ego moment

I wrote this essay for Campaign (which is to advertising what The Grocer is to grocery). It was intended to publicise the APG awards tonight but they neglected to mention them. Oh well.

They didn't tweak it much before they put it in - but I prefer my subheads, so here's the original. Warning - only likely to be of interest to planners, and frankly, not many of them.

(It's a word document.)

Click here to download.

account planning brands advertising

Comments

[Edward Cotton]

Nicely stated and you've just created a blueprint for planning 2.0.

Like you, I believe planners are in a battle for mindshare and space.

However, In the US, the ad media always tries to get soundbites from the creative leaders of agencies and clients are becoming increasingly intrigued with the idea of working more directly with creatives. It's time for planners to get their voices heard.

However, although you believe planners are all "over the streams", many are stuck in executional hell and finding it hard to get out of the mire of the day-to-day.

Your piece serves as a rallying cry for all planners to strive to break away from this.

Their thinking and debate is much needed in an ad industry that currently now needs as much thinking as it can get.

The US APG could play a critical role as the "always on" facilitator of this discussion, rather than just showing its public face once a year at a high profile conference.

[Ess Gee]

wait a minute, planning 2.0? weren't we onto planning 3.1?

[Merry Baskin]

I agree with Ed on the rallying cry, but these days there is no more US APG, it went bust, so it is now the 4A's who now strive to herd the planning cats and good luck to them. But this piece of Russell's definitely warrants a wider audience stateside. We'll put a link on the UK APG website, but maybe the US needs to get it's own page, like the Spanish and the Argentinians? Come on, Ed, get herding!

[Ben]

I read yesterday that when The Guardian was resigned in 1988 Spike Milligan wrote to the editor and suggested that he had obviously had "one meeting too many". This is probably true of most planners, creatives, account exces and clients.

I'm glad you've mentioned that you need to know the rules before you can break them. This is very true and of course real quality and real insights will always stand out, whatever version of planning we're on to now.

I think one of the problems is that there are so many OK ideas, so many OK channels, so many OK messages, so many OK ad agencies, no-one really bothers looking that little bit harder for the really, really good ones.

"A little more bite and a little less bark" as Elvis would say.

[Rob Mortimer]

Reminds me of an ad i once saw!!