannery take on what planners do. I’d just read Stanley Pollitt’s account on how he started account planning, we hired Peter Jones and then David Cowan.
John describes these first planners using the James Bond numerical tags, 001 and 002. The first planners at BMP. David is a Maths and Theoretical Physics graduate and was the second planning hire at BMP. He went on to become their Head of Account Planning at BMP for 13 years. It was then I thought that I really do want to do this, to interview the people who were the start points for account planning; while the opportunity was still there to do so. Then in 2013 I was introduced to the names of some of the very first planners and when I got in touch with each one, they would help identify other planners from the origin period who worked at either J Walter Thompson or Boase Massimi Pollitt; the two agencies that originated account planning around the same time. It was like a piece of detective work piecing the original list of names together and tracking them down. I ended up with 10 people that I wanted to do a one hour interview with each. So the real start of the idea was then when these people agreed to be interviewed and I decided to make the content into a book, with the videos also available online for people who pre-order a copy.
This then developed into 20 interviews, with 10 planners from the earliest stage of planning within each of these two agencies. By early 2013 I had the interviews and a rough first draft ready for development and editing into a book. I was meeting with Tracey Follows she kindly offered to help work on the book. This was immensely helpful, working as a co-writer, and helping to legitimise the book, through her experience as CSO at J Walter Thompson and her work as chair of the APG; ensuring the book is practical and relevant to planners working today. Planners work better as a collaborative team and I’ve found this to be the case with Tracey; we have all the interviews in the can, with typed transcriptions and are busy writing the final version of the book now, ready for publication in 2015.
As well as introducing us to the first planners and their world, the book also covers issues, such as how planners moved across cultures; such as introducing account planning to the USA. How you train planners around the world and how you recruit planners; how you get planners formed into a department. These are topics that no other planning book has explored before.
Reaching the world in a different way than today
I asked John about the difference in the media world the planners worked within at the time account planning started. As while the development of planning itself was bold and innovative. The media environment that agencies and their clients worked within back in 1968, when planning started, was much more limited and traditional compared to today. A layer of media planning complexity simply didn’t exist in the way we plan and engage with audiences today. But brands had an unparalleled opportunity to influence the mass audience as never before; as TV became the dominant media channel in the home.
Planning is a virus
Given the small numbers of planners, planners have been disproportionately successful. Planning is a virus that mutates and produces different versions of itself.
Planning fuelled the growth of qualitative research which became a mainstream research tool. Detractors called it the industrialising of qual, which had been niche and very academic before this. Account Planning has spread across Insight Departments, fueling the growth and application of quantitative tracking in marketing. Planners invented brand strategy and positioning language and eventually stand-alone agencies. Marketing departments have jostled to rename their brand managers and insight teams as planners. Agency networks have used planning as a focal point to differentiate and reinvent their positioning and way of working; to give at least an illusion of a point of competitive difference.
There are almost no books about planning. Most of the books written by planners have been about things other than planning. This is the first book by planners for planners in over 8 years. Which is why I hope planners will support it!
John felt there was much more value in interviewing the pioneers of planning than recent exponents, however good they are. The commercial pressures to demonstrate success and to get the agencies and clients to sanction what they say would probably hamper current planning stars from speaking frankly. Those from the very beginning don’t have an axe to grind. They are retired and can say what they want and they do!
John and I discussed the subject of planning being a virus for a while. The last two decades have seen planners split into different disciplines, such as advertising, digital, direct marketing, experiential, shopper marketing or PR. There has also been a number of new names for the account planner role as it splits into concentrating more and more on less and less of the original planning role; strategist is popular, as is creative strategist, brand planner and comms planner. But this ability to infest and claim ever smaller parts of the marketing puzzle shows how voracious the planning virus is. It has become indispensable, even though it was faced with clients and agency heads who struggled to see how the work of a planner was to be paid for.
John then mentioned that the first ever book written by a planner, using the rigour associated with planners, concerned how to train a winning race horse. BMP were big fans of horse racing and Peter Jones manually compiled racing results and published a yearly manual on race horse performance before the data was computerised.
Craft & Rigour: My Planning Topic Hot Buttons
At this point I had the opportunity to discuss points of particular interest to me, these concerned phrases that are particular hot buttons of mine. John had mentioned ‘planning craft’ and ‘planning rigour’ in our interview. These phrases are repeatedly mentioned by planners and in account planning books; but quite often they aren’t well defined or characterised. I was keen to get John’s take on what these sometimes nebulous planning phrases meant to him.
