andy grayson

"are you helping get to a big idea? or are you getting in the way of big ideas?"

Steel said this. In Truth, Lies, & Advertising. And I've been thinking about blogging about this for some time. Because it is the number one quote I think about everyday. It's really easy for planners to feel a sense of "what am I doing? Am I contributing?"

And the answer is never black & white. It would be easy if you always came up with the big idea. But you hardly ever do. You recognize big ideas. Hell, I'll take a good idea. It doesn't have to be a big one. But that's what we do. That' s the real value of a planner inside an agency. That's why we can never explain to people at a cocktail party what the hell it is we do. Because we're ideaists. Sure, we do research. We write briefs. We analyze the quant results to let our clients and creatives know that the work did well and we can run it. But what we really do, is help ideas. We help them get started. We help them grow. We help them survive. And we help them live.

So sometimes I get to asking what my real role is here and will it be obsolete someday. And the answer is "no". Because we need idea helpers now more than ever.

ideas

presentations

Davies posted a pleasantly simple video on his blog about presenations. The lesson: add some dimension to your presentations -- go for 3d vs. 2d. How? Perhaps some relevant music. Maybe some toys to play with, react to. Etc. Anything to engage more of your audience's senses.

This reminds me of a story I once heard while at Ogilvy about an executive at Sprite. He was chartered with moving the brand forward, though the old guard at Coke was reticent to really change anything about Sprite. In this instance, the debate was over changing the design aesthetic of the bottle & can. BIG (Ogilvy's brand integration group) was pushing for Sprite to take the leap and approve a a new can/bottle design . Nothing too radical. Just a refresh. But the Coke stuffies didn't think they should change what had worked for so many years.

So here's what the Sprite exec did. He pulled out a picture. Not just any picture. An old polaroid.

A polaroid of him in the 70's. He had a curly white man's afro. He was wearing a plaid suit. He had these huge ugly honking thick-framed glasses on. In a word, his style was HORRENDOUS.

Everyone in the room laughed. He looked ridiculous in that picture compared to how he looked and dressed now.

But here was his point. He showed a picture of the Sprite label design from the same year in the 70's.

And guess what? ... It was exactly the same.

So his point? Things change. We all do. We HAVE to.

Modernize the design. And Ogilvy did.