RedScout's Spur - Imaginative Solution Providers

The aspiration for planners should be "did I create a new reality and will people look at the world in a different way?"

Advertisers need to discriminate because you can't appeal to everyone. Planning is moving from the voice of the consumer to someone who adds imagination, creativity and a solution to a brand or communication problem.

Redscout presents Spur — Episode 3: Are planners glorified researchers? from Redscout on Vimeo.

Interactive Planning

I attended Planningness last week and want to share some of the great ideas that came out of it. Thanks for a wonderful event Mark.

The best part was the thought provoking and interactive sessions. We had the opportunity to listen to wonderful speakers and then get creative.

One of my favorite videos that came out of one session is the one below, the Failure Awards. In work and life we are intimidated to do the unexpected because of risk of failure. Well what if we celebrated failure as a required part of the journey on the road to success? What if we were open about failure and offered to learn from one another's mistakes? It is a novel concept and one seriously worth considering.

The event was filled with insightful people and there were somegreat discussions; here are all the videos of the presentations and the decks that were presented.

Eric Ryan - Method

Great speech from the Account Planners conference this year down in San Diego. His company produces house hold products, but he approached the market from a new angle. Method products are certainly design savvy; they're meant to function well and be aesthetically pleasing. His cleaners are about living healthier, something not normal grocery store cleaners don't care much about. On the most simple level, he's moved in on large companies by eating the market share of players who don't innovate. It's a great case study for doing market research and innovating.

http://www.aaaa.org/EWEB/upload/webcasts/ap_07/ryan.html

AAAA 2007

I've been at the Planners Conference in San Diego for the past 3 days and had the opportunity to listen to some interesting and smart people. The goal was to share ideas and become a better account planner.

The seminar kicked off with a speech by Sir Ken Robinson, an enthusiastic and funny, motivational speaker. His expertise is revolutionizing the way we educate and he spoke quite eloquently about unlocking creativity. He is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. He mentioned case studies like the branding of tap water to fundraise and made comments like "it's not how intelligent you are, but rather how you are intelligent." His ending quote was "our problem isn't that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim to low and succeed."

Adam Morgan of Eatbigfish spoke about realizing opportunities and being innovative. He offered inspirational advice like Kissing the Shadow - creating an opportunity from a disadvantage, and others like being Gorilla Blind, and how to beat the Duncker Cradle Task. He expressed the tremendous value he sees in looking at micro targets to determine future needs, like for example designing products for the mainstream by looking at products needed by the disabled.

Brandon Geary of Avenue Q Razorfish spoke about how we can use web 2.0 to observing better and capitalize on consumer information that is posted on sites like Flickr, Wefeelfine and others who are the 'online entrenched.' He talked about aspirational profiling and searching out pent-up demand.

Scott Lucas of Dosage talked about why people become engaged and what to do to engage them. He referenced the "7-up" documentary and focused on the characteristics that engage, like: Scandal, coopertive communities, rituals and listed about 32 different ways people become engaged.

Ed Cotton & Aki Spicer spoke passionately about Blogging, why it's so important and how to do it successfully. They expressed the importance of using blogs to"harvesting our collective intelligence" and "helping keep us curious." It was inspirational because they showed the essence of being a planner requires soaking information in, sharing information with others in an effort to engage other and figure things out.