Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Check out these photographic records of the heroines of the burgeoning women’s movement on indicommons.

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Do you know bestiario.org? If you don’t you should check it out now. Bestario features the latest in visualization techniques, displaying boring data in mind-boggling arrangements

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Last weekend some strategy and long-term digital agency career friends (Dirk Reinhardt, Shailia Stephens-Würsig, Björn Sternsdorf, Gerald Hensel and Angela Becker) and I held a seminar at our Leo Burnett offices on digital planning for traditional planners.

To be honest, we were a bit sneaky. To most of us, there ain’t no such thing as “digital” strategy. Or can you tell me what “analog” strategy is?

Fact is, there is so much confusion and mystery regarding the term “digital”, even to supposedly “channel-agnostic/media-neutral” strategists, that it seemed like a great strategy (haha) to offer a course in “digital planning”. In doing so, we had the pleasure to work with the top 20 of Germany’s planners who don’t just hide behind the hackneyed term “channel-agnostic” for lack of their own change-ability, but rather exercised their confusion tolerance and went into the whole thing full-on. The most engaged folks I had the pleasure to work with in a while!

Hence, our aim wasn’t sneaky at all: debunk the myths around digital planning, its complexity and hopefully provide some pointers that alleviate some angst concerning new terrains in research, discovery, strategy development and shaping the creative outcome. And above all: make the segregated planning community come together.

Therefore, the day started with the statement:

“Digital” strategy doesn’t replace traditional strategy. Strategy is strategy and always was. It simply rams home the point that we need to extend strategic planning overall so it can remain relevant as a discipline that can lead brands to success by making a qualitative difference in people’s lives again.”

Techniques and tools (such as information architecture, touchpoint analysis, contact planning, purchase funnels, etc) have existed for a long time before the term “digital strategy” became the mot du jour. They   may have given us an irritatingly confusing mess of terminologies, but also a gift: we can make brands relevant again, without unsuccessfully and repeatedly pressing the “mass media onslaught” button because we’re out of ideas.

Therefore, we see digital strategy as a way to go back to the roots and deliver what strategy was always about: know what to do, not just what to say. This is the most relevant job a strategist can do in a time when people wonder if they should listen to your brand.

Therefore, we try to make digital the stuff that adds a PLUS to your strategic effectiveness versus being a completely new discipline:

Each section of the workshop then explored each PLUS with practical exercises and theory moving along the planning process from research to strategy to creative briefing and team constellations.

Result of the workshop:

At the end of the workshop, we had a discussion on whether we succeeded in offering an intergrated approach to planning, and if indeed digital (and other) planning methodologies in fact can be seen as a plus or if it isn’t really something different out there.

Here are excerpts of the discussion:

On brands:

“I think one of the biggest issues is still that brands and their clients feel that they have to be perfect. But people don’t expect you to be perfect. They want a conversation about your products. I mean, would you trust a person who disappointed you and walks away when you want to talk to them?”

“I think if brands didn’t understand the importance behind people’s digital behaviors before, flailing a dead business and brand model, the recession could end up helping in finally understanding it. There didn’t seem to be enough pressure to have to change. Maybe now marketers will understand that it’s not them that change everything, but rather the people themselves. Strategic planning needs to accompany that.”

On Technology:

“Traditional planning has been moving this way anyway, but there seem to be so many barriers still for brand planners because they think they can’t do something that in the end requires a technological solution.”

“I am so relieved the new planning isn’t about technology. On the contrary, I am happy that it is even much more about people than before. Looking at human behavior and having all this detailed insight instead of just asking people is what we should do anyway!”

“For brand planners, it is second nature to look at trends in categories. It might help to think of technology as a thing that keeps generating trends that change people’s behaviors. It is much better than getting scared about technological details. And we need to know what people do anyway. How else can we plan for anything?”

On the planning process:

“What really helped was to understood that my team just got so much bigger and what the different roles are. It helps me because I now that my brand strategy is not seperate from digital stuff and I feel there are people to talk to about my strategy and get it working everywhere else.”

“Digital always seems so overwhelming when you don’t know you don’t have to know everything. Knowing there are experts really helps.”

