We were lucky enough to have a very senior and highly respected planner from the WPP Group come in to the office today. He talked to the agency on a wide range of issues including the fundamentals of communication, effective presentations, new business pitching, planning and creativity.
This individual has had a stellar career working for leading advertising agencies in the US, London and Europe. He is now based in Australia.
Planners, as I understand it, act as a point person between the client and the creatives – they facilitate the process which seeks to identify the connections between people and culture and brands They unearth insights that form the basis of really effective campaigns, concepts and messages. These insights are based on facts (i.e. research) and emotion, as our speaker explained. The insight should be able to be expressed, very simply.
The need to get to the nub of a communications challenge and to capture the essence of the connection between people and brands or products is something that all marketers should remember at a time when fragmentation, immediacy, multi-media, interactivity, technology and globalisation are grabbing the headlines and commanding mind-share in our industry.
The ability to see the woods for the trees and present knowledge or an idea in a way that is compelling and actionable is what clients pay for at the end of the day, as is the ability to make connections.
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I think it’s very easy to say that you need to boil down marketing and get it to the core. That’s very hard to do, and takes not only an intimate knowledge of the product and it’s benefits, but also it’s customers and how they will use it.
Paul Weiss
blogs.vbpoutsourcing.com
Agreed. It is an easy thing to say. I didn’t say it was an easy thing to do but the most talented people make it seem very easy – often the insights are staring us in the face but we can’t see the woods for the trees. Put another way, I suppose I would say: avoid the temptation to over-complicate.