Planners did not even exist when advertising first started
In the Mad Men era, planners don't exist. Don Draper is the planner, but the head of creative, and he finds ways to tell people stories about products so they will buy it. There's no such thing as the consumer insight, but only what they think its right. I remember there's this episode where there's a researcher who talks about testing the ideas before they run, but Don derisively says how can you know if an idea is good unless you run it?
The more I think about it, the more I feel like something's not right. The left brain and the right brain are, like doors of a cabinet, separate entities.
So planners gets first dibs on the client's brief. We look at the data, we understand the brand, the category and the consumer. We then do up another brief for the creatives but this time round, it's the 'right' one. At least it should offer them a direction to go with, a proposition, but just stopping short of the big idea.
The creatives then take it and based on that single piece of paper, start to think about creative manners to get people's attention about what we want to say (in this case, it should by right be about being relevant to the consumer's life). Among the creatives you will have the copywriters, and the art guys. They are like partners. But if you look at what they do, art guys can draw. They can make things pretty. They are the crafters. Copywriters, on the other hand, are supposed to write. They are like journalists or authors of books, and they are suppose to engage people with the writing. But in advertising, most times the copy is kept to 1 headline, a slogan or at most 2 paragraphs of text. There's not a lot you can write about.
Then you take the copywriter who has nothing to write, the art person who is a whizz at Illustrator and likes ideas in the craft or visuals, and ask them to find the big idea, after taking out the exploratory phase of the brief which planners do. And planners then hope and pray that the creative guys will get it right, and then they can put everything back into a deck and post-rationalize it if they have to to come up with the insight/proposition.
Something smells funny in that.
It will seem alright if we had more permanent clients/jobs where we become subject matter experts. So much so that the work becomes quite efficient. But in our case, we are doing pitch after pitch with barely time to breathe in between so we end up chasing our tails on everything under the sun. And the counter argument with having subject matter experts is that we end up doing and saying the same things.
So to make things efficient, in my head what would work would be that the insight, proposition and big idea should all be everyone's process. We should all be strategic creatives, or creative strategists. Take the crafters and writers out if necessary. Keep the thinkers. So when we receive the client's brief, we will all look into it - and get back together for a discussion on which direction is the best, and which big idea could be derived from it. Then the art guys (they could just be the execution people) will draw it, and the writer will fill in the lines, while the planner puts everything together.
To me that is more efficient than playing the Pass The Message game continuously which has more chances of communications being lost in translation from client to suit (who might also be strategic and/or creative) to planner to creative and back the way arounds.
"A new idea is something they don’t know yet, so of course it’s not going to show up as an option." - Don Draper
The more I think about it, the more I feel like something's not right. The left brain and the right brain are, like doors of a cabinet, separate entities.
So planners gets first dibs on the client's brief. We look at the data, we understand the brand, the category and the consumer. We then do up another brief for the creatives but this time round, it's the 'right' one. At least it should offer them a direction to go with, a proposition, but just stopping short of the big idea.
The creatives then take it and based on that single piece of paper, start to think about creative manners to get people's attention about what we want to say (in this case, it should by right be about being relevant to the consumer's life). Among the creatives you will have the copywriters, and the art guys. They are like partners. But if you look at what they do, art guys can draw. They can make things pretty. They are the crafters. Copywriters, on the other hand, are supposed to write. They are like journalists or authors of books, and they are suppose to engage people with the writing. But in advertising, most times the copy is kept to 1 headline, a slogan or at most 2 paragraphs of text. There's not a lot you can write about.
Then you take the copywriter who has nothing to write, the art person who is a whizz at Illustrator and likes ideas in the craft or visuals, and ask them to find the big idea, after taking out the exploratory phase of the brief which planners do. And planners then hope and pray that the creative guys will get it right, and then they can put everything back into a deck and post-rationalize it if they have to to come up with the insight/proposition.
Something smells funny in that.
It will seem alright if we had more permanent clients/jobs where we become subject matter experts. So much so that the work becomes quite efficient. But in our case, we are doing pitch after pitch with barely time to breathe in between so we end up chasing our tails on everything under the sun. And the counter argument with having subject matter experts is that we end up doing and saying the same things.
So to make things efficient, in my head what would work would be that the insight, proposition and big idea should all be everyone's process. We should all be strategic creatives, or creative strategists. Take the crafters and writers out if necessary. Keep the thinkers. So when we receive the client's brief, we will all look into it - and get back together for a discussion on which direction is the best, and which big idea could be derived from it. Then the art guys (they could just be the execution people) will draw it, and the writer will fill in the lines, while the planner puts everything together.
To me that is more efficient than playing the Pass The Message game continuously which has more chances of communications being lost in translation from client to suit (who might also be strategic and/or creative) to planner to creative and back the way arounds.
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