Final Post

Well, I return. But just for one last post...I guess I want to come full circle with this blog.

As you may have figured out, by knowing me or reading this blog, things weren't quite going my way and I felt that I needed to make some very serious changes.

For one, you read about my transition into a house as a short-term alternative for staying in the craptastic place they called an apartment complex that was my nightmare of broken air conditioners, no hot water, incompetent office staff, and asshole neighbors. Am I exaggerating? I don't really think so.

Update on the housing situation is that I lived at the house for about 6 weeks and was able to move into a very lovely apartment that I was hesitant to get attached to at first, but now I call home. I truly love my new apartment and I'm just so glad that I don't have to worry about my living situation on a daily basis anymore.

You may have guessed that this living transition came with much, much more - and you'd be right, a new job. Though I learned a lot of the basics of research and supporting my Planning team, I quickly outgrew that position because Planning is much more about strategy than it is about research. When I asked my manager for more responsibility, I was essentially denied and that's not the kind of environment that I want to be in.

In advertising, networking is everything. And a dear friend Christie that first mentored me at my very first job was able to help me out once again with an important career move. I am now settled into a great agency where I can really use my brain and my talents to move forward. I dropped the crappy Junior title that does nothing but make you feel beneath others and have moved on to kicking some ass! ;)

My new position is a great position for growing and learning about creating strategies for clients. I have already tackled so many interesting challenges and I look forward to more.

So with this huge change is an absolute life change. A second chance at living in Dallas...

Now the only problem is that I'm not a huge fan of Dallas. More than that, I'm really starting to hate it. But what that means for me now is that I will enjoy my apartment and enjoy my job until these things run their course. After that, it is adios Dallas.

I believe I know where my next move will take me, at least city-wise, but it is something that I will take my remaining time in Dallas to look forward to, prepare for, and hopefully ultimately achieve.

Thank you for reading my blog. I highly recommend my recap of the '08 Planning Conference for any of you who have landed here wanting to know more about Account Planning.

I may have another blog floating out there somewhere about my next adventure...

So long!

Too Weird NOT To Share

What A Difference

Here I am, sitting at a Corner Bakery with a pomegranate lemonade, enjoying the free WiFi internet and I am starting to look at things with new eyes.

It will still take some time to be fully satisfied, but I took a very important first step - I have finally moved out of my hell hole apartment!

WOOOHOOOOO!!!!

I cannot believe how much I went through at that place. And you know what, it was truly telling when I had cleared everything out of there (which should feel really weird) and the apartment really didn't feel any different to me. I knew then that the place meant absolutely nothing good to me and it will just be so much better for me to be out of there and not have to feel weighed down by the place that I live.

:)

I can't tell you how relaxed I am right now...

So I still have some things to worry about. For one, where I am now is somewhat temporary. I will be house sitting for a friend while she is trying to sell the house...but we'll just see how everything goes.

The fact is, this feels so much better.

On the road towards happiness and feeling more like myself again! Yay.

Not In A Long While

Wow, how I have let the time pass. For good reason though...I've been thinking about a lot, making a lot of decisions, taking a lot of time to take care of myself.

There are a lot of things that I want to add to this blog very quickly so I want to do a posting of highlights of exciting Plannerly things that I have been able to do in the past few (how long has it been since I last posted?)...months.

For one, I have moderated!! I am a master at the back-end of research - all the setting up, recruiting, and running of groups. And now I have finally conducted the research myself. My first group moderated was for new business for our Seattle office - awesome! I really didn't have time to get nervous about the actual group because I was handling all of the recruiting, coordinating, and setting up on my own. The day of the group I was a little nervous but decided to have fun with it, and I totally did! I also did three interviews that day. Afterwards I felt confident that moderating was something I could do and have a lot of fun with.

And I did! Just last week I moderated my second group. This time with college students which was a lot of fun. This was for my account...

