Russell Davies

Account Planning School Of The Web - Second Assignment

OK. Here we go. Seconds out. Round Two. Would anyone like to play again?

I'm going to do it slightly differently this time, rather than tackle a whole strategic problem in one go we're going to focus on a particular aspect of the planning process - namely target audiences. I think this'll give everyone a chance to really think, experiment and show-off.

The task is this:

Think of a brand. It could be anything. From any geography. It could be fictional.

Now, I want you to think of a target audience for that product. It doesn't have to be the obvious audience, but it could be. Now, I want you to explain the relationship between the audience and the brand. And I want you to suggest some ways that this relationship could be extended, developed and strengthened.

That's it. I guess it's a bit like a research debrief - but you should focus on thinking and insight rather then on doing actual primary research.

Things to think about.

1. Don't assume your reader will know the brand you choose. You have to explain enough about it that we understand what's interesting about the relationship.

2. Your key job here is to be insightful and interesting about the audience and their relationship to the brand. This means bringing them to life in some way. And it means thinking beyond the obvious transactional relationship - what are the underlying motivations and ideas.

3. Make sure you finish with some recommendations - not in-depth communications plans but key thoughts about how this relationship could be improved.

4. Things to think about with an audience - how do you define them? what are they like? what do they care about? what connects them to the brand? what kind of relationship is it? how should we communicate with these people?

A good piece will be:

1. Easy and interesting to read and digest.
2. Insightful about people and their relationships to brands.
3. Focused, clear and no longer than it has to be.
4. Imaginatively and compellingly written and put together.

I'm hoping this will be fun and that it should make an interesting set of stuff to read because we'll all get to read about different brands and audiences from around the world.

Same rules as before - no more than 1,000 words. Powerpoint or Word. No more than 2MB. Everything to be with me on or before midnight on December 15th (GMT).

Does that all make sense? Seem like an interesting idea? Questions? Thoughts?

speed parenting

This made me smile. A heavily modded Honda with a baby on board sticker. That rear wing could double as a changing table.

flying to portland

Looming skies over Heathrow.

The chair lamp looked kind of sinister.

Sat in Chicago and watched CNN interviewing bloggers via webcam. Very gimmicky. They wouldn't do that with anyone else. Oh well.

10 in the bed

The latest school assembly production was the timeless classic - There Were 10 In The Bed. Arthur acquitted himself with great aplomb. We weren't quite sure what the thing round his neck was supposed to be; it's covered in letters. Apparently it's a speech bubble. Genius.

Account Planning School Of The Web - library - continued

I rather think Iain's cracked it. At least for now. I've created a Flickr group called Account Planning School of the Web Library, it's here, or you can find it by going to Flickr and searching on "account planning" and library. At the moment there's only one picture in there. But if you roll your mouse over each book you can see a little bit of info about the book and whether it's being borrowed and by who, right now. At the moment there's also links to Amazon, but once we get some reviews in there can be links to those too.

Iain's also stuck some books up there and I'm sure he'll add it any second. If anyone else is willing to lend books then add your pictures to the group.

I think anyone who's lending should state their terms for lending the book in the comments field (where they're willing to ship, how long they're willing to lend etc) but I think there should be a general principle that anyone who borrows a book should write a review. We'll create a place for those to go.

That all make sense? This might just work.

unintended features

This is my phone - a Sony Ericsson K750i - I'm a big fan of it. All the pictures here were taken with it. And it has a splendid feature which I suspect they didn't design (though maybe they did) but which is genius and falls into a general class of very important features I'd call fidgetability.

You know when you're sitting in a cafe or a bar, for some reason, people tend to have their phones out in front of them, and they fidget with them. The great thing about this phone is it's perfectly balanced, and the lens cover creates a pivot so it spins round really well - with only a minimal shove. (Observe movie below.)

I think these ludic features will be increasingly important as actual functionality standardises. (Many thanks to Richard for teaching me what ludic means.)

spinning phone movie (About 5.5MB)

I've just noticed my camera does it too. So following phone filmed by camera, here's camera filmed by phone. Maybe Sony are onto something, ipods don't spin well. Anyone else got any technology they want to spin?

second batch of homework

Here's the final set of stuff. Comments are attached to individual pieces as before. Some general thoughts:

Fairness

I think I'll try and make the next assignment more international - or at least, less focused on Englishness. The Britishness was a bit unfair on most of you.

