Russell Davies

the future of brands and planning

At the beginning of August I wrote this post, and promptly did nothing about it. Huge apologies. So here's my attempt to catch up and start with answering Gemma's question:

What do you think Planning will look like in ten years and how will Planners have to adapt?

Obviously most things will be the same. In any forecasting project it’s always good to start by making it clear that most things will be the same. Look at any 10 year time-span and most things are mostly the same before and after.

But here are some predictions for you, in and out of planning:

The Superbowl and Coronation Street will still be on and they’ll still be punctuated by ads. Most of those ads will still be no good. But slightly more of them will be good than now.

Seth Godin will be publishing books on an hourly basis.

Traditional quantitative research agencies will have almost entirely disappeared (though a couple will be preserved at the National Museum of Redundant Services). The sheer amount of opinion generated by whatever the blogosphere becomes will make asking people new questions pointless. The companies who mine, analyse and package that opinion will replace old school quant and everyone will hate them as much as they hate Millward Brown now.

MRI and neural imaging will be banned for market research purposes when a petfood ad makes someone’s brain explode.

Planning departments will dump their econometricians when it’s discovered that econometrics is simply a vast con perpetrated by a cabal of disgruntled mathematicians and that statistical science is more akin to astrology than astronomy. Lots of planners sigh with relief and admit they’d never really understood statistical significance anyway.

Global warming and rising ocean levels will mean that the Cannes ad festival is relocated to Bucharest. The winning ad in 2016 is a visual joke about someone falling over that no-one remembers ever seeing before.

DDB will have created a computer model of Paul Feldwick’s brain which is issued to all their planners on a memory card which goes in their phone. They will simply wave their phone over any product or brand and a genius strategy will be SMS’d to the giant simulation of Trevor Beattie running in the creative department.

Naked Inside will be named ‘Contagion Number One’ by the Center For Disease Control in Atlanta.

As Sky/Fox/Star exceeded 100% household penetration on earth News Corp executives will announce their corporate space programme (re-using abandoned Pendolino rockets from the bankrupt Virgin Galactic). Their first move will be to target planets newly discovered around Cassiopeia and to use football as a ‘galactic battering ram’. The first game scheduled for transmission to the entire galaxy is a Carling Cup clash between Nottingham Forest and Portsmouth.

The IPA Effective Awards committee will finally admit that they can’t prove whether advertising works and attempt to prove something simpler. They’ll start with the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture.

Neil French will start his own country.

Maurice Saatchi will be made United Nations Branding Tzar. His taskforce will go through the dictionary and issue every registered brand in the world with their own word, seemingly at random. This will be the only word each brand will be allowed to use in communications. An unofficial One Word Equity Market will be established where brands secretly trade words, Marks and Spencer will desperately try and offload ‘putrid’ but will find no takers.

Planners will be banned from blogging as the amount of content they generate exceeds the world’s storage capacity.

what will marketing become?

OK, so as of this morning when I got up and remembered to look, this is the voting tally and the vote is  officially declared closed. With 'friends with benefits' the winner and the swirly/gritty one in second place. So congrats to Vandy and Ben and can you get in touch to tell me if you can/want to go to SFO for the conference, or if you have someone else deserving to pass your pass too?

meeting people is good

We had a coffee morning last week but I forgot to take any photos. So, sorry about that. Helpfully John sat in exactly the same place as last week so I can just re-use this one. Bunch of new people arrived which was excellent, though I'm ashamed to admit I can't remember everyone's name. Aggh. I must get better at that. Also this week I finally said hello Jonathan who runs the Breakfast Club, which was nice. And I met up with Dan from City of Sound and Jack and Matt of Schulze and Webb fame. All excellent people.

One of the things I've loved about blogging is the way you can bump against other online people who you imagine you'd like and you can just hang around in the same sort of space for a while until somehow you end up actually meeting. It's a bit like making friends at work, or in the playground, you're just hanging around together a lot and gradually discover that you're friends. There's no big awkward social moments.