On taking clients into the digital space:

“I am still worried about being able to give a client security about delivering, so he moves forward into the digital space, but to be honest was I ever able to give him this security before? My client spends loads of money on TV and I can’t really say if it works anymore either.”

“In a way, tradititional planners have an advantage: they speak the brand and marketing client’s language better than some digital agency people. Using that advantage, also in terms of tradititional techiques to make them feel comfortable to try out new stuff is a big opportunity.”

“It makes sense to think in little steps and strategies instead of trying to solve for everything at once and selling the client a holistic castle in the sky. Taking the client on a journey with achievable milestones and giving them a sense of success in the space and growing from there works better.”

Conclusion:

While not all myths can be debunked in one weekend, not all issues solved, we feel we started a discourse in the right direction and everyone involved feel that this kind of collaboration can open doors to better strategy with less siloes. As workshop participant, Stephen Rothman, Head of Strategy Saatchi Frankfurt said:

I believe that as the world of marketing and communications moves forward, the work will demand that we come to the place where classic vs. digital planner will become an anachronism. Because “consumers” aren’t digital or classic. This seminar got us all started in that direction.

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Cool stuff last quarter! Remember, if you’d like to get a version just for you, please contact us to set up a review of the latest and greatest from RIGHT NOW (and not a quarter later…).

Check it out here.

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I was just made aware of the business section at Twitter, which, until now, I didn’t know existed. Looks like twitter is getting more serious in trying to promote the service as a business tool. The site lists best practices and case studies, most of which you might already know, but check it out.

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Florian Geiger found a great article by Robert Fabricant on the future rules of engagment in terms of design. For years, UCD (User-centered design) has been the staple of every experience planner, information architect and interaction designer. In the light of the current crisis, Robert asks some tough questions, pushing to innovate in the experience planning and design areas and challenges the very basics of contemporary design practice.

We have been operating under the assumption that the primary challenge is to convince businesses to focus on fulfilling user needs with higher quality products, with more meaningful experiences? But what if the ‘users’ themselves are the problem?

In his article, Robert discusses new dimensions of social value that currently are not considered in the design process. After web2.0 it would be easy to agree that this is more than necessary. I agree with him that the holy grail of experience design cannot just be a quotient of user tasks completed and pain points eliminated on the single user journey to a successful transaction. Moving from the individual to the collective brings with it a focus on joy points derived from social value. Hence, as Robert call out, we have to plan and design for scial systems from the get-go. But how?

But engaging with communities is fundamentally different. We are not merely substituting one center (the user) for another (the group). With communities, the means of engagement and influence exist across the participants not within a single person. Value is created and shared dynamically through cooperative activities that are not often apparent from the outside. They emerge from within.

Yes, and it isn’t new. Old-school discplines such as PR have understood that engaging communities is driven by an inside force. While a rational decision making process of an individual (or a single user) is usually based on only one’s own black or white processing of the experience, dealing with a community means being part of a phenomen where everyone has a different experience, even if they are at the same time and place. Hence local relevance and offering a communual benefit, even if is not black and white is always part of a social force. Grassroot movements are good example of this. He continues…

As much as we can look at the external symbols of communities (such as status and reputation) we cannot appreciate the nuance of social behavior without participating. Certainly not to the degree that is needed to support effective design solutions.

To learn more about his techniques on how to design from “the inside out”, check the rest of the article here.

This should be interesting not just to experience planners.

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Nice little video about social media.  I think it’s good for Clients because it doesn’t take sides in terms of individual versus commercial expression.  It’s all good!

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Fresh off the presses, we have uploaded a new version of TechCheck for your enjoyment here.

And just let us know if you’d like to have us put together a version just for you, including recommendations for how to apply these ideas towards your business.

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Amazing, densly conceptual and sharp thinker Prof. Kruse on collective intelligence and the future. Kind of the German Kurzweil. Unfortunately in German, but I had to share this.

submitted by Andreas Combüchen. Thanks!

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In his article Tim Richards of Razorfish explains some (not so) new paradigms on how to approach experience planning and design. It’s a pretty good description of how to approach UX in general, and I am glad he took his time to spell it out at bit, especially the seperation of roles of planners and creatives. Also, more interestingly, his approach tries to marry the oh-so-traditional, but important need to be storytelling with the more functional user experience view of just documenting the experience.

Read the whole thing here.

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