My Infographic on Generation Z Marketing

Why Do We Need Account Planning?

After reading Jon Steel's Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning as well as various articles about account planning and talking to several industry professionals about the lack of account planning departments within their agencies, I noticed there was some controversy over whether account planning was necessary or even worthwhile for that matter. Based on the knowledge I gathered, I concluded that the presence of an account planner is the only way to guarantee the consumer's needs are addressed in each step of the process.

During a focus group of account planners (which is hilarious in itself) in 1995 in which conversation surrounded the importance of practice, one New York planner, despite expectations, argued against the need for planning when he agreed that “not all non-planning agencies make bad ads. ‘there are extremely good agencies that don’t have planning that do really good work, because the people there are intuitive planners or highly respect the consumer.” I would agree that it is not an account planner but a planning mindset that is key to successful advertising. Because we cannot assume that creatives, media, or account people possess the necessary planning qualities when their strengths likely lie elsewhere, there is a need for the distinctive role to guarantee the existence of the planning mindset within the agency. A planner, by essence, is a chameleon. He is someone intuitive and agile enough to slip into any role that the moment calls for—whether it is to empathize or communicate on behalf of the consumer, client, or agency—in order to bridge all three parties together.     

The view that account planning is a fluffy title for a researcher who merely serves as a “sales tool” in client pitches originates from the perceived lack of distinction between the roles of an account planner and market researcher. Account planning “works” because unlike quantitative research, it goes beyond numbers and integrates itself into each step in the campaign creation process. Although a useful tool for gaining footing and exploring the mere scope of a topic, quantities research is rather limited in its storytelling capabilities. Furthermore, it is easily subject to bias in its inability to translate to natural environments . Account planning’s role is to ensure that a message resonates with a consumer on a personal level, so that moment of is valued and stands out against the thousands of other ads the consumer is conditioned to ignore each day. To beat the odds in this way, a planner must uncover a truth so deep at the core of the consumer’s relationship with the product/brand, that the consumer himself only realizes it when he served the message . A personal connection between the consumer and brand is more than a mere “sales tool” and is hardly possible to uncover through simple quantitative measures.

The process by which planner fulfills his role is “an approach, rather than a ‘system’ to be identically applied across all accounts. Assessing each account on its own and determining which methods will be most useful in uncovering consumer insights. Focus groups and interviews are standard examples of qualitative research methods, but there remains much variety in ethnographic and experimental research as well.Although it is unlikely that the methods used to drill insights from consumers’ perceptions will be uniform across accounts, it is often that the insights from one method will lead the pursuit into another until a conclusion is met. Chris Kocek, author of The Practical Pocket Guide to Account Planning, explains that the insights run on a constant feedback loop, where new information is presenting new research opportunities. It is essential that an account planner know when he has hit the “sweet spot” and is able to end the loop. This, like all processes in the planning mindset, is highly reliant on intuitive capabilities--capabilities you can only guarantee with an account planner on board.

Key Takeaways from YMS 2014 Conference, Pt. 1

Voxburner's Youth Marketing Strategy 2014 Conference in New York, New York was "a day of insight, expertise and discovery." I learned key Millennial insights relevant to youth marketers today from leaders from brands including Spotify, MTV, Facebook, Tumblr, Uber, and more.

If I could the sum up what I learned from the event in one word, it would be “Disruption.”

Disruption defines not only what Millennials appreciate in brands, but how they live their lives. Rather than thinking about how things are, they think about how things could be be, and are now known for their desires to shake up and mend old systems with new resources. Most dramatically, they have shaken up the conventional timeline of a person’s life. As children, it has been drilled in our heads that after we finish school, there were only three things left to do: build our careers, get married, and have children. As a result of modern technology and a shift in political ideology, Millennials have deviated from this prewritten path in order to create their own paths and discover outside goals.

The ability to simply learn a craft or subject with a simple Google search has broken down the barriers to entry in many fields—you can literally Google how to be a CEO. They have granted themselves the ability to be driven by passion, and creativity is at the cornerstone of their accomplishments. Today, creativity is a form of social currency. We are rewarded with social approval via social media platforms when sharing our creativity with others. Because of this, they see immense possibility in pursuing careers in creative fields, a move that were previous generations wrote off as unwise careers choices.

With the information and tools technology makes available, Millennials can “become older” and achieve their creative and career goals at an earlier age, a phenomenon that results in more time for play. Millennials now want an extended youth, and believe there is more to life than just working a job and making a family. They have found a way to create a life of meaning, and a life that satisfies their individual needs and wants.  With their extra time, they want to experience more in one lifetime than was ever possible for those growing up in previous generations.

This deviation from the standard life timeline is an example of how Millennials have disrupted their broader life path and goals, but disruption also runs through their lives on a day-to-day basis. They like things simple and quick, and work to create life-hacks that will save time. Several Millennial brands have succeeded by simply repurposing a familiar product or service. For example, Uber, a company that utilized the crowd-sourcing ability of mobile phones to completely disrupt the public-transportation industry.

Overall Millennials are a creative, self-expressive, resourceful adults that refuse to be stopped by the boundaries set before them.