There will be another coffee morning, Friday, 11am, The Breakfast Club. Come one come all

napoleon world tour

So. On Tuesday and Wednesday last week Neil, Jeffre, Ben and I bored a small group of Romanian ad folk senseless with endless tales of how great it is to work at The Design Conspiracy and Wieden + Kennedy. Or at least that's how it sometimes felt from the stage.

We were guests of the splendid Headvertising, and especially Bogdana, who invited me out to reprise the trip Bill and I did a couple of years ago. Her initial suggestion was a two-day Russell Davies conference which even my enormous ego baulked at, so I said how about they forget about the fee and I'll try and persuade some other people to come - because I bet people would be up for a trip to somewhere they've never been. So huge thanks to Ben, Neil and Jeffre for coming just because it seemed like fun. (And huge thanks to Bogdana and  Headvertising, and everyone, who's hospitality was generous and perfect.)

Things I learned in Romania:

If you're not sure people will believe your ad, you might want to write 'True: statement' on it. Just to reassure them.

When bloggers travel together, infinite loops quickly become possible. This is a photo of Jeffre, taking a photo of Ben, taking a photo of me.

This is the second largest building in the world.

People who organise conferences don't like it when you tell them that you'll just make up the agenda as you go along. (Early on the first day, Bogdana, pictured above, looking worried, told Ben she realised that we really didn't know what we going to do, and was rather alarmed, she'd just assumed I was joking.)

Romanian ad folk are slightly better than North American planners with spaghetti and marshmallows. And they're smart, energetic and funny.

It's hard not to be intimidated when told this is your venue.

Bucharest has some rather beautiful bits, but not in a prissy, touristy way, instead in a rather attractive, rough at the edges way that I'm not really capable of photographing.

Stencils are very fashionable in Bucharest right now.

Blogging is doing to planning what television did to variety/music-hall.

I've always thought that a planning career is very like a stand-up comedy career. You spend a couple of years getting a decent 40 minutes together (act/presentation). That means you can go on the circuit and do presentations, meetings, pitches. Then if you're good/lucky you get a few more bits and stretch it out to an hour, maybe 90 minutes, and that means you can be a consultant, doing the same old schtick to a new audience every engagement.

Television killed variety because it quickly consumed everyone's act and the jugglers and novelty seal-balancers couldn't delight a new audience every night, because everyone had already seen it on TV.  And  blogging's doing the same for planning.  You can see here that Claudinho felt he'd already heard everything I said because he'd read it on the blog. And he was probably right. But I only have so many ideas and I really like throwing them away on here. (Though I am starting to think I've not got much else to say about brands, I'd like to write about some other stuff.)

We really like going to new places. So, if anyone out there, somewhere off the usual beaten advertising track, would like some of us to turn up and talk for a couple of days, we'd love to do so. Me and three or four like-minded folks. You'd have to cover travel and hotel and stuff but we wouldn't ask for a fee. If anyone's interested, drop me a line. (But please bear in mind, this is not a way for you to get cheap speakers at your conference, the idea is to get something to happen that wouldn't happen otherwise.)

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bonfire of the nuance

I got a text yesterday from Neil, inviting me to his Bonfire Of The Brands burning. I thought I'd go because I think his project's rather interesting. It's not just the standard anti-brand polemic, it seems like he's trying to do something slightly more nuanced. In fact I wrote a little piece for his book because it seemed such an interesting thing. (And because I'm a complete egomaniac who'll do anything like that, if people ask.)

Then, late this afternoon, Neil called and asked if I'd go on BBC News 24 to take part in a debate about the whole thing. They had some marketing person on and they wanted me to present the 'other' point of view. (Because as you know, in a news debate, there can only be two points of view 'A' and 'Not A'). And, though wary, because I hate the artificial polarisation of news debates, I said I'd do it. And then I talked to the researcher guy from the BBC and you could tell that Neil's PR person had basically said - get this guy on because he used to work for Nike and now he'll slag brands off and that's just what you want. I could just imagine the big Trisha-style super they'd put up - I Used To Work For Nike, But Now I Hate All Brands. So I said I wasn't going to do it. I'd try and put some more nuanced argument over and I'd just get forced into being polemical. I maybe wouldn't mind that myself, but they'd big up the Nike thing so much and it'd be unfair on them. I love the BBC, but I hate the way BBC news always do that.

