Account Planning

Why I want to work in Planning

Mai 20, 2010 by Jonathan

Great news in my mail today: I have been accepted to the Miami Ad School Europe’s Account Planning Boot Camp in Hamburg. The program will start in July.
I am super-excited about this opportunity and about being able to see St.Pauli play in the German Bundesliga again.

One of the questions posed for the application was: „Why do want a career in Account Planning?“. Here is what I wrote:

First, because it is the field that makes the most difference in advertising. My perception is that the outstanding work of the last years was only possible because it had a firm strategic foundation.

Second, it will be the most challenging and exciting discipline in advertising. We are just at the beginning of the digital age. The maps of human behavior and communication will be redrawn. What a great time to be an explorer!

And third, because I hate being bombarded with lame, irrelevant and meaningless advertising. I want to change that.

On a more personal note, I have been excited about account planning and it’s practice since I studied it at the University of Oklahoma. It never let go of me. I kept myself informed and took courses. What I learned I put into practice at my job with DMS, but never worked as a planner.

I am applying here because I want to turn a hobby into a career.

Breakfast is for lovers…

Februar 20, 2009 by Jonathan

The Lurpak campaign by Wieden+Kennedy, London is one of my favourite recent advertising campaigns. I like the insight and strategy behind it and how they were translated into marvellous ads (with long copy). The rhythm, images and focus on what good you can make with Lurpak (instead of promising some super-healthy proposition) are a pleasing contrast to the usual screaming of advertising.

Yesterday evening a new series of print and television ads went on air: „Saturday is Breakfast Day“ (via the W+K London blog).

Inspire people to make Saturday a breakfast day. The brilliant copy and images are mouthwatering and inspiring. Again, the focus is on something you can make WITH Lurpak instead of some obscure promise what Lurpak does for you. Improve your Saturday, enjoy a wonderful breakfast, add Lurpak. Brilliant.

I believe this resonates with many people in general (breakfast people like my wife or non-breakfast people like me) and Britain’s situation in particular.

It is hardly a coincidence that this piece appeared in today’s Times. Camilla Cavendish makes observations about the British and food that could very well be in the brief for the Lurpak campaign:

Most of us are confused. […] We balk at paying for raw ingredients, but readily cough up for extortionate ready meals. We spend hours watching TV chefs but apparently only 13 minutes on average making a meal – down from one hour in 1980.

and the last paragraph, where she recalls Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, drawing the contrast

between Britain’s “pornographic” onslaught of recipes and TV chefs, and the “act of true love” that he believes is making food from traditional, local ingredients.

Imagine that commercial.

Osama loves..

August 13, 2008 by Jonathan

While Austria is preparing itself for yet another election filled with xenophobic campaigning, I stumble across this at Mark Earls‘ Herd Blog:

Osama loves
Channel 4 does a little online/interactive/online campaign that tries to give people a differentiated look at Islam and muslims. The idea itself is simple: they are looking for 500 Osamas around the world to tell who they are, what they do and what they like.

Osama from Indonesia loves Mangas. Osama from Nigeria loves Playstation. And I share my interest in Astronomy with Osama the Imam from the UK. Who knew?

This is great. It involves people. Makes them do something. As Mark points out it is a textbook sample for a modern campaign. But more important, this campaign lets muslims portray themselves, instead of being portrayed by hatemongers on soapboxes.

Austria could use some similar campaign these days. We need more human faces and the realization that we have more in common than what separates us in to break through the label of „non-integration-willing foreigners“ (bad translation of a bad term) and whatever that may suggest. But that would be an entirely different post.

They still need around 400, so if your name is Osama, or you know an Osama, join in.

A look back: XBox

Mai 14, 2008 by Jonathan

This is a presentation I did at school back in 2003 at the University of Oklahoma. It is outdated but I still believe it is a great example of how to build up an argument for a strategic decision.

I have to stress that we made this before the Playstation „Mountain“ commercial that won the Cannes Grand Prix 2004. „Mountain“ actually could have been based on this presentation, except here the technical potential would have been stressed.