That's right, my account. I have been very active on an account in our agency to the extent that I am really the Planner on it. Now there are a few things about it: 1) it's one of the smallest accounts in the agency, 2) it's led by me because the other planners don't want it or don't have time for it, and 3) it has not always been easy to work on this account. But I am growing and learning and I'm just trying to look at the whole thing as a great educational opportunity for me. I'm working with teams of AS and creative people, I'm talking directly to the client and have presented a few things to them (over the phone and in person), and I have to deal with conflicts and obstacles as they come up. The great thing is that I really feel like I'm getting to a place where I'm more comfortable with my team and that they're coming to me for my advice and direction because I have tried to always be there for them and prove myself.

Oh, so much going on!

And on to life outside of the office...I am finally moving out of my hell hole apartment!! Woohoooo!!! It is long past time to leave this place behind and I move out next week.

Unfortunately, things aren't completely certain right now. I have decided to move into a friend's house as she is trying to sell it and I am trying to save a little money. *I'm 90% sure right now that I will be moving into this house.* I'll help her out and she'll help me out by doing this. But this will be a short-term solution as eventually the house will sell and I will have to be on my way. But this is giving me the opportunity to really get out of a shitty situation while I look for something better.

So as you can see there are a few things on my mind. I have been working a TON and trying to coordinate everything for the move and it has not been easy. Yep, I'm stressing! But I wanted to get back to blogging to see if letting some of it out here would help.

I surely hope to have more good news about work as I just continue to learn and grow!

Hooray for posting after a really long ass time. :)

Kraak & Smaak

Heard this song on the new Rhapsody commercial where the woman dives into different bubbles and hears music...could not get it out of my head.

It's called Squeeze Me by Kraak & Smaak. Cool video too.

Darn Ike

Well, Ike is hitting Dallas now with a pretty steady stream of rain. We seem to have come through the windy phase and I'm glad - no tornadoes for me, please.

I've been following the storm for a few days now and I'm just trying to keep all of my friends in Galveston and Houston in mind. I texted a lot of people today to make sure they were okay and it seems like there's a lot of power outage but overall people are safe.

There's just one friend I haven't heard back from but I'm hoping that she has just turned off her cell phone to conserve battery power - Mary, get back to me when you can.

Another friend's parents' house got hit very badly so I'm hoping to get an update at some point. A tree fell on their house and it flooded - no good.

Apparently the rain completely missed Austin though they needed it, and I really didn't think we were going to get much of anything until it finally started raining. I'm on the west side of Dallas, though, so I imagine I'm getting a lot less of it than some.

All and all, millions of people are without electricity, thousands didn't evacuate from Galveston and are in bad shape, and I'm just trying to make sure all of my friends and family are okay.

Go away Ike!

Heebie Jeebies

Got this kind of gross feeling today at work...let's just say it involved cockroaches - ewww. Oh, and I mean for work purposes. Yeah.

Target Rocks My World

Target is awesome.

To celebrate it's awesomeness, here is a list of the types of things I bought last night. What I like about it is that all of these items came from one place!

body wash
frozen food
gum
clothes
magazine

I considered getting some wine but I might do that next time. Yessss!

American Boy

AP Conference - The End

Wow, I didn't think I would post that much from my other blog but there was just so much good stuff!

I hope that anyone reading can learn something from it, and please let me know if you have any questions about the conference, the sessions, or what I wrote.

Happy Planning!

"More Goodies" - AP Conference Posts

Here is the AAAA Flickr photostream of conference happenings:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaaaconferences/


Here is the Twitter feed from the conference (in real time).

Scroll down to the bottom to read all of the posts:
http://twitter.com/2008APConf

"Planner Wrap-up Panel" - AP Conference Post

Suzanne Powers who kicked off the conference, hosted throughout, and kept things going wrapped up the conference with a few planners in the Planner Wrap-up Panel.

