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David Fletcher,
Head of MediaLab, Mediaedge:cia UK
"Neutral"
is a dirty word. Neutral is diplomatic, detached. Neutral requires the
discipline of consideration. Neutral is the language of containment, compromise,
summits and accords which bring agreements which allow us all to carry
on doing what we did before. Neutral has all the verve and passion of
Switzerland.
In perfect
illustration, Neutral has contrived for us a definition, "media-neutral
strategic planning", which has kitchen-sink inclusiveness but is as incisive
and insightful as anything which you might get from the greyest of Orwellian
nightmares.
We have
"strategy" - the overall intention which guides the plan, and we have
"planning" - the route-map from strategy to execution. These two things
are different; putting them together in the same statement of activity
lacks clarity and allows an emphasis on the traditional/easy/comfortable/profitable
elements to persist.
Lack of
clarity affects clients as well as agencies and this is readily observed
in the area of media. Media agencies have traditionally laboured under
the curse of data, trying in vain to gain some shred of insight from the
tera-bytes of audience data that trading currencies generate. These get
moulded into permutation after permutation of media plan which get presented
to clients as "strategic options". Deployment options they may be, but
strategic they certainly aren't.
Clients,
meanwhile, charge their auditor henchmen with assessing the viability
of each of these routes. Such is the culture of accountability (a very
positive force if used appropriately) that clients require media agencies
to produce and then rule out options not to be progressed. "What about
a poster and ambient route?", "How do we harness interactive TV?"
This is
in marked contrast to the creative process, where clients are not in the
habit of asking the creative director, "Can you show me all of the other
solutions before I buy this one?" At least not more than once.
As Niall
Fitzgerald noted in a lecture to the Marketing Society, a brand provides
the consumer with "an essential shorthand" for product delivery and value.
Digital protagonists had suggested that the information age would spell
the death of brands; but in an age of information overload, brands had
more rather than less of a role in consumer society.
As with
brands, so with strategy. Marketers are as prone to information overload
as consumers. Options proliferate to the point where paralysis sets in.
What is needed is the "essential shorthand" of a strategy to bind together
and galvanise communications activities in a progressive, cohesive whole.
If this
strategy is to provide the intellectual platform for all activities then
by definition it needs to be portable across channels - to be as incisive
and effective in each relevant discipline as any single-channel strategy
produced in gloriously focused isolation.
This is
a tall order, but not one met by neutrality. So what, then, constitutes
an effective solution?
Strategy
needs ideas. Far from being neutral, Ideas are neither diplomatic
nor detached. They are fiercely partisan. Once conceived, they have lives
of their own. Ideas point out opportunities which are inherently stronger
than other routes. Ideas may allow expression in any number of different
channels, but they aren't media-neutral. The well-documented Stella Artois
strategy - to own film - is not media-neutral; it provides an automatic
hierarchy of channels and opportunities within channels to bring the strategy
to life.
Ideas
need insight. Ideas may be the product of discipline, but this is
by no means a prerequisite. The same is true with insight, which at least
one dictionary defines as "a clear, deep and sometimes sudden understanding
of a complicated problem or situation" (Cambridge International Dictionary
of English).
We might
infer that the insight in the Stella Artois was "every lager company chases
football". Parkinson's "XP" law states that presentations grow to fill
the processing power and pc memory available. So there may well have been
an exhaustive competitive analysis to complement a brand U&A to help explain
the elasticities in the econometric model. Doubtless all of these played
their part, but at the end of the PowerPoint there was only the one pivotal
piece of insight. But what a cracker.
Neither Insight nor Ideas care who has them. But in flawed human
nature, we do. This has two expressions. The first is that with a good
idea everyone involved will take the credit (see Stella case studies!)
- ultimately a predictable factor of limited consequence. The second is
that Not Invented Here syndrome is alive and well and living in an agency
near you.
The 'media-neutral'
approach implicitly appoints the most "independent" supplier to carve
out the activity goodies amongst channel-based agencies all vying for
their cut of the action. This provides leadership of the process, but
does so on an exclusive basis.
Our vision
to resolve this tension requires inclusive leadership where the objective
is to allow an extended, cross-discipline team to share the insight and
idea-generating process. That way the insight can come from anyone, the
extended team owns the idea and the client owns the strategy;.
This requires
a different approach and new skill sets. The difference in approach fundamentally
relies on all parties to lose - if only temporarily - some sovereignty
over what has historically been "their patch". This is as much about clients
as it is agencies, not least because insight needs to inform rather than
follow the brief. It follows that financial relationships with agencies
need to reflect that workloads and contribution do not necessarily scale
directly to execution-based output.
The new
skills include the ability to facilitate workshops with inputs from any
number of disciplines; to absorb and assimilate frequently conflicting
inputs reflecting different dynamics in the client's business; to summarise
analysis in headlines; to develop processes that stimulate ideas; to draw
out and recognise insight.
What's
our insight? Clients don't want neutrality, they want holistic, actionable
ideas. What's our strategy? Ideas from inclusive leadership. This is a
near and achievable goal because it doesn't require us to know everything
about each channel, either now or in the future. Instead it requires us
to formulate and nurture imaginative partnerships with channel and insight
specialists which bring both ourselves and our clients access to the widest
range of relevant stimuli.
Like recognising
insight, we'll know it when we've got there. However it turns out, we
won't be calling it "media-neutral strategic planning".
(c) Account
Planning Group 1995-2002
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