My draft speech (comments?)

(Introduction, thank you, familiar faces etc. On with the speech)

“Life Begins at 40”

…unfortunately so do haemorrhoids, reading glasses, and (according to Carl Jung) a nagging sense you may have found yourself ‘half way up the wrong ladder’.

“Planning begins at 40”

What if planning has reached a midlife crisis moment?

There are some worrying signs. Planning sometimes looks like your mate that turned 40, got divorced and now goes clubbing. Planners in skinny jeans, using words like ‘cool’, ‘web 2.0’, ‘flash mob’, ‘twitter’ and ‘blog’. This is viewed by planning traditionalists as a sure sign of declining standards. Older planners - ie ones my age - worry that the discipline and rigour has gone; that's it's all creative intuition and fad.

I dont share that view: There have always been sloppy planners as well as good ones. But I dont think these new interests are faddish. Brand models are heavily dependent on media. More dependent than we sometimes admit. Most of the modern ideas about brands (like the idea of brand image or personality) emerged at the same time as commercial TV. We wouldnt have the idea of a (unique selling) proposition unless we had started with press and its headlines. New media, new models.

'Getting new media' is part - but only part - of figuring out how it all works. Most of my work as a strategist has been based on or at least supported by large amounts of laborious research, sifting, questioning, evidence and analysis. Creative planning is great for thinking up options, but shouldn't be used in my view to leap to conclusions.

Having been kicked out of an interview in MT Rainey's office once as 'one of those planners who thinks he's a creative' I thought I ought to set the record straight (albeit 15 years too late for that job)! Dont judge the new generation of planners by their haircuts or hobbies, judge them by their IPA effectiveness papers.

Anyway back at the theme. Is planning having a midlife crisis?

Once upon a time when I was a trainee, it was common to say here at JWT (or BMP, I forget which) that products had lifecycles, but brands didn’t. A well managed brand could go on and on. Nowadays, in an era of cultural as well as material obsolescence I am not so sure. Seth Godin an American marketing author with slightly less hair than even John Steel or I, wrote on his blog early this year that ‘brand lifecycles’ follow 5 stages:

1. Who is Brad Pitt? [insert your brand/name here]
2. Get me Brad Pitt!
3. Get me someone like Brad PItt, but cheaper!
4. Get me a newer version of Brad Pitt!
5. Who is Brad Pitt?

According to planners I speak to, planning in many places by now is hovering around “3. Brad Pitt, but cheaper”. This is exemplified by the trend to fast strategy, ie less planners per agency and less time per account. We also do see some ‘4. newer versions of Brad Pitt’ in planning – for instance the trends blog turned brand consultancy is one.

What reaching midlife really means, as Seth’s model vividly illustrates, is that you have passed the point when you are making your mark. Jung described this as like the sun reaching the high point in the sky. Of course this task may still lie ahead in India and other places where planning is newer. But even here most of the groundwork has been done.

The less good news is that you cant stay at this peak forever. Life is change. History is change. The glory days of TV advertising may be past. Digital is 13 years old now too. The Western economies (currently so fragile and being bought up on the cheap by investors from Qatar and Hong Kong) look culturally exhausted. The energy and world changing spirit increasingly comes from the younger countries that are just establishing themselves on the world stage: India, China, Brazil… Planning as we knew it is probably going to decline. And even if it may blossom in new markets and new forms, even if it grows in numbers of practitioners it will never be 'new' again, will never again be in the exciting 'discovery' phase.

Faced with the reality that things are changing, will fade in excitement, and over the long term you face a decline (nothing lasts forever), according to Eric Ericsson (the great psychologist of the lifestages and author of the term ‘identity crisis’) you have 2 choices:

1. go on as you are. Ericsson called this Stagnation. Every year you tell the same old stories. Fight the same old battles which you already won. And you shrink a bit every year. Because you are shrinking from the knowledge of your decline.

2. start believing in something bigger than yourself. Ericsson called this Generativity. You have established yourself, made your name. Now it’s time to find a mission in life. Something to leave behind to future generations.

Ericsson believed that in mid life Generativity was the only way to keep on developing in psychological terms. He saw stagnation as the result of freezing in the headlights of your unconscious fears of mortality. Only by finding something bigger than you which could endure, could you go on growing. Through a process Jung called individuation.

That may sound a long way from the business world. But “Built to Last” (the business book by Collins and Porras) came to a similar conclusion. Long-lasting successful companies tend to have a much bigger vision than just making money from what they produce. I’ve had the privilege over the last 14 years of working with one such company – IKEA – whose mission is nothing less than this: ‘to improve the everyday life of the majority of people’.