Here are some of the key themes of the conference as pulled out by the panel:

• Conversations - don't plan against things that are bad (reacting), plan for things
• Doing - putting stuff out there for people to participate in, planners as producers
• We are cultural inventors and innovators, existing within a certain time
• We are storytellers that light up the marketplace, not just the agency, by making a story inspiring
• Getting people involved - interacting and dialogue
• We don't always have to have the answer, but we do have to ask the right question

I would add to that list:

• Brands need to have a point of view instead of relying on the idea that there is a unique selling point
• The digital realm is still not understood by all planners and measures need to be taken to get more involved, be organic and flexible, and use the digital world as an opportunity to get our brands talked about more
• Becoming a part of the conversation is essential in today's marketplace - help mold the conversation, help start conversations, help redirect negative conversations
• Look at the entire marketplace instead of just the world according to your category
• We must be more nimble and must act quickly, especially in the digital age
• Innovate or die

That's the end of my notes but I will be pulling in a few other sources to go over some of the other sessions I didn't get to attend. I hope you enjoyed sharing my journey to the 2008 AP Conference.

"Sidney Bosley & Rob Perkins" - AP Conference Post

The second breakout session of the day was titled "All Change: A Worm's Eye View" presented by Sidney Bosley and Rob Perkins of Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

If you're interested in Connections Planning, this is the post for you.

Bosley and Perkins presented a model for context mapping. They admitted this tool is still in development, it's a work in progress, but hopefully it's something that planners can add to their toolkit.

Instead of just creating creative, can we integrate media use that also changes behavior and gets our brands talked about? Some creatives already intuitively integrate place as part of their idea, but how can we inspire more creative media ideas?

We can't just tell them to do a tv spot or do interactive but this is where we have a gap in knowledge. Planners have developed methods for everything from research to the ad idea but the innovation and inspiration on where to place that ad idea is lacking. We currently use syndicated media research, the brief doesn't currently inspire in this area..."along with our regular day job of inspiring creative ideas, how do we inspire the media placement?"

To begin, there should be a canvas rather than an execution. One platform is too prescriptive but multiple platforms are more organic and welcome. [Let's think back to the brand POV vs. USP and platforms vs. channels.]

The tool: Context Mapping

• A brainstorm tool
• Moments on a timeline: potential interaction, event, could be media - people gather here, wait here, are here; these are the starting places
• Timeline: chronological, day in the life, product journey, scenarios stemming from the creative idea (telling a story or beginning it); tend to focus on chronological points in time, this can be actual or a "what if?"
• Context insights about specific moments: what is the target thinking, what are they doing, how can the experience be enhanced, what are their frustrations? Further research may be needed around each moment on the timeline

This tool has a lot of interesting implications for inspiring richer media ideas and purposeful media use.

"George Scribner & Elmar Webb" - AP Conference Post

The first breakout session of the day was "Planning Possibilities: Craft & Content in the Digital Age" by George Scribner and Elmar Webb of Digitas.

Scribner and Webb started the session off by saying, "We're just planners but this is an exciting area to be in." However, they also said it is wrong that what's done in digital today is still ahead of advertising and we should all be there.

They challenged us to send out not just messages but take actions. Let's stop stopping people, interrupting them like the perfume people at the mall, and let's start being a part of people's natural flow and integrate into their lives more. One way to achieve this is by approaching creative briefing in a new way.

The New Creative Brief: Active Branding

1. What are we going to do, not just say? (POV, not USP; actions, not attributes; adaptive, not pre-planned)
2. What value are we going to provide?
3. How are we going to integrate into consumers' lives?

Some other changes to the brief: strike the word "audience" from the brief and replace it with "participant" so you will never go to a medium that doesn't make sense again. Get in the pathway of where people naturally go throughout the day. Also, strike "channel" and replace it with "platform" because as digital transforms you can't just send a message down a shoot, it's more organic. Next, replace "ads" with "possibilities" which require creativity rather than just good creative. If you can imagine it, there's a good possibility that you can actually do it. This creative brief pushes us away from self-serving ideas to doing things for people that they didn't necessarily ask for but may appreciate.

In summary, there should be digital content and digital craft. To get to an idea that brings something of value and integrates well into people's lives, we must start with insights and ideas from focusing on participants, pathways, platforms, and possibilities.

