When Mark Lewis invited me to come talk at the San Francisco Planning-ness conference that was held last week, I really didn't know what I was in for. Business conferences in Israel are usually quite general - people come, speak and leave. What you're left with most of the time are some great stories (mostly of successes) and a bunch of additional case studies you can include in your next presentation. So although you may have spent a really interesting afternoon, you ultimately leave feeling cheated: Having come to learn something, but going home still wondering "how the hell do they do it?
In this sense, the Planning-ness conference was very different. The whole point was to actually get people to roll up their sleeves, and get dirty. Pick each others brains and build on whatever clever insights and comments were put forth without ruling anything out and with the starting point being all ideas are good and welcome.
There were a lot of great workshops to choose from - beginning with "How to design a product", "How to Design a Successful Application", "How to Create Advocacy and Conversation", "How to do Connections Planning in 2009", right down to the amazingly clever Zeus Jones guys: Adrian Ho and Rob White's closing presentation:"How to plan in the 21st Century".
They really touched a soft spot: many planning and marketing tools were invented over 40 years ago - way before television was invented and way, way before the internet ever emerged - not to mention social media. Their amazing session revolved around getting people to think about new tools for marketing. So, after a quick preview on Modern Branding,
they asked everyone to call out loud tools for planners that were obsolete and not really useful anymore. The whiteboard filled in less than 5 minutes:
Rob then split the audience in groups based on month of birth, and asked them to think about a new "tool" that would replace the ones on the board.This is what Rob Perkins and his team came up with: replacing the messaging model with the invention model. The goal being to create brand experiences that surprise and delight.
This is not the only idea submitted and for those of you who are curious, I suggest you visit the Zeus Jones Blog to watch the other months' ideas as well. Whatever the case, lots of people came away from this session feeling really hyped and inspired and the Planningness guys have promised to start a wiki page on this to keep ideas coming and evolving. Some of the learnings as Adrian and Rob put it:
- We’re all pretty clear on the fact that many of the tools we use currently aren’t working
- We’re much more interested in dynamic processes than static tools
- We want our new tools to be social, to be participatory not just for individuals
- We’re looking for our tools to reveal complexity and depth rather than hide it with simple-mindedness
- We need tools to plan the company as much as we need tools to plan the customer
- We want to learn by doing rather than by thinking and strategizing
The difference between this conference and all the others I've been to: this time I've gone home thinking "So that's how they do it!". That's a great feeling, a great thing to be a part of. Can't wait to hear how this evolves and definitely look forward to the next Planning-ness conference.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment