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Mark Earls,
Executive Group Planning Director, Ogilvy London
There is
a lot of confusion around what media-neutral planning is, so let's be
really clear from the outset: media-neutral planning is not about media
(please note, media buying shops who think that running both the advertising
and DM allocation counts as media-neutral). Nor is it about planning -
as in account or comms. planning.
It's about
media-free thinking. Not thinking above and below the line but thinking
that is fundamental and which drives all of a company's behaviours not
just how it spends its media money. Or what goes in the media spaces bought.
It's about
big ideas, not taglines or TV scripts. It's about profound and transformative
ideas. Ideas that stop and engage our audiences - that give our people
a reason to get out of bed in the morning and our customers a reason to
spend a few seconds of their precious time with our brand (when they know
that every market is oversupplied with equally good products - it doesn't
matter which one they buy). Ideas that shape and drive a company, a brand,
a product or a service.
Ideas that
lead to different kinds of behaviour by client companies. Behaviour that
is worth talking about. Like St. Luke's reinvention of the Clarks Shoes
business model around Pleasure. Or Ogilvy London's reinvention of the
Observer (first expressed through the product - the monthly supplements
like OFM and OSM). Or HHCL's reinvention of the AA as an emergency service.
Or Ogilvy's reinvention of IBM from Big Blue to Bright Blue through the
idea of E-business.
Ideas like
this should be meat and drink to us: because of the way we work and the
unique combination of skills we are better placed than many of our clients
and certainly more so than the classic management consultants.
But are
we set up for this?
Sometimes, we are lucky: a big idea pops out when we are trying to make
ads or DM pieces or packaging. But it's not what we are set up to do.
Ad agencies
are set up to make ads (look at the Adfactory processes which were copied
from 40's Detroit). They talk the "big idea" talk and then show you a
TV reel. DM agencies are set up to run DM programmes (ditto). The thinkers
- both creative and planners are trapped within these processes and follow
the concerns of their jailers. Rarely do they venture out in the sunlight
and dare to dream big and profound thoughts. Not least because the finances
of each business discourage it - the project-based relationships of most
DM clients discourage much big thinking. Every hour has to be accounted
for so DM thinkers spend their time worrying about targeting rather than
engaging in deep and profound thinking. And frankly ad agencies don't
get paid for big ideas, just ads (as Martin Sorrell observed several years
ago).
Turkeys
and Christmas, discuss
To be honest, most of those who lead such specialist businesses have no
interest in things changing. They have a nice life, they get paid reasonably
well (not as well as some of their clients but well enough). Some of them
might even be looking to benefit from selling their business. All you
have to do is play the game as it has been played for years on end. And
so "game-players" are the kind of people our industry has tended to select
and promote. We don't have many rule-breakers (whatever we tell our clients
about the need for them to do it).
So when
I suggest that we need to change what we do and how we do it to make media-neutral
planning a reality, it's no surprise that most folk like to think they
can get away with a bit of tinkering. Just polish up the existing model
or add some new channel experts to the mix, now and again.
Misunderstandings
In a classic article, "The Metaphors of Change", the change Management
guru Robert Marshalk explains how easily we can misunderstand what kind
of change is proposed when, say a new CEO, reveals his plan for the business.
All too easily, we understand "change" to mean that a little bit of the
business-machine is broken (say the alternator or the spark plug) - tear
it out and put a new one in and it'll all be fine. Or, we might understand
the problem as meaning we have to turbocharge the machine to go faster.
Or then again, we might get really serious and recognise that what we
need to do is harness some new technology to bring our business up to
speed. In each of these 3 cases, the basics of the business go unquestioned:
"it's all fine really, we just have to?."(insert your chosen repair here).
One of
the reasons why so few change programmes ever achieve much beyond a very
complicated and expensive HR and IT initiative seems to be that we get
stuck here. We never really question the basics of the business: its core
assumptions and its received wisdom about how to do things. We never get
to rethink the business from the bottom up.
Rethink,
remodel Which is what is really required to make media-neutral strategic
planning a reality and not just this year's advertising industry lie.
We need to rethink what it is that we do and how we organise ourselves.
Not thinking in order to make an ad, or thinking in order to get the targeting
right for a DM programme, nor indeed thinking in order to decide where
we spend our money. But thinking which creates an idea which re-orientates
an entire company and all of its behaviours (including communications).
We need
to change our processes so that we work to have ideas. And ideas that
solve business problems.
This means
more than just having super planners thinking super thoughts for others
to colour in: it means engaging the one group of thinkers whom our industry
has selected on the basis of their ability to solve problems - the creative
department - in strategic discussions.
We need
to bring them in before we talk about pictures and give them the tools
and confidence to contribute.
We need
to make sure that we have the right mix of "planning" skills to work with
them - I favour a mixture of traditional account planners, business strategists
and channel experts working together as a team. In parallel, not in series.
All of
which means we cannot afford the traditional way we allocate resource
- according to the IPA census data, in the average member agency client
service still outnumbers planning by nearly 4 to 1. And the balance is
worse in most DM agencies.
And we
need to rethink how we get paid, not only because it makes this kind of
thinking between different disciplines really difficult but because it
doesn't put any value on the idea.
And, when
it comes to implementation, we need to develop some better thinking about
how stuff works so that we can plan the implementation of our chosen idea
coherently. On the one hand, we need to find ways to develop a shared
currency for implementation so that the channel specialists can talk usefully
to each other; on the other hand we need to polish up our thinking - most
one-to-one business are obsessed with some debatable notions of loyalty
and advertising businesses talk about image or preference without being
clear quite how this affects customer behaviour. While we're at it, it
would be good to have better measures of effectiveness.
And, last
but not least it means changing who we work with at the client end. Big
ideas are rarely bonusable objectives for Marketing Managers. Nor do they
have much experience or insight to bring. We must connect at a higher
level.
All Change
at the Wharf
This is not just theory. Ogilvy London are putting this into practice
now. We are experimenting with just these kinds of structural changes
to our business models. All group companies work within the same process
whether we are charged with one channel implementation or several - to
have big ideas which solve business problems. With creative people. And
with interesting mixes of strategic thinkers - indeed I am responsible
for the largest group of communications thinkers in Europe under one roof,
advertising, one-to-one, on-line, design, PR, SMS, call-centre and internal
communications specialists (sorry if I forgot anyone!). And we work with
a number of outside strategic partners in all kinds of fields and in all
kinds of combinations.
It's not
easy, it's not yet always as successful as we want it to be. But it is
breaking new ground and that's always more fun than repeating what generations
have done before and suffering as the world changes around us.
Media-free
thinker. Good job title. Must change those business cards.
(c) Account
Planning Group 1995-2002
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