Madison moment

It was a hot summer afternoon and I was excited just by being in New York for the first time. The city has this buzzy energy that was reverberating through me - from the noisy subway underground, the crowded newsstands and halal stalls on every corner, the busy people crossing as soon as the last car had passed even before the light turned green.

I found myself on Madison Avenue, famed as the birthplace of the modern ad agency. It was disappointing to discover that none of the big agencies hold office there anymore, but walking the street still gave me a little thrill.

I noticed a pair walking toward me, he in a sharp navy suit and hornrimmed glasses, her hair coiffed in a wavy updo matching her ruby red lips. Their fifties garb was out of place but strikingly attractive. He reached out and handed me a calling card that with a name that made me gasp: Sterling Cooper. "Season 2," he said.

How they could have guessed that a random Asian chick was not only a mad woman herself, but a Mad Men devotee, is beyond me. That one moment cemented my day-old love for New York, the first of many awesome surprises that the city has given me. But it was a demonstration of marketing brilliance - right context, right message, right experience. I still carry the card with me, as a reminder me of how our work can potentially excite people, and how our creative process still excites me.

New York minutes

Traveling gives me new perspectives and new questions to answer. A few from this trip that I will need to chew on in the next few weeks / months:

• Design as a mandatory but a gap in Philippine digital - both form and function.
• Re-thinking Innovation: Not tech but new adoptions. Is something only an innovation if it reaches a certain level of adoption?
• Innovation framework as a model for experience planning?
• New York: The Experience
• (Again) Museums as the best model for engagement planning / Personal Analytics & the Quantified Self
• How movie-going has changed because of digital
• What do we want to curate?
• What should the idea of the "global village" mean for agencies

Advertising is a team sport.

I grew up in a Catholic school run by nuns who often told us about their "calling". I didn't know if one day they encountered a burning bush, heard a deep voice in a dream, or saw a light leading them to eternal celibacy. But they were certain that this was the life they were called to.

We are definitely not saints but sometimes it feels like advertising is also a vocation. This is the life we were called to, and there is no rest. We battle mental blocks to make even the tightest leadtimes. We slave away over abstract mental models and ideas until they turn into more concrete propositions, storyboards, status updates, wireframes. We put on our smartest and most smashing shows in the hope that clients will be able to envision what only really exists in our heads. Sometimes we hit it out of the park. Many times we get shut down. It isn't showbiz but there is a lot of rejection. And for some reason we're willing to miss breakfast, lunch, dinner, and stay til 10 pm, midnight, sunrise. We stick it out despite the waves of depression that settle over us when we compare compensation with contemporaries in banks, real estate, client side. An advertiser's life is tough, hard, heartbreaking. Yet it feels like working anywhere even slightly more corporate would be selling out. Even in planning it feels like we have creative muscles that need to be stretched. It feels like nowhere else would we be as fulfilled, so we stick with it.

Given this level of commitment, it is scary that we need to be able to count on a wealth of other people to get the job done. Did your account guys understand the client? Is the planner going to find a good problem, insight, solution? Are the creatives going to be clear and clever, solid yet fresh? Do you have anyone to optimize those low CTRs? We collectively try to come up with and execute work that breaks ground but there is a lot that can go wrong. No one person or team can run the show, but for a job this tough, it can be tough to have to count on a wealth of other people to fly.

The other thing about agency life is the high turnover. Because it is so back-breaking, it is almost impossible to stay at the top of your game - clients change, budgets shrink and most of all, people move around. Our team has been through a lot - we've lost in good ways and sad but we've arrived at some kind of synergistic whole that really seems to work for us. We get to do pretty great work, we laugh often, drink together a lot and our internal network is chock-full of internal memes-slash-jokes. In advertising they say you're only as good as your last idea. Maybe you're only as good as the team you're on.

I don't know how long any of this will last but for now I am humbled and thankful. Advertising is a team sport. And for today I'm on the best one.

speech

This week our agency won gold.

It was 2010 when I returned from an in-depth digital immersion in New York. I had no idea where I was supposed to go next but Planning for MRM ended up that next move. I could never have imagined that I would eventually end up in Singapore at the Campaign Asia awards, shortlisted as SEA Account Person of the Year. (Despite its title the award is for both suits and strategic planners.) By some crazy miracle I ended up winning.

I never even aspired to this because only creatives win awards! Not planners. Especially not specialist digital planners. But what must have given me the edge is the hardcore education I've received from so many stellar mentors throughout the years.

This is my feeling-Oscar winner post but 
I absolutely need to thank these people who believed in me and taught me through the years.

MARICEL & DINO: My first mentors, and first set of advertising parents. They showed me that, in an industry that can be a little too cutthroat sometimes, absolute trust can exist in the agency as long as there is some hot pan de sal, some of Alex's sisig and as long as bosses are leaders, too.

BUDJETTE: My first-ever advertising boss! Remember? As an intern on his Globe Prepaid creative team I picked up an appreciation for ideas, art and copy. Through the years that I've been so lucky to have kept working with him, He has been the best example of a leader who will never abandon his team and the work. He will tirelessly search for truths and even creative articulations that properly convey brand role yet set his people free to grow. Replete with creative temper/ament yet devoid of cliche creative airs, he is the Madonna of creative - able to re-tool and re-invent through the evolution of our industry.