John on Planning Craft Skills & Rigour:
I think the core of what planning has become is a process. There is an assembly line of work within marketing agencies that is much more structured than it used to be. It often starts now with being the voice of the consumer within the agency, as well as writing the creative brief. Then, depending on your school of planning, you might also comment on the creative work in development or test it in research.
Pre-testing of creative work is still a point of contention, not all agencies do this. But planners were the foundation point of evaluating both the brand strategy and the proposed creative ideas. They brought the ideas to the consumer, inventing qualitative pre-testing of concepts and ads in the process.
The planner, working with researchers, ensured independence between the agency developing the idea and evaluating its appeal and impact on the target audience. The planner also helped to craft and sell in the strategy, proposition and creative idea to the client.
So the role of planner involves different skills, often like the geek running up and down the assembly line as multiple campaigns are in development and work reaches different stages that require or are permitted planning involvement.
The strategic role has become embedded in the agency process through planners, without planners necessarily having to create anything themselves. The account handler goes and gets clients, takes them to lunch and bills them the invoice – that’s doing something. The creative team come up with the campaign idea and the studio and production team make the idea happen. But perhaps the account planner doesn’t really create anything. So they make documents, they build arguments, inspire ideas and thoughts; and prod and poke the rest of the team into delivering better work. So I think planners are often about ensuring the process creates something different and better; by observing, inspiring and improving the material produced by others along the production line.
Planning craft and rigour are often labels for research skills, being able to access the voice of the consumer, being brand literate and socially informed; being plugged into the wider media environment and perspective. Making the work replicable and comparable, ensuring there is an approval process and that the performance of the work is both verifiable and quantifiable, are all part of the demonstration that planning has process and rigour. They are justifications that, as a planner, I do the job properly.
The Assembly Line Dilemma: Measuring Hours vs. Measuring Effective Ideas
One of the main drivers of the assembly line approach within agencies was the introduction of time sheets and billable hours. Previously agencies were paid for their thinking and ideas that effect sales with agreed project budgets or retainers. Now they are usually paid for producing hours of work. This of course risks the point of needing to spend more and more hours measuring ever fewer hours on the work itself, in order to administer and report gains in time efficiency; rather than gains in business effect.
Before planning existed there were quantitative research studies; but these were often trend based and weak on diagnostics and didn’t explain why advertising worked – so often they failed to answer the “Why?” questions raised by shifts in the trends reported. Diagnostic quantitative campaign evaluation came along much later. But with the arrival of account planning, there was more rigorous qual applied in campaign development. The early planners from both J Walter Thompson and Boase Massimi Pollitt used qual research alongside quant research; as an insight tool and as a measurement tool.
One of the main reasons planning started was to find out why and how advertising campaigns worked and to use consumer insight to persuade clients to both run more challenging creative work and also to show that it had been effective. The decline of the use of qualitative research in recent years has meant that agencies are increasingly presenting and justifying work using quant data only.
This part of my discussion with John is very relevant to my own work, which focuses on planning and evaluation; specifically for media channel effect and creative campaign performance. It’s my day job, so I very much enjoyed learning from John what it was like back in 1968 and the first decade or so afterwards, when the methods I have available for evaluation and planning today simply weren’t available.
In the 1960’s and ’70’s, quant campaign evaluations lacked diagnostics and the voice of the consumer explaining what the results they indicated really meant, the result was Scientism and this wasn’t proper science at all. It was just hiding behind numbers and graphs that often only showed a rise or a decline in trends. This was blunt and lacked the ability to truly inform progress. There was a need to explain what was happening, why, and to provide informed guidance on how to improve performance further.
The first planners knew all about blunt or non-diagnostic quant data and they used qualitative data because it helped them to develop and sell better work. The development of pretesting of campaign ideas, led by the original account planners, introduced a diagnostic and comparative method to qualitative campaign evaluation. It used a replicable approach, evaluated by people who were usually trained in statistics.
