Russell Davies

blogging from the account planning conference

Thus far I've only found these two other bloggers from the conference. Don't disagree with anything they're saying so far. Going to be very tremulous about what they say about my bit.

Gareth and Brand New is here.

Ritter and Chillout Lounge is here.

damn

I missed Bob Greenberg of RGA, which is a huge shame, because everyone says he was good.

Planning Neutral Planning

Not really sure what Planning Neutral Planning means and Julie Liss and Steve Zaroff admit that they don't either. But they're gamely trying to talk about it.

They've just made a really good case that Karl Rove should be considered 'planner of the year' (if there was such a thing) because of his management of the Republican brand and re-election of Bush. A very good point. He used unexpected media channels, he won the contextual high ground - the election was fought on his agenda, he made great use of research etc etc.

Good point, well made. You can despise his politics but you've got to admit he seems to be a master of the communication arts.

And, a chink of light, they're suggesting that we don't get always have to rely on a big 'insight'. And, they almost said that we don't always have to say, one big, simple thing. Sometimes you can do lots of little ideas rather than one big one. Hurrah. Maybe I'm not going to be such a disaster on Wednesday.

The Changing Landscape

Rick Boyko is leading a panel of people saying fairly obvious things in a really badly miked-up way.

I feel kinda sorry for them because they're dealing with a lot of mic popping.

Though it's hiding the fact that they're not saying anything much. Maybe the mic thing is distracting them.

Apparently TV is in decline and the world is changing. (I seem to be getting over my fear of saying bad things.)

Someone from Yahoo is telling us that RSS is important. Who'd have thought it?

Someone else refered to daypop, which seems kind of interesting. Though I'm not sure why it's different/better from/than Technorati.

Apparently we have to embrace the digital age.

And now someone's quoted that stupid Ogilvy thing - 'the consumer's not an idiot, she's your wife'.

(Which is true because apparently no women work in marketing.)

A little bit bored now - found this fantastic yamaha website where you can download paper models of bikes and rare animals and stuff. But the best one is this paper version of a tool kit.

Scott Goodson is saying something reasonably interesting - talking about how creative agencies are shrinking, because they want to. Clients are building their own networks out of small companies and freelancers and stuff. This seems true, that there's going to be more collaboration, more temporary networks, more affiliation. Which creative people will probably find more rewarding. And clients will find more effective and cheaper. And as a corollarly of that, clients will take more and more of the 'brand guardianship' in house.

John Hunt from TBWA

John Hunt is talking now. Seems like a nice guy. Did quite a nice mock sermon thing, but entirely based in a very old world view of advertising - the creatives have big ideas, the account guys make them small because the client is unimaginative and the planners do lots of research.

Is it not possible that some clients are imaginative, some creatives are unoriginal and some planners don't want to do research?

Is it really true that creatives just need to be set free from the tyranny of dull clients?

Maybe once, but not anymore. Maybe a bunch of demanding clients are trying to get exciting work out of dull creatives.

That doesn't seem to be conventional wisdom among creatives but maybe they should concede it's possible and that would make them stretch themselves a bit.

large and airless

The conference is just starting. Why do conferences always happen in large, darkened, airless rooms?

I guess it's a logistics thing, but it's not conducive to listening well. Or staying awake.

Just around the corner there's Millenium Park with a fantastic open air auditorium. It'd be very cool to do this there.

Oh well.

planning by night

night-time view from the hotel

account planning is go

I'm in Chicago, the AAAA Account Planning Conference starts tomorrow.

I thought I'd try and do some serious planning blogging for a change and post some reports on all the sessions I get to. Though I probably won't be the only person doing it. Gareth is here too, and I bet there'll be others.

Though I hope everyone's good because I'm not sure I'll bring myself to say anything bad, which I know isn't really the idea, you're generally supposed to be all critical and malicious. Or at least that's the impression you get from all those technology conferences.

But I'm too chicken to do that, especially as I've got to get up there and say stuff myself at some point.

My presentation's about half done right now. But I've got until Wednesday.

Above is the view from the hotel. Kinda like a Thunderbirds set.

account planning

what to think?

I just noticed that the splendid people at psfk have linked to one of my posts on their IF thingy. So I clicked on the trackback doodah to go and see what they'd written about it and found that I couldn't do it without a subscription.

Which made me feel kinda hmmm.

I'm not sure why exactly. I guess it's that I can't see what they've written about something I wrote without paying them some money. Is that very petty? Of course, I based my thing on a Guardian article (though I did a bit of extra research and thinking) and I used a picture from there so maybe I'm doing exactly the same thing, but then I'm not making any money out of this, and they can see what I've done for free.

I was thinking of subscribing to IF, but now I'm slightly less inclined.

Am I just being an arse?

for all you arthur fans

Clearing out my Homestead site, which is soon to be abandoned in favour of Flickr. I found this picture of Arthur from about three years ago. Sorry, but it made me go aah. It's probably all the being away from home. I'm getting soppy.

There'll be some actual planning thoughts tomorrow. Promise.