Summarise

There was a lot of great thinking in every piece but it was often hard to find and a bit woolly. You always need to clearly summarise exactly what you're saying should be done. Ideally in a memorable, pithy way. Not only is that a good idea for communicating what you want to happen, but it forces you to interogate your idea and work out what's really good about it. Otherwise it's too easy to just do a list of quite good ideas.

Learn From Each Other

There's something good in every piece. You might learn more from reading other people's than reading your own.

Again, I really hope this helps. There'll be another assignment on December 1st. This one will be simpler, less British, but hopefully just as challenging.

Please, tell me what you think and what you've learned (if anything) in the comments.

thanks

BeansI.doc BeansJ.doc BeansK.doc BeansL.doc BeansM.doc BeansN.doc BeansO.doc BeansP.doc BeansQ.doc BeansR.ppt

first batch of homework

Here are the first set of responses with some comments from me. This has been a really interesting process, I've really puzzled over how to do this.

What I've done is anonymised everything - if anyone wants to claim any particular piece please do so in the comments. I've then read through each piece typing in comments as soon as anything occurs to me. So none of the comments are deeply considered, they're my first thoughts. I hope you'll take them in that spirit.

I've decided not to pull any punches, I want you all to like me but it seems this is only a worthwhile exercise if I actually say what I think and many of the entries could have been a lot better - though they all had something good about them.

Overall thoughts are these:

Bad

I know I said not to spend too long on it but almost everyone could have spent more time making their piece look half-way decent. I gave you a 2MB limit because I expected you to use it. Put some pictures in there. Think about design and type. Make me want to read the stuff.

Similarly, you could all have been more concise, I got lots of chatty personality (which was nice) but I'm hoping that isn't always how you share stuff with colleagues or clients. Almost everyone could have written at least half as much.

I think, if we're going to do this then the pieces you do should represent your best efforts.

There's a lot of defaulting to doing TV advertising. You should be beyond this by now.

There was a lot of good thinking that wasn't well summed up. You need to be smart but you need to give people hooks to hang your smartness on. Give them memorable distillations of your thinking.

Good

Lots of imaginative solutions. Lots of thinking both inside and outside the box.

Many of you got (what I thought) was the key opportunity in the brief - which wasn't the minimal product advantages, but was the story and personality of the founder.

You did something. You're doing extra work to try and get better that's fantastic.

Some really interesting non-traditional ideas.

Some great demonstration of old-fashioned planning rigour - which is a very good thing.

Next

Don't hate me if I've not said many nice things. I'm trying to help, being cruel to be kind.

I've added Microsoft comments to the Word and the Powerpoint. Hopefully they'll show up properly.

If you feel I've not been sufficiently fair or rigorous let me know and we'll discuss it more. But I think this whole thing will be more useful as a group exercise than just you reading my comments on your bit. Look at everyone's pieces, measure yourself against them, learn what you can, share your thoughts in the comments field below. I think that's what'll make this thing work.

I really hope this is useful for people.

The final 9 documents will follow asap. (Depends on what time Arthur gets to sleep tonight.)

I should also add how amazed I am by everyone who did this in not-their-first-language. I can't even order a drink in another language and you're all doing strategy in English.

BeansA.doc BeansB.ppt BeansC.doc BeansD.ppt BeansE.ppt BeansF.doc BeansG.doc BeansH.doc

blogging marriage

Anne is blogging again. Which I like, mostly because I love the way she writes, but partly because we find out quite a lot about each other's lives via our blogs; the stuff that gets lost in the mess of family life over the dinner table. Like I knew that Arthur won the good behaviour raffle, but I didn't know he'd burst into tears about it.

brilliant idea

Smart and simple. Hard drives that stack like lego bricks. Since people stack their hard drives and since computer people like lego and since lego's stack well. Perfect. From LaCie. And designed by Ito Morabito who famously started his career by designing fake products for real brands.