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Fast Strategy Event

April 29, 2008 by Jonathan

Did something interesting in my lunch break today. I teamed up with the Planning4Good AllStars who were competing at IPA’s FAST Strategy event today.

Ok, explanations first: Planning for Good is essentially a club of Account Planners all over the world that tackle strategic problems for good causes and non-profits. Members include Gareth Kay, Planning Director of Modernista!, Aki Spicer of Fallon, Mark Earls (author of Herd) and many more notable names from the Plannersphere.

Anyways, Mark Earls was team leader of the Planning4Good AllStars (him, Jon Leach, Chris Forrest (The Nursery) and Ian Tait (Poke & crackunit)) to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars, one of three teams competing in the three hour battle for the title Fastest Strategist.

Mark additionally called – through the power of the Internet! – the combined brain power of Planning for Good people who could spare the time. So my lunch break was 30 minutes of furious typing, reading and searching at once, trying bring in as much thinking, ideas as possible. The Brief was about creating a strategy for a dog owner’s registry in the UK.

What I learned today (apart from „30 minutes is not much time“) for doing strategy in a team online and fast:

kick off fast, don’t wait for suggestions, have influencers just throw starters
keep the team updated of what you are doing, ask questions constantly
choose the platform wisely. wetpaint is good for a wiki, but maybe twitter would have been better for this fast event. Communication felt slow both ways.
give directions once you feel where you are heading, this will organize the herd instead of dispersing the effort.

Mark Earls posted that they just made second place. Bugger. Still was fun.I hope I can see the presentation they gave.

Apropos, presentations. In my Vodpod there is a splendid presentation Mark Earls gave at the ARF conference in New York (via Gareth Kay). He talks about Word of Mouth, decision making in our connected lives and how to best influence those processes. Intriguing stuff. I think I will get his book.

Account Planning Tools Workshop Day 2:

April 20, 2008 by Jonathan

This was good. I have not seen a planning process in a team like this in action. I had exchanged mails with George prior to the workshop and he had mentioned that this was rather about „strategy being about ideas that are stimulated and confirmed by research rather than strategy being something that emerges from research“. I get what he meant with stimulation.
It really was about laying out as many potential routes as possible before deciding where to go. Getting ideas for brand values, ideas for consumer values, ideas for consumer insights, ideas for propositions and spot the route through that multitude that hums best. The hardest part about the process is probably turning off your filter that keeps trying to cut away things.

I believe this can be exciting with smaller clients and companies to produce a useful platform for communication in a day or two. It takes an experienced planner to facilitate the process, keep it running and spot the nuggets. And trigger lateral thinking.

Another nice aspect of the seminar was meeting some of the few Account Planners in Austria. I can now safely assume that there are no more than 20 people that have Account Planner or Strategic Planner as their job title. And all sit in the network agencies lik TBWA, DraftFCB, Ogilvy, BBDO et.al. or work as independent consultants.
The bad news of this: the job situation is pretty dim. The good news: there is potential for Account Planning here and especially for the agencies who embrace it.

Workshop Account Planning Tools – Day 1

April 18, 2008 by Jonathan

First day of the Account Planning Tools Workshop with George Shepherd in Vienna. The few times an opportunity for training comes up in Austria, I have to be there. Even if I pay the whole thing myself.
George, who worked with Y&R, the Leigh Agency and Red Spider, is introducing us to his Account Planning Toolkit, a blueprint and set of templates for a planning process. A lot of hands on work in groups, with a lot of brainstorming and thinking. With his templates I found you can move the results to promising routes without limiting the broadness of ideas. So far, I find this especially useful for teams that have to bring up results in a very short time.
I assume that whole thing works a whole lot better in the real world compared to five advertising people in a hotel lounge, when the client is involved and the agency has done the homework.

The LeMeridien is pretty chic, the room with the name „Eternal Black“ not as dark as it’s name. Just the typical hotel conference room. No photos, yet. Hopefully, I will get around to post some tomorrow.

