Mad Men "The Other Woman"

One of the best things about our industry is the passing on of craft. In planning we don't just learn a set of skills or end up with physical products; ours is a craft of mind shape and form.

It takes brilliant mentors to master and then teach young padawans how to wade through intangibles and abstracts, how to find, shape and sharpen thoughts. It takes mad and passionate visionaries to show us how to weave logic and leaps of creativity into ideas that can be turned into words and pictures that start conversation, sell products, and once in awhile maybe even change how people do things.

I rarely feel like Mad Men acurately captures our industry. There isn't nearly that much alcohol, nobody dresses in suits, all of the AE's are girls and where are the planners? But Don and Peggy are a mentor-and-protegé that remind me of my teachers in our crazy world.

In "The Other Woman", Peggy finally quit. I can't say I wouldn't have arrived at the same decision as she would. But I can completely relate to the difficulty of venturing outside a place that, for all its imperfections is a comfort zone with a lot of potential. I had an idea once of writing a show about advertising and the pilot was going to be young account executives, creatives and strategists trying to quit. It is so hard to quit!

The most acurate part of Mad Men is probably having "Mad" in the title becuase it hurts so much to do what we do - the hours, the politics, the people-pleasing, the crappy bosses, the bad briefs, the low pay, the mental blocks. It is insane and it drives me crazy. But learning from the best has always been one of the best parts. I didn't always have good school teachers, but I've had great ad mentors.

Some bosses have shown me what it means to be a leader and not just a boss. Some have shown me how not to get screamed at by co-workers. Some have taught me how to think and leap harder, faster, better, stronger.

I love what I do and the playground that has been created for us. I love having found my life's work in a group of crazies. I hate that we need to move on sometimes, but there are always people we need to learn from and teach.

This episode was insane. Joan is crazy and awesome. There was a pitch! Megan asked Don about the strategy! Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce finally presented something at the client's office! They won. And Peggy got a job offer from another agency.

Mad Men maybe finally hit on something that is so innate to advertising, the fluidity of movement within our industry. I guess I haven't really maximized this myself, but I've seen it happen so much recently. Hello, Goodbye.

Superhero Content Planning

This movie was so awesome that even my mom, who rarely comes with us to the movie house, saw it twice.

What I thought was pretty remarkable was how the story was so well-paced even if there are so many main characters to keep track of, the entire Avenger team of Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye, plus Nick Fury, Phil and bad guy Loki.

In other ensemble films with so many backstories to establish (Valentine's Day, anyone?) character development usually suffers. But Avengers pulled it off without a hitch and the film was able to focus on the task at hand - a story of different super-personalities coming together to form a team.

This was executed flawlessly through good screenwriting in this film, but more importantly through careful content planning that was several years in the making.

Iron Man (2008) was the first Marvel film in this set (I mean those with characters that they included in this Avengers movie), with Nick Fury making a cameo at the end to ask Iron Man to consider "The Avengers Initiative".

Shortly after the release of Iron Man 2 in 2012 producers announced the entire Avengers cast, but it took two years to release the first film installment.

During that time producers were busy establishing the other team members - Black Widow had already made her debut in Iron Man 2, and in 2011 Captain America and Thor (along with Hawkeye) were launched in their own films. That left only Hulk to be introduced in Avengers, and the end-result was an awesome ensemble film.

Even if it isn't exactly the same as branding, there are good principles we can draw from this in terms of Content Planning: Some stories are best told from different points of view. It's ok to spread content in a non-linear fashion, and over different executions - and content can be crafted so that viewers enjoy even the "setup" bits.

Mostly, this shows how much it helps to have the end in mind - what story ultimately needs to be told and what is the best way to get there. To give us a clue how far ahead producers are planning, Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury contract is for nine films (not counting the first Iron Man), which means we've got five more to go!

good job

Yesterday was a great day.

I've sort of fallen in brand love. That is, I handle a brand that I've come to really care for. It is an old brand that has started to feel a little clunky and truth be told, it has fallen on tough times. It is still a moneymaker for now, but little cracks are starting to show. They aren't so obvious yet, but if my loved brand doesn't think carefully about space, position and identity, the cracks will become holes and end up a leaking bucket.

I've had a gut feel for awhile about where I think this brand needs to go, what it needs to stand for to close the tiny cracks. People love this brand, I think, because of what it has meant to them over the years, not because of a clear identity that has been established. But this brand still has equity and gravitas. And I've had a feeling that we could think this through for them and help its brand managers rediscover its potential.

As a digital "specialist" agency, however, we don't often get to present total brand points-of-view. Our job is usually amplification of executions that an ATL agency has already done. To be honest we don't often agree with their approach, but it has been slow going gaining credibility to show that we can think brand, too, and that we think differently. But digital planners need to be as proficient as traditional agency planners at brand-level matters, because brands come to life on digital, 24/7, in-depth, on-demand. Whether we ask them to or not, consumers become co-brand managers who comment, create and project brand identity. And brands that don't have a strong sense of self could end up getting lost.

Yesterday we finally got our shot to share a piece of our dream for this brand, a starting point to where we could take it. We delivered a think piece that was little over the ask, but our client bought in to it and reflected on the critical questions we raised. In the end they thanked us for one of the best takes and understandings of the brand that they'd ever heard.

I was so happy, proud and felt so validated to have gotten to share something that I think will really help this beloved brand. We'll have to wait and see where this piece of thinking brings our agency but yesterday was a good day, that reminded me of the important role planners play in the communication process.

We are engineers of space in mind, of vision and brand dreams, of relevance and clarity. We are architects of identity, principles, value and personality. We are designers of form and action. In terms of discipline nobody else can or cares to do what we do. And I love that I love to do this.

Yesterday was a great day.