great planners are schizo
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Great planners play many roles and require balancing different skills and perspectives. They are impartial wingmen who provide outside perspective to clients and teams. Planners must be able to work collaboratively with others while also taking time for lone creative work. They need to understand both data and stories. Balancing a broad knowledge with focusing on key insights is important. Both big picture thinking and attention to details are valued. Most of all, planners should be brave, positive and bring an outside perspective to their work.
great planners are schizo
- 1. GREAT PLANNERS ARE SCHIZO
- 2. THE WINGMAN
- 3. THE TRUTH SEEKERS The “conscience” Open to anything (vs. clients) Impartial on work (vs. creatives) Liberated from agendas (vs. account people)
- 5. GREAT PLANNERS ARE SCHIZO
- 8. INSIDE our job is to know our clients’ businesses, our teams, the process & the rules through and through
- 9. our job is to bring the oxygen. divergent thinking. perspective. OUTSIDE
- 11. CITY COUNTRY
- 12. CITY you’ll probably live in a city. cities are awesome. soon over 50% of the world’s population will live in them. cities have cultures and norms and rituals that are awesome. go cities.
- 13. a lot of people don’t live in cities. yet, they have valid cultures, rituals, perspectives and norms (protip: it’s really hard to find those in one-way- glass focus groups). being smug about “flyover states” is a stupid thing for a planner to do. COUNTRY
- 16. BEING SOMEONE’S BITCH you are in a service industry. client says jump, you say “how high?” you are on a team. if the creatives are in a crisis, you buy them cake and work with them until they have it worked out (even if you explained it to them ten times already). your account person needs unusual help with a meeting (ie making you read a script about cleaning testicles)? you do it.
- 17. the client isn’t being objective about their brand? you need to try to fix that. the creative is off-brief? you need to speak up. your account man isn’t giving you enough time to write a brief? raise the flag. BEING A BITCH
- 20. COLLABORATOR you are a creator. planning requires a creative process. but to get to a smart solution, you’ll need perspectives, opinions and pressure tests against other thinkers. drop the ego and let that happen.
- 21. you are a creator. planning requires a creative process. a creative process requires alone time, mulling, sitting with a blank page in front of you and ultimately taking on the responsibility the brief. don’t be afraid of that. LONE WOLF
- 23. NERDPOET
- 24. NERD ahhh data. it’s everywhere and no modern planning process is complete without diving into the spreadsheets and studies and databases and nerding out.
- 25. ahhh stories. the stuff of magic, the pathway to connecting with people. no modern planning process is complete without a bit of dreaming and what if’ing. POET
- 28. KNOW EVERYTHING planning requires thoroughness. you have to bring it all in - the books, the studies, the conversations, the visits into other worlds, the reports, the data.
- 29. you must, must, must be able to crystallize your thinking into simple, clear, logical flows and statements. a great planning deliverable doesn’t lay out everything you know; it only reveals the things that everyone else must know. KNOW ONE THING
- 32. LOVE BIG STORIES find the big story of the brand. know it through and through. be audacious with it.
- 33. pull that story all the way through to the tweets and the words on the back of the package. LOVE THE DETAILS
- 34. a few things no matter what...
- 35. BE BRAVE
- 36. BE POSITIVE
- 37. thank you