Account Planning in Austria: I am Number one.

April 3, 2008 by Jonathan

I still can’t tell whether this is a good or a bad thing.

So I want to search for account planners in Austria, maybe find agencies that have planners and planning departments. What to do? Start up the Google engine and type in „account planning österreich“ and here is the result in unretouched screenshot glory:

And ranked at five: me. The link actually goes to a report I wrote for university about my exchange year at the University of Oklahoma (where I had my first real exposure to account planning).

So the first Google results for „Account Planning“ bring up an Account Planning Workshop in April (for which I have signed up already) and then me, some guy who tries to keep in touch with Account Planning in his free time. What does this say about the state of Planning in Austria?

I mean, face it, the largest non-network agency Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann calls Red Spider for planning duties when clients request it. And the general quality of advertising … oh well, let’s not get into this.

But there is a handful of planners in Austria. FCB, TBWA and other network agencies have planners. One sent in a reply to Heather LeFevre’s Account Planner Survey 2007, there is one Austrian in the Plannersphere (but he works in Hungary), none found at LinkedIn, one at Xing (German equivalent to LinkedIn). I haven’t checked StudiVZ yet, but it can’t get much better.

* The search results are bound to change: I will add some posts about planning things I did in the last half year or so in order to fortify my spot at the forefront of Austrian Planning.

APSotW Winning entry: Me. Yay!

März 26, 2008 by Jonathan

This week started with a pleasant surprise:
Rob Campbell posted Paul Colman’s reviews on the presentations for the assignment on Extra gum. After short disappointment because I wasn’t able to identify my presentation from the feedback (see whole story here) it turns out the winning presentation is my entry.



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To sum this up in short: Extra is the everything else gum of Wrigley’s. The brand is spread out to appeal to everybody, and also the vehicle for new products. My recommendation was to define Extra by leaving innovation to a new brand, and putting focus on Extra as functional gum that aids concentration, focus etc.

Personally, I knew that this would taken two more slides, but ten was the limit. I REALLY would love to see Assignment „I“: „Mental Hygiene“ is perfect, sums up my positioning thoughts much better. In fact, I would love to see all the other presentations. It was always great to see where all the other minds went.
BIG Thanks to Paul and Rob for taking the time to a look at the work.

But, alas, back to work. The new assignment is up already online.

Hm, I can’t help it, but I still have a suspicion that there has been an error and Paul Colman will ask me to return my price.

APSotW Assignment Feedback

September 23, 2007 by Jonathan

Gareth Kay, planning director at Modernista!, posted his feedback on the last assignment of the Account Planning School of the Web. There were 6 entries discussing Mr. Clean and Gareth has taken the time give useful critique to all. Brett and Hayley were named winners.

Here is my entry:


  
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And here is Gareth’s feedback:

Visually I think this is the best presentation and kept my interest levels up – good way of showing competitive clutter, etc. I like the implicit call for brand humility. But here I had a real problem in understanding your recommendation – I see the issues you raise but don’t get a sense of what the recommendation is. What are the things you would recommend the brand to do? Just saying make better product is not the answer. Some seeds here, but I would have loved to have seen the flower.

Yeah, when I put the finishing touches I pretty much knew this was not complete. I guess it is a limit of the format: 10 slides without any written coming with it. You just can not add everything that swings between the lines.

The recommendation really is that Mr. Clean should try become part of the process of cleaning. Right now, people spend more time with brooms, buckets, cleaning cloth than any cleaning detergent. The P&G Swiffers of the world come with those special brooms, while Mr. Clean just handed out a license to a broommaker in the US to produce Mr. Clean branded cleaning utensils. So you see what caught my attention.

I figured that a „New Formular!“ would not really help. But a brand that would start saying „We work to improve cleaning!“ and does everything to relieve us of the nuissance would have impact. Instead of that magical thing out of the bottle that never cleans like on TV, Mr. Clean should become a strong, physical support. Does that make sense?

Thanks very much to Gareth for taking the time.