PSFK & Redscout’s SPUR interviewed some top-notch planers and asked them what they think the future of planning will be. As they interviewed some very smart people it is not very surprising that they came-up with some very interesting thoughts and observations. Speaking of observations Robin Hafitz and Dan Cherry are hitting the nail on the head (starting at 0:45 minutes and 02:42).
Dan Cherry also says that “Clients will increasingly actually be in competition with agencies”. Well I think some clients will try to solve business problems on their own as they think – and quit often they are right – that agencies are not capable to provide an appropriate solution as most of them are still to focused on pushing out consistent messages via paid mass media.
The hole series of interviews deals with the reinvention / evolution of planning which at the end can only be achieved if the overall business model of agencies gets reinvented.
The ten webtrends for 2010 according to Pete Cashmore - nice name by the way ;-).
Some of them have already been the trends for 2009 so lets wait and see wat happens in 2010.
A hilarious and very precise analysis on how people embed technology into their daily life by the comedian Louise C. K.
Yes, people take technology for granted and we all tend to forget that a couple of years ago all these things have not been available.
Technology changes behavior and also increases people’s expectations regarding products and services. That’s not very surprising.
The interesting thing about all this is how Louise (or any other good comedian) is analyzing people and society, than extracts an insight that their audience can relate to and puts it into a tangible and relevant context….
Do you notice something?
This is basically everything a good planner should be able to do. So instead of hiring a planner why not go for a comedian?
An interesting Adage article about the quality of client briefs with - as expected - shocking results.
More than half (54%) of respondents said fewer than 40% of client briefs give them clear indication of what’s expected from their agencies. Of that number, 30% said only 1% to 10% of briefs provide clear performance expectations.
The agencies responded that clients are best when it comes to identifying budget parameters and communicating the desired image and brand positioning.
Client briefs were ranked poorest when it came to providing competitive information and describing how a client’s offering ranked in the competitive landscape.
Another issue that has been addressed is that a lot of people on the client’s side are involved and that those decision makers define different priorities and targets. As a result the brief gets revised a lot of times over the course of a project.
They said ideally fewer than three client decision makers should provide an agency with direction during the course of a project, compared with a current average of more than five.
What makes the whole thing even worse is that the briefing gets handed over to many different disciplines/ specialized agencies (media, online ATL, etc.) and they all start to interpret the briefing according to their needs and then define a strategy and write a creative brief - Well shit in, shit out.
The reason for this is not that all clients are morons it’s because they have never been trained on how to write a brief - so they simply copy and past an old one – plus companies’ organizational structures created many silos and people only care about their own area of responsibility and not about the broader context.
But many agencies are still structured in the same way which makes things even worse.
Just discovered this fantastic presentation form Helgevia Faris’ blog.
Beside the fact that the presentation is definitely too long for most peoples’ attention span it is absolutely great as it covers a lot of aspects of marketing in the context of technology, society and culture.