planners as show runners

I have this work practise of writing in notebooks, and then, when I've finished the notebook, scanning and archiving all the good ideas. It's not as onerous as it sounds. I don't have that many good ideas.

I had a bit of a backlog and in going through them I found some stuff I'd intended to blog while I was computerless. I thought I'd stick them up, if that's OK, hope you can read my writing. Apologies for spelling mistakes etc.

Comments

[Adam Zero]

Regarding the future role of planners as producers...

I've been thinking about this too. Rather than entertainment, I think planner/producers will be ‘authoring’ learning experiences: interactive content which a consumer can use to learn more about some aspect of their own lives through a two-way relationship with a brand. This content is really an expansion and exploration of product benefits, rather than standard asp rational image-based marketing. There’s a great opportunity to leverage consumer-generated content into the learning proposition also.

I think this follows the current trend for ‘improvement TV’ such as reality shows (learning how to interact with people), make-over shows (achieve the look, bank balance, business success), quiz shows (test your knowledge via SMS), etc.

To achieve this sort of planning we'd be looking to create a series of open ended brand narratives, which have generic points of interaction along the way, and which can work across many mediums. I'm thinking of the work of Todorov and his study of conventional narratives in this respect:

1. A state of equilibrium at the outset
2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
3. A recognition that there has been a disruption
4. An attempt to repair the disruption
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium

Hmmm….

[Patrick]

Totally agree with your point about entertaining by regularly delivering new news. I call it currency: a brand has currency if people talk about it, and people will talk about it if it does things that they can get excited about. Perhaps excited isn’t the right word. I’m thinking about those unexpected, imaginative things that make you stop and think, even if that thought is just, “Ooh, that’s good”.

Hence, currency is about the way a brand behaves and can be generated as easily by, say, an interesting bit of packaging (have you seen the shoe boxes you get from TopShop?) as by a noteworthy bit of advertising. Whatever we call this thing, I think you’re right that it’s likely to be the result of a lot of little things rather than one or two big fanfares.

But I’m not so convinced it means entertaining in the Corry sense. Unless we’re talking about drama in the widest sense. Skillfully constructed drama, like Corry (come on, it wins BAFTAs, its art!), allows us as viewers to guess what might happen whilst regularly confounding those expectations by surprising us with events that we weren’t anticipating.

Whilst we’re on the subject, we might look to the soaps for some pointers for successful brand building/maintenance in other sectors. Let’s face it, at its heart Corry is a product just like any other and it has been at, or close to, the top of its market for over forty years. What has it done to remain so popular and how can we apply those principles to brands in other sectors?