So then I went to the thing, down at Finsbury Square and Neil's opening oration followed the same simplistic line; brands are a con etc and it all made me begin to wonder if Neil's not falling prey to exactly the forces he's protesting against.

I bet his publishers are starting to think they've got another No Logo on their hands and they're selling Neil to news outlets as exactly that - the latest rabble-rouser, the latest source of cheap news in the Business Pages. That'll create some publicity, stir up some WOM, get decent placement in the bookshops, guarantee sales. And what's that they're doing? Marketing. And what are they building? They're creating A Brand. All the simplifaction, obfuscation, hype and bluster he's having a go at, right there in the marketing of his own brand.

Is that irony? I'm still not sure.

I still bet the book is more thoughtful than this hypey ranting and dumb PR. He trikes me as a smart and decent man. But maybe it won't be. Maybe my little piece will look rather stupid in context. Ah well. It's only brands, they're not important.

not innocent

We were down at the South Bank yesterday and happened across this   Helter Skelter. Good idea a Helter Skelter, we're big fans of them. Ooh, I thought innocent finally has some competent competition.

But then I noticed this laminated exit sign and I realised that feel good just don't get it like innocent do. Innocent would never just write 'exit', they pay attention to the details, they take every opportunity to be who they are and to maybe make you smile. They realise that a brand isn't just a big idea, it's hundreds and hundreds of little ideas, including an idea for a better exit sign.

Plus Innocent's drinks are nicer.

elvish surprise

Arthur and I have been big fans of the original Lego Star Wars game for a quite a while, it's the only computer game either of us have ever really played. We've been playing it on my Mac. Then recently we got very excited because we saw a bunch of ads for the new Lego Star Wars Original Trilogy and went out to get that too. But you can't seem to get it for the Mac. So I raised the idea of getting a PlayStation.

We've always resisted before, partly out of middle-class guilt and snobbishness, partly because I was worried it would start to burn up my time and displace some less essential activity (like  sleeping) and partly because he'd never really asked that deeply. But we'd always assumed we'd relent sometime, if nothing else because it seems like familiarity with a joypad is a requirement for basic cultural literacy.

Anyway, in the typical parental way I tried to defer the moment a bit (to give the impression that you can't always get something just because you've decided to want it) and said maybe Arthur could have PlayStation and game for Christmas. He wasn't happy about that but he did OK with it.

But then Anne really surprised me. And I really love that after 20 years together she's still, in many ways, completely unpredictable. She said that she didn't want to get Arthur a PlayStation for Christmas, if we were going to get one we should get it now. I imagined it would be a reason to do with not spoiling Christmas day etc with us all gathered around a machine. Or to do with avoiding a Christmas day hyped up with technological maleness. Or something.

But really it was because Anne doesn't think Santa's elves are capable of making games machines and sophisticated electronics. Anne's image of elves doesn't tie in with computing and consumer electronics and she thinks that getting presents like that from Santa diminishes the myth. I suggested that maybe she was guilty of the worst form of stereotyping, her prejudice consigning elves to being locked in a craft economy, never creating a strong, wealthy, educated middle-class and never being able to overthrow their tyrannical oppressor but I think she probably has a point.

Anyway. We now have a PlayStation and our lives will never be the same. In a small way.

naughty bus

We bought Naughty Bus yesterday, and it's the best kids book I've seen for ages. A charmingly odd story, very modern, exciting use of photography and photoshop. Plus they do all sorts of stuff with the type that makes Arthur much keener to actually do reading. Which is fantastic. I suspect you graphic designers will love it. (Either that or tell me what unsophisticated design taste I have.)

after my own heart

Just the fact that the Condiment Packet Museum exists makes me glad to be alive. The fact that it's so nicely put together is the cherry on the glad-to-be-alive cake. (thanks to Jonathan)