This form of original planning rigour was not rigorous in the sense of statistical sample size. Scientism was the use of statistics from quantitative research studies to generally inform the marketing client and agency about the market place, the consumer and their behaviour; but often in a blunt way (e.g. 90% of people eat potato). But the numbers alone don’t always tell the story of difference and change among influential minorities, or help to forecast the power of advertising to change the current market situation rapidly. Agencies were troubled by the rise of Scientism in the 1950’s and 1960’s – when polls and studies could be used in fairly arbitrary ways to build arguments for or against marketing and its effectiveness. Even with the arrival of computers and more analytics. Quant research only started to really help explain advertising effect and aid campaign development once the way advertising worked had been understood through qual research and the appropriate diagnostics and comparative tools were developed and refined; but that’s a story that leaps ahead to the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Sticking slavishly just to numbers and dashboards doesn’t get us to new places
The founding planners developed qualitative research to understand advertising, identify the effect of creating difference, and to spot the opportunity or new trend before it happened. Essentially meaning they identified what was possible and important, but not necessarily present in statistically significant numbers within an audience. Planning and insight isn’t just about measuring stuff; as the important stuff isn’t always obvious or dominant within the data.
The point of a planner is someone who challenges and disrupts the thinking, or usual pattern of approach; allowing ideas to break into new and different places. This requires time. So mental rigour and analytical rigour – what you think and being able to ask why people think that think or behave that way (things quant numbers can’t do, or do easily) are a vital part of planning.
Time and collaborative discussion allows planners to create insight, ideas and craft persuasive arguments to gain client support to do something different and engaging with their marketing budget. And this approach started before there was evidence of how advertising works, in a purely statistical quantitative way. Before computer based research existed and was able to prove influence and effect in large numbers. The early planners had to conduct qual, carrying heavy, so called transportable, recording equipment from venue to venue; be it a focus group in a hall, or to a cinema, in order to capture the audience response.
Gender equality among early account planners was aided by advances in technology
Interestingly, one of the reasons mentioned by the first planners as to why there were initially few female account planners among their number was to do with the physical strength perceived to be required by the job; in order to transport and set up the equipment used in the pre-testing process. So the arrival of truly portable audio and video recording technology arguably opened the door to more women in planning in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. But John’s book does include interviews with some of the very first female account planners too.
Planning in another culture
Account planners are often very different types of people, rather than clones with specific characteristics. But the account planning discipline originated in London the late 1960’s and was initially a peculiarly British invention within advertising agencies. In the book one of the themes explored is the transplanting of account planning to America; where a very strong and different culture continues today. So part of the early development story of planning was also it’s ability to adapt and grow in different environments.
Summing up
Planners need to invest in what’s going to make the biggest difference, rather than invest more time in building a more complex and time measured process. Planners need to focus on helping the team solve the problem and recognise when they have.
In writing the above version of our discussion, I’ve intentionally left out many funny or insightful anecdotes that appear within the interviews in the book. As well as the day to day reality, revealing what it was like to work at JWT or BMP during the 1960’s and 1970’s. So I hope you will enjoy these stories for yourself by ordering a copy of the book for yourself: HERE.
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Tags: 98% Potato, 98% Pure Potato, Account Planning, BMP, Brand Strategy, DDB, John Griffiths, JWT, Kevin Sugrue, Origin of Account Planning, Planning, Planning Books, Strategy, Tracey Follows
There is an Account Planning group on Facebook and Sytse Kooistra, a member, asked for points of view on what the role of planning is within an agency. Every planner answers this question differently, although common themes are apparent. The question and my response are below.
– Be obsessive about understanding the client’s business, the consumer, how media channels work and inspiring great ideas.
– Inform conversations with relevant information and argument.
– Understand what the objectives are (help set them) and what drives comms success (Are the team clear on what measurably improves brand and sales performance?).
– Guide the team to create more effective work.
– Allow time to think, reflect and refine; as well as for origination.
– Be clear and confident in saying “no”, when it’s the right answer, as well as “and” when you need to build or refine thinking further.
– Write succinct and compelling creative briefs (rewrite the briefs of account handlers if this helps team engagement).
– Guide creative development (don’t become a binary pass/fail test for ideas).
– Develop a coherent and robust plan for each client that everyone can understand – refining it should be rarely necessary.
– Speak and present with clarity, simplicity and passion.
– Continue to learn and challenge. Budget for learning.
– Make the process fun and engaging for the team.
– Be committed and still a pleasure to work with.
– Make everyone feel smarter; your job isn’t to own intelligence within the team, it’s to raise the intelligence and effect of the work and team around you.
– Be recognised for the effectiveness of your work and the work you inspire by winning awards.