Other advice for working in the digital realm: get past the latest web tool or widget that is fun and ask if it is really relevant. Only fit in the cool new application if it fits. Once found, present these new things that are striking and beautiful so people are willing to look at it and interact with it.

As far as measurement in a digital world, we need to throw away the old model of a purchasing funnel. The timeline has to stretch out a bit more. However, engagement and recommendation to others is immediate - you get a yes/no answer from customers.

In order to inspire, a few examples were called out:

• Jonathan Harris - http://www.number27.org/ - he makes physical experiences out of web/digital data, he takes something without humanity and gives it humanity
• Virtual Human Interaction Lab - http://vhil.stanford.edu/ - from Stanford, a virtual experience that is actually helping change real world behavior: people create avatars of their ideal self and this inspires them to adopt healthier habits in real life
• From TED - Photosynth Demo - this video is amazing! In short, this presents a technology that creates 3-dimensional, digitally-rendered images from photos off of Flickr. Each individual photo can be viewed as well as the full-scale image created by linking all of these individual images together
• MoMA Online Exhibit - Design and the Elastic Mind - http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/ - a display of different scales of technology from nano to space

If you look at one thing, check out that TED video.

"Karim Rashid" - AP Conference Post

Karim Rashid of Karim Rashid, Inc. discussed the "Business of Beauty" with us - he is an industrial designer and his entire presentation consisted of pictures of his beautiful work.

Karim Rashid considers design to be essential to systems and services. He is mostly interested in the physical world and making it a better place. He tries to bring a heightened experience to everything he designs because he sees the power in one moment to elevate your spirit.

In the mass consumer market, design at one time was elitist. Now with brands such as Method and stores such as Target, the world and people in it are more physically engaged.

Karim doesn't think artists are futurists. "No, I'm just contemporary," he countered and said he sees today whereas others see the past. There is a tipping point where it takes just one person to make a change. Unfortunately, sometimes that person isn't empowered to make that kind of change. In these cases, Rashid says it takes only one believer.

Rashid believes that beauty is a word that needs to be raised more and that physical things should be aesthetic on the ouside with content on the inside. Things can still be disposable or reusable, they almost have to be these days, but they are not the same. Archetypes stay with us until we can break the norm and design something with new shape, color, and styling.

The global middle class is spoiled with options and have many opportunities to experience more. The consumer is more powerful now.

As creative people, we should look at the world objectively because to look at the world from the outside is to be able to do brilliant things for others.

Technology has given us a super-heightened image of reality or what can be in reality. Now with efficiencies and the ease of getting materials online, physical things hold more importance. If we have to have something physical, let it be beautiful and with function. Create something so engaging that it will capture your mind.

The moment something becomes a style it's a part of history and therefore a part of the past so Rashid says to design instead of style things. We must innovate or die.

"Planning for Good: Kiva and Witness" - AP Conference Post

The following session was a Planning for Good interview by Ed Cotton of two participating organizations - Kiva and Witness. Jessica Jackley Flannery, cofounder of Kiva Microfunds, and Su Patel, communications and outreach manager of Witness, spoke to these two unique programs.


As a note, several planners with less than 3 years of experience met on Sunday before the conference started and worked with Planning Directors to help "Plan for Good" by helping these two organizations.

Kiva
Kiva is about building third world businesses. They lend money to others so they can thrive. The program seems to be mainly women helping women (most of the lenders and beneficiaries happen to be women).

The system works on microfinancing which is essentially banking for the poor. By linking up individual lenders with beneficiaries, it puts giving in individual terms. This makes giving to Kiva less like a drop in the bucket and more like a real difference.

http://www.kiva.org/

Witness
Witness uses video and online resources to uncover human rights violations around the world. The idea is that these stories should never be buried so Witness empowers and equips people to capture them on tape.

http://www.witness.org/


There is consumer fatigue with donating - there's another cause, another thing to give money to, and there is a lot of bad news in the world. So how do you transform good intentions into actions? By engaging people and making causes personal.

