Frustration is cumulative. Sometimes, the most devastating part of feeling beaten down is not being able to ID any one thing that makes your feelings make sense.
A quote that I came across right when I needed it. Heads up, this week’s newsletter might have a “tone” and for that I apologize.
Also I rant a bit. This week’s newsletter is really about catharsis for me just as much as it is about you. Thanks for being here.
PIRATE READINGS FOR PIRATE PLANNERS
The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. (Link) — I’ve linked to this book before, but I’m going to again because I think it’s one of the few books where if everyone in the ad game were to apply its principles, it would save the industry.
I almost didn’t share it out of selfishness and wanting to keep the contents away from competition. But in reality if this leads to a single change being implemented anywhere, our world is a better place.
That’s it. Thats the only book this week.
QUOTES WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION
Just stuff I dropped in my notes this week and have now forgotten where it came from.
“Not all problems are the problem”
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Tumbling down a rabbit hole can often get us where we need to go quicker than figuring out the perfect route.
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For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile. ... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.
fuck.
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Moreover, there is no sense that planners share a common philosophy, let alone a common body of accumulated marketing knowledge. So to confusion, uncertainty and anxiety, we can also add ignorance.
For real. Planner’s should need a license. Ad people in general actually. Maybe then we’d act like we belonged in the room.
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Is the problem that we have too many meetings or that they last longer than they need to? So much time is spent making points that are smart, true and unnecessary. Aiming toward “necessary” rather than “correct” might get us off the battleground.
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This week I learned about the “5 laws of library science”
(See even if Planners had 5 laws, we’d be less shit as a whole)
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RANTS
Topics I’ve gone off on this week…
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Nobody wants to farm, everyone wants to hunt. We owe our entire success as a species to the ability to long term plan and cultivate growth rather than rely on intermittent big wins. But in business, nobody wants to farm anymore. Nobody gives a shit because they all plan on being somewhere else in a few years. Nobody earns the Rolex. This is even true in modern human behavior in general. We should be able to live longer, better, healthier lives, but instead everyone just wants to live harder chasing the big win that nobody can define.
But bringing it back to advertising… I have never once seen a brief about building long term brand value that didn’t also have some immediate need for making a splash.
This is why PR is killing it. Short term-ism is going to doom us all.
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Gut Strategy. Probably 60-70% of the time I get a brief, I’ll have a good sense of the strategic direction within the first day of thinking about it. Or it’ll come out via conversation with someone. That sticky, interesting, fertile thought.
But I won’t have the data to support it.
I call this my gut strategy and I want to start listening to my gut more. Because it inevitably gets watered down and lost in all the things brought forward trying to prove something that is inherently not provable.
… Speaking of which… We need to do a better job educating clients that good strategy is a decision between two (often equally good) choices. No data will prove THIS is the way to go when you could just as well go another.
Let’s take the “insight” off the pedestal and replace it with “the choice.”
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KILL THE REVEAL. This was sparked by the Win Without Pitching book. But we have an obsession with the reveal. I’m guilty. Kill it. It doesn’t help us. We’re not magicians. State your point and back it up like a normal person.
Also, stop letting the client diagnose the problem. Would a dentist let you tell them what was wrong? Even if you were right, they are going to take a look and decide for themselves.
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If you’re still reading, Thank you for sticking around. This has been cathartic.
SOME SCREENSHOTS AND A DRAWING
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