– Provide and inspire thought leadership.
– Work collaboratively. Train others and share knowledge.
– Promote what’s interesting, different, engaging and substantial in the work of others as well as your own.
– Don’t expect the answers to come from sitting behind a desk. Get your hands dirty.
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According to LinkedIn data, below are the top 50 companies people searched for jobs at, in the UK, during 2014. Click the image to enlarge on your screen:
Link to the original list from LinkedIn: HERE
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Tags: Best Businesses To Work For, Best Companies in the UK, Best places to work in the UK, Careers LinkedIn, LinkedIn jobs, Top 50 UK Businesses
An excellent piece written by Dave Trott appeared in Campaign today.
The article asks the question “what do you use for fuel; what motivates you to perform in your career?” The example was taken from Peter Mead, of AMV fame in UK advertising.
He was sixteen, he’d just left school with two ‘O’ level GCSEs.
He was applying for a job as a dispatch boy.
What Americans call a ‘gofer’: “Go fer this”, “Go fer that”.
Peter had two interviews: one was at the massive agency, J Walter Thompson.
“Peter didn’t like being treated as a member of the lower classes, so he didn’t take the job at JWT.”
It was incredibly snooty, only the poshest people were employed there.
Peter was interviewed by a secretary in the ‘personnel dept’.
Like JWT, she was posh: elegant high heels, two piece oufit, pearls.
Her accent was cut glass.
As she talked, it became apparent there was a huge gap between the people who worked ‘above stairs’ who would be seen by clients.
And the lower orders, the ‘below stairs’ people who handled the daily running of the building.
Cleaners, doormen, van drivers, tea ladies, and dispatch boys.
She informed Peter that he would be starting at three pounds ten shillings a week (£3.50).
But what burned into Peter’s memory was when he asked where he would eat.
She said “There is a staff canteen of course, but you won’t be able to eat there on your wages. However, you can take your sandwiches into Berkeley Square and eat them there”.
Peter didn’t like being treated as a member of the lower classes, so he didn’t take the job at JWT.
He took the job at the other agency instead.
He worked his way from the dispatch department to a job in account handling, and gradually worked his way up from there.
Eventually he opened his own advertising agency.
Eventually he persuaded David Abbott to join him.
Eventually Abbott Mead Vickers became one of London’s best agencies.
Finally, becoming the biggest agency in the country, bigger than everyone, including JWT.
Peter says that on that day he got his wife to make him sandwiches.
He popped them into a Tupperware box.
Then he went to Berkeley Square and sat on his own, on a bench overlooking J Walter Thompson.
And he ate his sandwiches.
Exactly where that posh secretary had told him all those years ago that he’d have to eat his sandwiches.
Because people like him couldn’t afford to eat in the JWT staff canteen.
It reminded me of something Gary Neville said.
Gary Neville had an incredible record as a defender for Manchester United and England.
He won the Premiership eight times, the FA Cup three times, the League Cup twice, the Community Shield twice, The Champions League twice, the Intercontinental Cup, and the Club World Cup.
An interviewer asked him where he found the energy and desire to perform consistently at that level.
Gary Neville said “Indignation is a great source of energy”.
That was his fuel.
He knew he needed to locate that before every game.
Find something that courses through your veins.
A source of energy you can turn on when everyone else says it’s time to quit.
Something that gives you an unfair advantage.
A bench where one day you’re going to sit and eat your sandwiches.
This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk
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Tags: Advertising, Career Motivation, Dave Trott, Motivation, Peter Mead
Many countries have experienced continuing recovery in their advertising media spend during 2014. The forecast from Carat continues to show positive growth, although at a slightly lower level, during 2015.
Carat publish updates on their website: Here
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Tags: Advertising Media, Carat, Compare advertising media forecast 2014 to 2015, Media Spend Forecast 2015
Global Apple iPhone sales, by quarter, since launch of the original iPhone.
Data: Apple iPhone Sales Q3 2007 to Q3 2014
iPhone Announcement / Launch Dates
Original iPhone announced January 9, 2007 in USA (UK, France & Germany launch Nov 2007, plus Ireland & Austria in Spring 2008)
iPhone 3G released on July 11 2008 in 22 countries
iPhone 3GS announced on June 8 2009.
iPhone 4 announced June 7 2010 (white version not launched until April 2011)
From 2007 to 2011, Apple spent $647 million on advertising for the iPhone in the US alone.
iPhone 4S announced October 4 2011. 1 million sold in the first 24 hours and Apple later became the largest mobile manufacturer in 2011 by volume, with unit sales surpassing Nokia.
iPhone 5 announced September 12 2012.
iPhone 5C and 5S models announced September 10 2013.
iPhone 6 and 6 plus models announced September 9 2014.