"Gold Winner Presentation:JWT Mumbai" - AP Conference Post

Shaziya Khan of JWT Mumbai presented the case study of one of the Jay Chiat Planning Awards' Gold winners - DeBeers.

"The Story of the Diamond Bride: Imagination to Reality"

In India, the culture surrounding jewelry is very different. There is a preference for gold jewelry especially during wedding ceremonies where gold has been a bride's adornment for centuries. Gold means doing it right.

Generally, conservatism dominates during traditions. For one, most marriages are arranged. Personal choice (especially of the bride) takes a back seat and traditional ways hold sway.

Previously all targets in India for jewelry were parents who are traditionally the influencers and decision-makers. The bride's mum has as much a say as the bride herself. The conventional wisdom, therefore, is to talk to parents who would then decide what they wanted to tell the bride.

In wedding celebrations, diamonds indicate status and modernity but just couldn't stand up to gold as that traditional piece of jewelry. A gold bride is lower to middle class and very traditional whereas a diamond bride is elegant, sophisticated, and relaxed. Below the surface, it was found that diamonds provided more freedom and happiness because of that relaxation.

The final work displayed individual expression but with respect to the family. There was a private moment between the bride and the groom during the ceremony that brides liked because it was special but not disrespectful to their family and wedding guests. This campaign spoke right to these brides.

Extending this idea to new media ideas, clothing was used as a channel. The traditional wedding dress obviously matched with gold jewelry so a look for the diamond dress had to be created. By working with clothing designers, sleek new dresses were made to create a look for the diamond bride.

The client feedback and results were very positive. From the client, "It's not just about the shine of the diamond but the shine of the bride."

"A Few More Bits of Miami" - AP Conference Post

Dinner for the evening was sponsored by Yahoo! on the back lawn of the Loews. I just wanted to quickly call out the art deco vibe of our hotel and the surrounding area with a few pics.

That evening, several planners headed over to the Delano for poolside drinks. A very LA scene without the LA snobbery - it seems that image is important but you're accepted either way.

"Christopher Owens" - AP Conference Post

The first breakout session I attended on Monday was "Planning for Conversations: Let's Get People Talking" by Christopher Owens of The Richards Group.

Conversation is "intimate, real, brings you in like a part of the family." When people start to talk, they share. The definition of a conversation is "a workable balance of contribution from the partners in a conversation." Give them as much as listen to them (an exchange of social currency).

People aren't just sitting there waiting for our message. In fact, they are completely wired to the point of saturation - it's difficult to fit much more in to their lives. But people trust people, so word of mouth can break through.

A conversation can be started through points of comfort or points of tension. People talk about points of comfort because they are familiar, but points of tension cause a spark of debate. Tension will be more engaging but it can be more polarizing. Owens suggested not to run from tension, but to use it and shape it.

At what levels can a conversation be started? All levels - company, product, campaign. The brand ideas need to be a part of the actual product, and if they aren't there then work on getting them into the product. Some products are inherently conversational such as Dyson where design breaks them away from the rest of the vacuum category.

Guide the conversation about a company or product to an endpoint. Sometimes an idea of what to talk about materializes but you don't know where the conversation will go. It's important to have an idea of what you want to get out of the conversation instead of just starting one.

Some examples: Freytag Sub-Zero

• The idea was to take the current conversation of ego preservation to a conversation and message of food preservation for the brand - the brand had become too flashy and without purpose
• Owens was able to brief the designers of the product to make changes at the base level and also briefed cartoonists at The New Yorker to help utilize an entirely new medium - the changes had to come at every level
• The attributes of the product were designed with the conversation in mind to create a product that had inherent talkability
• A research method to determine what the product should include, from a consumer standpoint, involved having women stock their refrigerator - interact with it, use it - and then place red and green lights on product attributes that they would remove/dislike or would keep/like, respectively. The points of tension came out when results showed that a certain area of the fridge received many red and green lights - some people liked the attribute, others hated it
• One example of a polarizing attribute was the refrigerator door - it was too shallow to fit a gallon of milk. This attribute was specifically designed in that way because the door is the least fresh place to put the milk and so Freytag doesn't allow it. Consumers learned something about the brand and something about freshness while Freytag was willing to confront consumers' perceptions and communicate that to the very deepest level they believe in the values of their brand to the extent that the product mirrors that image

