Planners chasing creatives with long tails.

The MTLB pithy filter is broken today. Had a few concepts infecting my brain that I need to purge. Maybe I can make it connect, maybe not. Let me try anyway.

In AC’s latest podcast, they responded to a listener considering staff or freelance. No matter where you are they said, do the best work you can. I agree. Just because you don’t aren’t at Crispin, W+K, etc., doesn’t mean you shouldn’t design the fuck out of whatever it is you’re working on. Great work begets more.

Paraphrasing another idea, there was a point made that there is no real difference between the large shops and small-market ones. True–if they’re good. Where I jump off though is at the point it involves being stuck in a shitty agency, big or small.

There is nothing worse. Nothing. Stuck in a place with people who could give a fuck. It’s then you see why W+K is better–is it that they just have better people, (or more of them), who care? I think so. In the ‘could-give-a-fuck’ culture, you constantly end up fighting layers of negativity just to get an idea pushed through–before it even gets to the client.

In those places, the idea of something like even planning comes down to a know-it-all AE who nixes everything because they “know what the client likes” or “we tried that last year and they hated it.” Forget even getting relevant insights or brand info ahead of time from them.

A planner though who knows their shit will explain the brand and culture of the audience so that the creative can be effective. I’m not trying to get all Jaffe Web 2.0-ish, but reading Russell Davies and how he approaches presentations, his thinking surrounding a brand is the difference between being around people who get it, who know their shit–and the ‘could-give-a-fucks.’

He has one particular take on the care and feeding of creatives which is the inverse of what I’m saying. Sometimes he says the role of a planner is to prevent average creatives from hurting themselves and messing up the idea. I feel this way about account teams: creatives are there to make sure they don’t mess things up. And in better agencies, there tends to more people who help, not inhibit the creative process.

Which leads me to a planner from O&M named Mohammed Iqbal who suggests a newer approach to engage consumers. You can download his thinking here. It picks up on the Long Tail theories started by Chris Anderson that every brand evangelist spouts. Worth reading as it breaks down the thought process behind brands having multiple messages. One main message for a brand limits you from appealing to a more diverse group of consumers by using as many relevant messages as possible.

The only problem I had with that was if I like the messaging a brand puts forth in one area, but don’t like another message they run somewhere else, does that then create a negative impression in my mind? This made me think of the Clorox spots I came across.

Now, did you get all that? Good. Explain it to me then.

Tags: Chris Anderson, Long Tail