What might generativity or ‘finding a higher cause’ - something worth doing for future generations - mean for planning?

Well as some of you know, my personal answer has been about sustainability. I see this as the key thing which our generation has to get right, and fast. I see a huge role for our skills, in creating behaviour change, helping the companies that lead sustainability be successful, getting the marketing of green right (which often means it becomes seen not as green, but as normal).

Sustainability is an opportunity. it's also a threat. Junk mail may get banned - the Scottish Parliament already looked into this. 19 billion items a year, made out of tree, with poor recyclability, and many dont even get opened. Clients will hold media plans accountable for their carbon footprints. Car ads will carry eco health warnings. There are renewed attacks on consumerism from environmentalists and NGOs. And they hold advertising as the culprit. Because it's the visible tip of the iceberg perhaps. Whether you want to ignore this issue or not, you are going to need to start to find some answers.

I hope sustainability will be on your agenda going forward. It certainly seems to be on many clients’ agendas (not to mention Martin Sorrell’s given his recent much quoted ‘super-consumption’ comments). But making it THE cause is my midlife answer. Planning will have to find it’s own answer. Even if it’s the same one.

The other big themes that came out on my blog when we chatted about all this were globalisation, and the digital age. I’ve met people from Goldman Sachs and Google who certainly seem to have found their life’s work in those fields. And maybe there are other issues closer to home you will want to tackle (like saving the ad agency and industry?)

The point about midlife is I don’t really think it matters what you believe in. Only that you believe in something. Something bigger than getting the job done.

Planning doesnt begin at 40. There's no point pretending it's young again. But it could well ready for a good midlife crisis. A crisis of purpose and finding a bigger cause.

That's about all I have time for. Thank you for listening, to the organisers for inviting me, and to everyone here (including some of my own former mentors) who helped planning become what it is today; a place where some of the most interesting, valuable and original thinking anywhere in business takes place. Long may that continue.

pushing the boat out

I am feeling in need of some assumption challenging

ie lets talk about the ocean not the boat

what if consumerism in its current form is wiped out?

what if companies were mostly owned by their partners, employees, customers (not shareholders)?

what if most 'marketing' (eg launches of new ideas) was done through networks of active community?

what if the entire economy was service based (including the service of fixing & upgrading & reusing existing goods)?

what if media and brands were virtually the same thing?

what if income tax was replaced by (an equally onerous) carbon tax?

what if the economy, energy, food production & everyday life were profoundly relocalised?

...so that all that travelled were ideas?

what if we moved back from a brief period of surplus to scarcity (basis of true luxury)?

what if brands were primarily made out of meta-tags eg clouds of reviews from other users

what if radio was the main medium again, or live entertainment, or something so immersive it might as well be real life?

ie if we sketched some far-out scenarios

and then make the leap of assuming that creative/communication services is still a viable specialism

THEN what sort of strategising' might we get to?

it's about looking 40 years ahead after all

:J

ps we might decide that planning for good was an early indicator of something very reachable (open source planning)
if so in some decades planning would be a medieval style guild, with people posted to agencies as liaison rather than staffer

speaking of which do check out the new briefs (london branch meets next friday I believe)

the raw & the cooked

1935 photos of painted Caduveo women from Claude Lévi-Strauss Structural Anthropology

many of you will know structural anthropology (Claude Levi Strauss) - if not I'd recommend it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_anthropology

the key idea is that society is characterised not so much by its overt content but by its dividing lines, often physical lines within the floor plans of villages separating RAW/COOKED, MARRIED/UNMARRIED, SACRED/PROFANE etc.

a modern example would be WORK/LEISURE which we have delineated in only the past few hundred years

PLANNER/CREATIVE is such a distinction

it separates the strategic intent from the artistic interpretation

some outcomes:
- advertising (and similar) is manipulative, it always has a hidden agenda
- there are separate awards schemes for effectiveness and creativity
(it's only apparent that's ridiculous when you think about applying it eg to awards for new product inventions)
- planners are over intellectual, post-rationalising everything but missing out on feeling 'it's the right thing to do'
- creatives are over artistic, cutting off their problem solving ingenuity in favour of impressive flourishes
- it is resistant to change, because it creates a set way of working (the old way) that may not fit new contexts

most interesting people and agencies of course to some extent heal this divide
John Webster was by far the most advanced person I've worked with in knowing how advertising 'ticks' (ie works)

of course without such divisions there is no organisation
and there were huge gains - groundbreaking ideas - that came from this when it was new
(although its particular effectiveness as a spreading meme might also have something to do with the fact that it is a system designed to win client pitches?)
it's just that any such structure becomes decadent and ossified over time