Apple quarterly reporting periods
Q1 = Jan – Mar
Q2 = Apr – Jun
Q3 = Jul – Sept
Q4 – Oct – Dec
Data Source: Apple
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Tags: Apple, Apple iPhone, Apple iPhone Sales, Apple iPhone Sales Q3 2007 to Q3 2014
While I still firmly believe that when businesses fight solely on price they embark on a competitive race to the bottom. Providing simplicity in how good value is accessed by your customers may be a great differentiator that augments a value message. And this can divert some pressure from having to be the absolute cheapest competitor in order to claim difference or prowess in being a customer champion.
Providing simplicity to the customer can be difficult for the business. It forces you to think about how to remove operational barriers and pressures on the customer to make them qualify in a way the business feels in control.
I first became aware of the change in approach at LIDL in 2013. Thier activity in supplying a pop-up restaurant in Stockholm with LIDL produce showed more confidence over the quality of the food, extending relevance beyond their traditional the low price value.
This was followed in the UK by a recent TV campaign championing the surprising quality LIDL offer.
The UK ad reinterpreted the same idea for the British consumer and had middle class tonal appeal. The product quality established in a farmer’s market scene, then using the reveal to show the way consumers were pleasantly surprised when the LIDL brand was revealed.
As both mid-price and value price competitors scrabble to demonstrate their worth and difference selling often similar commodities. A new press ad from LIDL has now emphasised how at least one competitor makes it difficult for customers to access value similar to that offered by LIDL; because they don’t make access to value simple and straightforward.
Having worked with Waitrose on their customer communications and services, I’ve come to appreciate the amount of training, dedication and focus required in order to provide a consistent quality of retail service. Particularly one that customers appreciate is truly centred around helping them gain better food. While providing cheap food in itself is easier. Making your brand appreciated requires brand difference and service quality people respect and prefer.
If Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury’s in the UK place barriers in front of service and make it difficult for the customer to identify if they are indeed truly gaining competitive value on price; they will continue to find the approach demonstrated by LIDL difficult to challenge.
There is an interesting article exploring these points further at Contagious: HERE
Sainsbury’s have also made it less simple for customer’s to gain value by halving the rewards available automatically through Nectar points collected for every £1 spent. Sainsbury’s intend to tactically deploy additional point bonuses that hope to target customer shopping benefits more closely, by incentivising specific purchase bevaviour. But this adds a barrier to simplicity and the clarity of reward available on a regular basis for the customer.
Marketing Week discuss Sainsbury’s change of Nectar Points: HERE
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This Bill Mauldin cartoon celebrated the plight of Russian author Boris Pasternak.
Pasternak won the Nobel prize for literature 1958, after his manuscript for Dr. Zhivago was smuggled out of the USSR, translated and published in Western Europe.
Pasternak narrowly avoided being exiled from Russia by the authorities, because the text was subtly critical of Stalinism, the purges and the Gulags.
Maudlin’s cartoon won a Pulitzer prize. The cartoon shows a Soviet Gulag scene, with two prisoners talking while they work on splitting a tree trunk in a forest. The caption reads: “I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?”
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Tags: Bill Mauldin, Boris Pasternak, Mauldin, Nobel Prize, Pasternak, Pulitzer Prize
David Bailey on TV advertising
I remembered the above quote from David Bailey and thought you might like it too. David Bailey also describes himself as an advertising amateur, because he has only worked on around 600 ads – including quite a few TV ads. A nice touch of self-deprecation.
The quote is taken from his BBC Radio 4 interview on Desert Island Discs from 1991. When the Beeb kindly opened their back-catalogue for several programmes, it allowed me to listen to some very interesting people that I’d missed when the programmes first aired. Find someone you’d like to know more about through their Desert Island Discs interview here:
The Desert Island Discs Archive home page
The archive catalogue – this allows you search for people interviewed, their interests and specific music tracks selected.
