Sunday Morning Ponderings

Sundays are my favorite mornings - maybe even more so than Saturday mornings. It's trite, I know. New York Times, homemade Chai (I'm getting better), CBS Sunday Morning (Charles Osgood in his bow-tie is cute), and PJs until an embarrassing hour.

This Sunday is no different. Except for the theme that's formulating in my head: Surrounding Yourself by Good People.

Three observsations:
• VF's recent cover story and photography "Laughing Matter: Comedy's New Legends"
• Today's NY Times article in the Style section about "The Fempire"
• (This is an ongoing observation) Plannerette's unspoken (and self-induced) knowledge competition with her beau, who's one of the smartest person I know

Like the rest of the country, I am enamored of the comedy stylings of Andy Samberg's Lonely Island, Apatown, Tina Fey and her SNL tribe, The Fempire and more. In their own mediums, they are smart, insightful and just plain funny. I find myself hungry for content, scouring for behind the scenes footage, articles, quotes, and more from each of them, "wasting" hours for laugh. Besides a good laugh, I think there is bigger lesson that I have realized: individually these people are smart and funny on their own, but they are better because they are part of a core group. This group allows them to bounce their ideas off each other, test their writing, build and improve.

If you read the above articles, it's clear that great ideas are coming from the people alone, but from the group as well. The group makes them each BETTER than they'd be alone.

This is a lesson to me: one that I guess has been percolating for me. Surround yourself by people that make you better - listen to them, use them to bounce ideas off of, argue with them, call them on their arguments, ask questions. Doing so will make your work better, smarter, and in the end - if these people are colleagues - bringing them into your process allows them to buy into the thoughts early on, thus hopefully ensuring the success of your work. (I wish this was always the case.)

Plannerette's beau is a perfect example: as one of the smartest people I know, he makes me a better planner just because he questions things that I don't always question, he seeks out and finds trends and observations in other areas/categories that I don't innately have as much interest in, he shares this information to ultimately allow me to broaden my knowledge base. It's my job to take and synthesize that information in a way that makes sense of things.

So, the moral of the story for this junior planner: surround yourself with good, smart people you can trust, who you can be yourself around and use them to share and better your ideas.

I guess it's not rocket science: it's no different than seeking friends which we've been doing since kindergarden. But it makes a difference. I have seen it happen in my work world time and time again.

Fallon Planning Secrets Revealed

It's where I get a lot of inspiration. Some applied, mostly just because it's interesting.

Fallon Brainfood: Agency Blog Secrets Revealed!

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Despite the Snow, Others Were Likeminded This Morning

This Friday was as good a day as any to try likemind ny today. Little did I know that it would snow the day before Spring. Oh well. And being a non-Ne Yorker, I did not take the right subway and had to walk in the snow and cold. But once I got there, I got a large latte and settled into the corner of a family style table, along with 10 or so likeminded folks. As the morning went along, more came and went.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous. I am not the greatest schmoozer and often find that I don't have what it takes to talk the talk like others, especially planners, do. But I found this morning was good, even great.

I did drag a friend, which always make life easier. A good friend who recently lost her job at a small package design agency in the city. I thought to myself last night 'perfect opportunity for BOTH of us to network,' her for new gigs, me to meet and try this likemind thing. It was nice to have a partner-in-crime.

We actually had a nice discussion, the two of us, that coincidentally dovetailed into a few of the conversations we had. She's been doing a lot of thinking about her future, not surprisingly. She, like me, has a love of design, interiors and architecture. And through her recent work realized her interest in research. Plus, her background is branding, so to combine all these things into one new career was her recent epiphany. Like being a retail psychologist/sociologist. We talked a lot about that, and how my company is trying to forge ahead in the land of retail marketing. I talked to a number of people about that - as I said earlier, coincidentally - and even got a few names of organizations for her.

But I realized something through this likemind thing: talking to people helps me understand what I do. How weird is that?! Like I need to talk to others outside where I work/what I do in order to make sense of what I do. Or more straight to the point, what I HOPE to do. But that's for another day. I need to go to more things like likemind - talking to people, hearing what they have to say, listening to others stories, how they got to where they are. All of this is helpful for me to find my voice, for me to understand what I can bring to the table, what my value is.

As you can tell from recent postings, understanding and defining my value is the struggle that I am going through. It's a journey, and today likemind was a good experience to help me along this quest.

Thanks Noah, for seeing that, and bringing it to more people.

I'm the Target! I Love When That Happens

So one of the things I've learned thus far in my illustrious planning career is that sometimes you don't need to make the assignment more difficult than it is - sometimes it's really not that hard. We often make it harder than it should be here, where I work. I cannot quite decipher why - that's a story for another day. But we just do. And we don't need to.

Like for instance, I was working on a top-secret assignment just 2 weeks ago and as I read the brief it dawned on me "I'm the target!" And I pretty much sat at my desk and asked myself what I would want, what would motivate me, what message would I want to hear. It was pretty cool, I have to admit.

So in the line of thinking, I saw these new print ads from Benjamin Moore for their new line of paint called "Ben," aimed at a younger audience. I think why I liked them so much is because they got me - they are aimed at me, and make sense. They speak in language that means something to me, in a tone that I think speaks to my generation, and aesthetically, they are unique and eye-catching enough to stop me if I saw them in print. Further, their placement in April issues of Cookie, Real Simple, InStyle, Wired, Details and Shape are spot on in terms of who's reading.

Planning with a Capital P

I'm probably not the first to notice that, in "the industry" the words "strategic" and "planning" are practically every other word used to describe marketing and communications. It certainly is something I think about a fair amount, because I share a derivation of both of those words in my title currently, and often times really wonder what the eff it means? Seriously, when those two words are thrown around it makes you question your credibility, ability and reason for being.