Calling BS on Queen B

Let's face it, Beyonce's new album was not made per Beyonce's request, but rather the careful strategy and realization by her PR team that the mix of the elements including-- 1. her level of stardom and admiration, 2. the fact that consumers, particularly those in Beyonce's fan base, are increasingly demanding visual content, and 3. the element of surprise that positions her as acting in goodwill-- would without a doubt induce virality. Although I don't for a second believe this was her idea alone, I cannot help but continue to bow down to Queen B--whether that's the doing of her publicist or her own magnificence as a human being--I have no desire to know. Long live the Queen!

See Part 1 of the Beyonce's visual album, "Beyonce" below:




Updates on this post in a bit!

3D Printing Yields 3D Advertising

Among all the recent technological developments, there is one piece of seemingly archaic technology that has remained unchanged. I am talking about printers, of course. We've all been there: on the verge of completely losing our grip on sanity when the printer decides to give out, jam, or simply not follow orders minutes before a deadline. Finally, some developments are being made in the printing industry, although not necessarily in the direction we previously imagined.

3D printing, currently popular with architects and prototype designers, is a new technology that creates physical items by layering raw materials on top of each other based on a digitally design. Beginning in 2013, this innovation will revolutionize industries including manufacturing, retail, environmental, and health among many others.

Once 3D printers move from the hands of manufacturers and designers to the those of every individual household, many market changes will ensue. Soon, consumers need only to download a set of data to their computers in order to own any customizable object of their liking. Once consumers purchase the codes, they will be able to print the items on their personal 3D printer and interact with the products in their home that very day. Retailers may no longer need to sell physical products at all, but only their data codes.

The advertising industry is likely one of the first that will bear the weight of the change this advent will bring, so it is important that we prepare in advance for the coming shift. Here are some of my predictions on the impact 3D printing will have on the ad industry:

1. Since online shopping is likely to become even more prevalent as this invention popularizes, digital advertising will, as predicted, become increasingly important. Luckily, this prediction has been foreseen and the industry is well on its way to optimizing for the digital world.

2. Opportunities for promotional giveaways will increase and advertisers will be able to give away not only free access codes for branded items but for the products they are promoting as well. This greatly reduces economies of scale and eliminates wasteful practices of bulk purchases.

3. Not only will video production be completely revolutionized with the ability to easily create model sets and items, but the capabilities in user experience will grow as well. Google does a great job employing 3D printing to enhance user experience in the "Uncover Your World" campaign. Below is a YouTube video which sheds light on the behind-the-scenes process of creating the ads.

ADHD Generation

Millennials are constantly criticized by the older generations for their perceived short attention spans, poor social skills, general apathy, and other undesirable characteristics. Although the critics usually acknowledge that these perceived traits are the byproducts of an increasingly technological society, they fail to recognize that a shift in their own behaviors could make up for the observed shortcomings of this young generation.

Due to the abundant and rapid-paced decision-making processes that occur while navigating the Internet as well as its progression towards concise and digestible content, Millennials' attention spans have proven significantly shorter than older generations'. The flighty attention spans of this "ADHD generation" have caused significant issues for these young adults in their educational and work experiences. The traditional education model, in which professors assign students lengthy textbook readings, no longer aligns with students' learning styles. Students find it excruciatingly difficult to maintain focus on one source when they grow accustomed ingesting bits of information from a wide range of sources. If we want students' declining performance and focus in class to improve, professors must realize that they cannot force a model which was crafted for the minds of their generation on a group whose brains have developed under much different circumstances.

Millennials' brains are optimized for rapidly processing and integrating information from various sources at once. This doesn't mean that they are less intelligent than other generations, but rather that they require different learning tools than them. Furthermore, their high level of participation in social sharing since a young age has allowed them to overcome many social barriers experienced as a child and adolescent at a much younger age. If we change our education and working models to a style that caters to the way they think, we can unleash their full potential.

Although advertisers are not generally looked to for guidance, they can provide a great amount of insight to those working in the education and management industries. Advertisers pay close attention to changing behavioral patterns over time so they can optimize their strategies to align with these observances. If educators and company managers follow advertisers lead and create a system that optimizes for millennials' habits, this young generation may produce higher quality work than we previously thought possible.

A Thank You Note to Facebook

Facebook, which has often been compared to "Big Brother" from George Orwell's 1984, is making some solid steps towards its literary counterpart with the introduction of Facebook Home. Those who choose to use the app will be able to keep all their Facebook activity and messaging conversations open  as they switch between functions on their mobile phones. Thanks goodness we will finally be able to eradicate that awful separation anxiety we always feel when logging off of the social media platform!

Behind its mission to ease communication and sociability between its users, Facebook hopes to maintain and further extend its title as the richest hub for Big Data. If Facebook Home takes off and Apple somehow agrees to allow the app on iphones, its integration of messaging into every other cellular function will eventually eliminate the need for SMS texting completely. Moving all our conversations to the web comes with a price: our privacy, which we have already slowly given up over the past several years with the advent of social media. This integration of mobile conversations with Facebook means that marketers will finally be able to access our texts, the single digital source of information deemed untouchable.

Despite my sarcasm, I really do appreciate Facebook's continual journey towards complete integration. Not only does it allow for its users to achieve greater productivity, but it inadvertently empowers the consumer to contribute to the increasingly consumer-driven marketplace. When marketers know what each consumer spends their time doing and talking about, they know what products will best enhance our individual lives. The market is now about serving rather than selling, and that, my fellow consumers and advertising professionals, is a beautiful thing.