the thing might be to wonder how it might have been carved up differently

eg INTUITIVE/STRUCTURALIST
BUSINESS/PLEASURE
PAST/FUTURE

total lateral thinking week (or so)

there has been some really interesting input already

I also quite like the slow pace, it's so luxurious still having 5 months to think about this

but I also really like David H's suggestion of working out something totally surprising to say & didnt want to lose that as things necessarily get more narrowly focused

it's still got to have something with the future of planning I guess

planners have often gone on to apply the same skills in new areas
eg kay scorah went off to work on hollywood movies
mt rainey just started a big internet social venture

but planning I suppose only strictly makes sense as a term within marketing communications agencies or similar

so what would be a really lateral way of tackling this?

(forget the speech. I mean a lateral way of thinking about the issue)

here's one starting point;

in the communist state army post 1917 there were two officers per position - one military & one political...

(I suppose one question is whether the division of labour in our industry is similarlty daft?)

time to think

It seems crowd sourcing is catching on (a good thing) this in today from Guy/the IPA:

"Dear John, I am writing to invite you to participate in a significant effort by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA ) Strategy Group to champion strategic thinking. Strategists across our industry feel that the biggest barrier to creating great strategy these days is a lack of time. The critical new deliverable is Fast Strategy. Without it, strategy is being reduced to tactics, and strategists become overheads. We are inviting experienced strategists, such as yourself, to share their one tip - expressed in just 50 words - for how to generate quality strategic thinking quickly. All the tips will be collected together online and in hard copy and will help set up a unique conference in April. The authors of the best tips will be invited to speak at the conference. If you would be happy to contribute you 50 words of fast, planning wisdom then please let me know and I can send you details. To find out more about the IPA Strategy Group please follow this link http://www.ipa.co.uk/strategy.
Best regards and thanks in advance. Guy Murphy Chair, IPA Strategy Group"

Time is a very slippery thing in relation strategy, it can take you seconds to crack something or months
Admittedly it sometimes takes months to validate your first hunch
I was actually a big fan of fast strategy at St Lukes. Although what we really meant was fast scene setting, then doing strategy alongside creative development in a twisted helix sort of way

It's great that in the case of this project we have 6 months to write a speech

Will we overcook it though?

Is it really anything to do with writing a speech anyway (destination, vs the journey)

:J

First question

What has changed planning the most so far?

Becoming international (vs UK based)?

New media?

Or what?

Here's what it's all about (revised list - now 27)

Do comment to say you have arrived and also to say in a couple of sentences what you think the speech should be about (or as my old boss what say 'what is it for?')...

THE ORIGINAL CALLUP

In July i am going to speak at an event hosted at JWT in London (along with Jeremy Bullmore, Jon Steel and others) celebrating 40 years of planning and looking ahead too.

I'm not sure I have anything new to say on the matter that I have been banging on about for some years. So... My idea is that instead of presenting my views I get 40 fellow planners from diverse backgrounds to help me put it together. I would open a blog and for the next 3 months we'd just talk about the brief (ie taking this as an opportunity just like any other for a piece of communication to have some sort of effect). We'd then write the presentation together, pick interesing visuals or creative ways to bring it to life, and finally write a speech which I would simply ead out on behalf of the team.

All of which depends on if this grabs 40 of you. I'm going to crosspost this on .ning plus the facebook planning groups and give it 1 week. If 40 people say they are interested then we have a project. (If not I'll have to think of something else!) Do say if you'd like to take part (first come first served) & add comments & ideas

THOSE UP FOR IT SO FAR
GEMMA
PAUL ISAACSON
ADAM CROWE
EMILY REED
OZIOMA
AMELIA TORODE
FARIS YAKOB
JASON OKE
SHWETA KHOSLA
DANIEL BERKAL
CHARLES FRITH
DINO DEMOPOULOS
KIRSTY ANGUS
THANIT CHIRASKAMIN
HUGH M WEBER
CLAUDIU FLOREA
GARETH KAY
ANTOINE MAUSUY
KARIM MELAOUAH
DARIA RADOTA RASMUSSEN
NEIL PERKIN
KIM PORTRATE
VERITY JOHNSTON
JANE HOVEY
JITENDER JABAS
JOHN LEACH
JANINE RAMLOCHAN

that's 27 which I think is plenty enough and I love that fact that it's so international but there is room for more too (and getting to 40 would be nice just for the symmetry, although it arguably doesnt mean anything; 40 people/40 years)