Like recently, I was having a conversation with a fellow planning colleague: as of late, we've been wondering what value we add, because often times we're not finding ourselves doing "real planning" - but rather, we are being logical and bringing a thoughtfulness to the work that, for some reason, is missing.

Being paid to be logical? I guess that's a good thing, but it really does make me wonder why I am then using two words like "strategic" and "planner" to describe the role that I play. When there is none of those ingredients in my recipe.

So what's a young planner to do? I want to stop with "planning" and bring on the Planning to experience how it's really done; how we see it at the 4A's Planning conference every year.

BRING ON THE BIG P!!!

Principles to Live By

It's been a while - but that's not the purpose of this posting. That can be addressed in another posting. For now, I wanted to try to capture the principles that, as a planner and a person in this communication industry, I have learned and will use going forward as my PRINCIPLES TO LIVE BY.

Some are totally 'duh!-worthy' but truly make a difference, most are not unique, all are simple and helpful and do matter in the long run. I repeat them to myself on a daily basis and they help me understand our assignment and the work we do, as well as what my role. So I am just going to have at it:

-Don't burn any bridges
-Document everything
-Every word you write matters, EVERY WORD
-Every word you say matters, EVERY WORD
-Listen, stop, breathe, think - never react first, it never gets you anywhere
-Reread everything, EVERYTHING
-Ask yourself: Who, What, Where, When, Why - four of the greatest, and frankly MOST important words in the English language
-Be simple - less is more - live by Mies van der Rohe's mantra. It always wins out in the end
-Read, Strip Repeat - strip it down - I guess this is a repeat of the above, but editing is always possible
-Be logical, usually it's never more than thinking logically. This is marketing, not rocket science
-Don't be prone to Analysis Paralysis - more data is not necessarily the answer
-Does it tell a story? That's the point, we are storytellers and are paid to entrance.
-There is no one way to do things - you have to figure it out and make it work - reference the above storytelling principle
-Always bring facewash...besides wine, it's the best way to wash away the day

That's the list I've come up with to-date. I think I will be keep adding and feel free to make suggestions.

Hizzonah's Blank Stare

So, one of the first posts I've wanted to write about is DEFINING ACCOUNT PLANNING. I know what it means, and most people in the advertising and marketing industry know what it mean. Actually, as I write this I realize this is NOT true; that is precisely why I'm writing this post - so many people in our industry DON'T know what it means to be an account planner. And lay-people? FUGETABOUTIT! In any event, this topic has been on my mind A LOT lately. It started a while back, and it was reinforced last weekend. Some background:

1) I work for an agency where account planning is relatively new. Over the past two years we've put the discipline and people in place such that Planning is now a part of our creative process. Thus, it's still a novel concept, and one that our youth-heavy agency does not truly understood, or embrace.

2) My Dad's Blank Stare. So, I had a nice impromptu evening with my dad last weekend, let's call him Hizzonah. He's a judge, but you probably guessed that. Very rational, logical, process-oriented, but only relatively comfortable with my industry. He loves talking about what he's read about advertising from the Wall Street Journal. (He thinks I work for Omnicom and he loves to tell people that). So we were having a lovely dinner out, and got to talking about my job, and the recent promotion I had gotten. And he's inquisitive (it's where I get it) and so he starts asking me about my job and what I do and all that. And, of course, I am so excited to prove myself to my Dad, show him what I've learned and how smart I am. But as I explain to him what I do, how I do it, what it means, I slowly come to realize I might as well be speaking Arabic, for all he can understand about what's coming out of my mouth.

So, then I give him what I think is a truly brilliant answer. "So Dad, you watch 60 Minutes, right? Andy Rooney? Well, I'm like Andy Rooney."

Well, the blank stare ensued, but I still think it's a fairly interesting way to talk about planning. Here's why:

Andy asks questions.

That's what a planner does. Always inquisitive, always, wondering, pondering, musing, percolating, pulling things apart to better understand them in the end. I think that's what makes being a planner so great. You never rest until you can make sense of something, and will use amazing tools to get at those answers.

My boss likes to say that planning is "defining the path that is yet to be" for a brand. Another colleague says it like this: "we are responsible for understanding the consumer first, and the brand, and where those two come together."

Wikipedia defines Account Planning as "the discipline that brings the consumer into the process of developing advertising. To be truly effective, advertising must be both distinctive and relevant, and planning helps on both counts."

I think the APG defines it the best, and when I moved into planning and read the APG's specs on planning, I realized how utterly lost I'd been up until that point in my life. I did not know why I could do these things, or how to harness them, but then "Planning" came along and I had a purpose.

So I will try to figure out how to upload this APG article written by Merry Baskin, and originally developed by Stephen King and Stanley Pollitt.

So, when it comes to talking about planning at my agency, and what planning can do for our clients, I might still get blank stares, but slowly and surely, one by one, when planning is involved, and people see how it helps and why it's so important and how it gets us to better ideas, that's how I define planning. It's me knowing what planning is, doing it everyday, asking the questions, plugging for more information and being smart about using it to to the best of my ability.

But I still stick to my Andy Rooney analogy about asking questions, the right questions, questions that make you think and open up more questions and doors and take you to a place that, once the answers are applied, are beneficial to your clients business. Blah blah blah...That is still the answer I will tell Hizzonah and maybe one of these days I will no longer get a blank stare.

One last thing that does make me feel better was Hizzonah's question to me... "so, where did you learn all this stuff?"