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Tags: Advertising Quotes, David Bailey, Photography, Quotes, TV ads, TV Advertising
Top 25 ranking of the finest smartphones currently available in Europe
Each total score is shown as a Percentage (%). Each smartphone was reviewed against 10 criteria, with each criteria scoring a possible 1-10% toward the total final score of up to 100%.
The top performers all scored very closely together, but for slightly different brand, design or performance reasons. So if you wish to use this ranking table to select your next mobile phone, I suggest you also check the two or three of the very best, based on the scores below and then go and try these hands-on for yourself in a mobile store before you buy one. But it’s unlikely you will be disappointed with any of the two or three that meet your particular criteria from the data shown below in a table.
The top 5 smartphones, listed here in alphabetical order:
– Apple iPhone 5S 32GB and 64GB versions (counted here as 2 separate alternatives, as there is a high price point between them)
The iPhone is still popular, if an expensive choice. But both are a joy to use.
– HTC One M8
A design icon, with great character and stereo external speakers. Only the camera is average in this otherwise excellent smartphone.
– Samsung Galaxy Note 3
A large, high performance media, gaming and business-use phablet. It goes beyond the Samsung Galaxy S5 and really is a mobile powerhorse. It virtually replaces the need to carry an iPad Mini or an iPad.
– Sony Xperia Z2
Possibly the best mobile phone for social media, with an excellent camera and amazing in-ear sound quality with the supplied headphones.
Please click on the table below to read the detail more clearly.
Each of these smartphones have been reviewed extensively online, but I couldn’t find a ranking that compared all of the best against each other in an easy format to reference. So I compiled the data from my own reviews, cross-checked for product specs with manufacturers web-sites and other reviews mentioned below.
The 10 criteria used to create the ranking
– Brand Appeal (Brand desirability and social acceptance)
– Design Appeal (includes the visual appeal and physical feel of the design, the materials, textures and colours. As well as the range of Accessories available, such as cases/covers and the adoption of a standard charger)
– User Interface (including Ease of Use and if it is a pleasure to spend time using)
– Battery Life (including whether there is the ability to swap out the battery to extend use as you commute)
– Screen Display (including ability to view out of doors in sunlight, Full HD etc.)
– Camera (including rear facing and front facing camera, video mode and image stabilisation)
– Built-in Features & App Store (including functions that are likely to be used by many owners, rather than bloatware that fills up space, ease of use, fair pricing and wide range of apps available. A built in feature, such as front facing stereo-speakers, excellent camera will also improve the score awarded).
– Robustness & Longevity (Robustness includes resistance to scratches, or more severe damage; such as screen cracking when dropped. If the smartphone is waterproof it also improves the score. Longevity includes the estimated ability for the smartphone to both continue to operate and be supported with the latest software upgrades, as well as whether it is likely to remain socially admired/credible when seen in public in 2 years time)
– Form factor & Expandability (includes weight and dimensions, memory card slot. Excessive pre-installed software bloatware that fills up internal memory is penalised. Additional functions that are useful to many owners, such as fingerprint security or health apps are credited extra merit)
– Value for money (This is the perceived value offered by the price of the smartphone purchased standalone, or as part of a contract)
The ranking table and some further details on how scores were formulated are included in an Excel spreadsheet that is downloadable from here:
PLEASE NOTE:
In addition to personally conducting a hands-on comparison with each of these smartphones. I have also referred to reviews from Pocket Now, Tech Radar and Phone Arena. The ranking scores are my own informed opinion. So who am I? I’m the former brand manager of a major mobile phone retailer in the UK. I provide consultancy, research & planning support to mobile networks and mobile manufacturer clients. The views expressed here are my own.
I am contactable at kevin.sugrue@plannersphere.org
And via Twitter at #plannersphere
Please also be aware that while the HTC One M8 is a relatively new smartphone in 2014, Samsung are launching a new Note 4 late this year. Also Sony are due to launch an updated Z3 in the Autumn and Apple possibly 2 new iPhones in September 2014.
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Tags: Smartphone Ranking, Smartphone Ranking July 2014, Smartphones
“It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no-0ne is ever ready to do anything. There’s almost no such thing as ready. There’s only now. And you may as well do it now. I mean, I say that confidently as if I’m about to go bungee jumping or something – I’m not. I’m not a crazed risk taker. But I do think that, generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”
– Hugh Laurie
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Tags: Act Now, Be Decisive, Hugh Laurie, Quote, Quotes
Brand Tao 