Patron

• Quick quote - "Patron flows like water down here in Miami." ;
• Patron competes as an ultra-premium spirit instead of just a tequila. Tequila is something that slams you, you don't sip and enjoy it, but by positioning it as a spirit it disrupts the category. This is an inherently conversational category so the work that was created had to be conversational
• The research - Went to bars to figure out what the current conversations were - what was polarizing? Talked to magazine editors to see what a specific edition was about - were there any debates?
• The work - "Some perfection is debatable, Patron is simply perfect" Patron is the one constant while two boxes represent two opposing sides of an argument. For example, Gas/Charcoal, Football/Futbol, Pacific/Atlantic. Some of the power of the campaign is to let people come up with a third option or an entire debate. The idea is to get them talking about it
• A nod to conversation is even in the background noise to their website: http://www.patronspirits.com/en.phtml

Planners help catalyze these conversations and the idea is that conversation should be driving all areas. Listen to current conversations in bars, airplanes, restaurants, twitter feeds and ask why they are talking about that and how it can be used. Incorporating conversation into advertising requires agility and speed in getting executions out the door quickly but can certainly cause immediate buzz.

As part of the Q+A, this thought emerged: "We should be consumer-informed, not consumer-led." Planners make recommendations based on the information we gather. Sometimes consumer info helps validate what we thought and sometimes it makes us think differently.

I enjoyed this session immensely and thought that these were some actionable recommendations on how to start conversations.

"Miami Updates" - AP Conference Post

Well, I certainly expected more time to be able to get on the Internet but I suppose that's not really the point of this conference so I will accept and embrace that tomorrow. There is WiFi access but nowhere to plug in the computer to a power source so I didn't want to kill my computer and only used it for sending a few critical e-mails today when I could. I will be able to check e-mails when I get back into my room tonight and tomorrow after 6pm or so but otherwise catch me on my cell if you need me.

My, my, my - off to a good start with the conference. A great and full first day. I will begin to post about the different sessions (probably more after the conference-sponsored dinner tonight) but I wanted to spend a few minutes updating on not just the conference, but Miami as well.

Yesterday was just a travel day but I met up with a few planner friends that I know from school and we headed out to explore the food and culture of Miami. One of our friends lives here so she directed us a few blocks from the Loews Hotel to Lincoln Road. It's more of a touristy spot but is a large open shopping area dotted with restaurants. It was quite humid but under the shade we enjoyed our lunch...

Later we enjoyed some time on the beach and the people watching led me to coin the phrase "Man on the Beach" - I have trademarked that if we want to use it later. ;)

But for the real fun, our final stop for the day was on Ocean Drive to experience a little more of Miami culture. Miami is a place of image and status. I'm sure it would be hard to rival Ocean Drive in illustrating this point more clearly. A parade of expensive and tricked out cars, people gawking and taking pictures at the opulence, and a few oddities made up what Ocean Drive, and I think Miami, is all about. We stopped at a restaurant for dinner and was promptly placed at a table right on the sidewalk in perfect view of the mix of tourists and attention-seekers.

I'll give you a few highlights - a lime green Lamborghini that created a stir for at least 30 minutes, a woman tanned well beyond a color nature would ever give her (well, I'm sure she wasn't the only one), a man with a chihuahua in the basket of his bicycle dressed in American flags, and several young girls asking for donations to be sent on trips to Disneyland or somewhere else mildly amusing.

This was surely Miami at its finest!! :p An interesting view into the culture complete with retro design and brightly colored buildings was my first view of Miami.