NANDY: I will never forget the day Nandy asked me to move to Planning. Through intense one-on-one internals, he tooled me up for (hopefully) a career's worth of briefs, campaigns and brand strategies. He remains the Planning bar to which I aspire - a masterclass in razorsharp problem-definition, insighitng and brand stewardship. He is the Fr. Dacanay of our discipline - the "tough love" teacher who will stretch each learning opportunity. Most importantly is he a leader who will inspire people to reach outside themselves in work, craft, grace and integrity.

GEN, VIBOY, BEAU & EZ (and later Jen!): Almost everything I know about Planning I learned from watching these guys work. I'm a baby in this discipline, only 2.5 years old! But I joined the best team in the country, and they took me under their wings. They were willing to partner with and teach me, and indulged me in many existential Planning discussions. My original planning family, who taught by example.

DONALD: Our fearless leader who inspires confidence from his hardcore marketing background, solid business instincts and slightly experimental management approach. He espouses ongoing education to sharpen our craft and has been so willing to take chances on young people with possibly ridiculous ideals. A man with vision and a personal roadmap to carry us to the top spot.

MY TEAM: I wouldn't have gotten through this insane year without Beau & El. They inspire me everyday to be the best leader I can be, and push me to create room for each of us to grow. Their crazy hard and awesome work assures me that our future is so bright.

TEAM MRM: The dedicated and tireless OT crew! Who sticks with each problem until it is solved, no matter how many hours and sleepless nights it takes. Accounts, creatives, community managers, production guys whose passion never seems to run out and who remind me everyday why it is more fun in MRM.

The sweetest part of all this is that our agency was also awarded gold, as Philippine Digital Agency of the Year by this regional body. This award succeeds a local Digital Excellence AOY award, which we won earlier this year.

Two years ago, and even last week, I would have laughed this thought off. But as I stream of conscious-ly posted in our MRM Manila page: We don't know what will come our way next year, but as of today, this week, this month, we are the best in the business. 

where do we go from here?

Facebook has been the king of Philippine digital marketing for the past two-three years. I don't think this will change drastically next year, but I think we will have to start moving past this gated community.


The Philippine digital branding ecosystem skipped a stage when brands went straight into social media and skipped building the "Web 1.0" assets - websites with sound SEO, e-commerce portals, etc. Most "motherbrand" FMCGs (the Nestles, P&Gs or Unilevers, even the San Miguels or Universal Robina Corps) do have properties but it is not rare to come across a brand without a local and content-rich dot.com. Many marketers we were working with in 2009-2010 were hesitant to build websites. There was no social ad equivalent back then, and banner ads were expensive to produce, optimize and place. So, many brands skipped building these sites. Luckily Facebook came along, and saved marketers from having to pay for programming, CMS, database management. Even social ads are much more cost-effective than the usual banner ads.

But I think that next year will one to go back to digital basics that we might have skipped in the rush and excitement to build Facebook communities.
Because for brands looking to create a deeper layer of utility and engagement beyond the Wall, apps may not be enough. Many clients have started to ask us to start think about what comes after Facebook. What happens to our community when people stop signing up or frequenting the social network? I don't think there will be another Facebook after this (just like nobody really succeeded Google), but there could be a new trend after social networking. And while we have the Likes, brands don't necessarily own the database of their hundred thousand-to-million fans.

*Note: This is completely based on personal experience and observation.

Ultimately the issue is one of ownership. Many brands don't necessarily own their databases, unless they've secured additional contact information through an app. Most of all, brands are subject to each of Facebook's changes and re-designs. We once developed an app for a client to give fans a feature missing on Facebook, only to have that exact feature launched as we were programming. So brands looking to be more content-heavy may start going back to the dot.com. Content will probably always best-propagated on social network sites but this doesn't mean that wholly-owned properties cannot work complementary to communities.

This might be too old school for brands and agencies in more developed markets. But a lot of us might have room and occasion to build and/or improve on these foundational assets.

It is an honor just to be nominated!

We found out today that MRM Manila has been awarded Philippines Digital Agency of the Year by Campaign Asia, already identified as GOLD winner from the first round of judging. AWESOMESAUCE!!!!! It is always awesome to win agency-wide awards because it acknowledges and celebrates the team spirit that drives MRM. It wasn't always like this but we have come a long way in two+ years and it is rewarding to see the fruits of the company we have built.

And as if that weren't enough, the individuals we entered in the awards were all shortlisted!

• Donald Lim is shortlisted for Agency Head of the Year
• Budjette Tan is shortlisted for Creative of the Year
• Me! Bea Atienza is shortlisted for Account Person of the Year  

This is amazeballs. Winners will be announced on December 10, but it is enough for me that our agency won and that all of us were even put on this list!

our baby is two million fans old

We inherited the Nescafe page at a few hundred thousand fans and a few weeks ago it hit two million. We celebrated this milestone at a Fans Day event held two Saturdays ago.

Our community has a way of making those of us working on the page feel so deeply rewarded. We hit a million fans on Christmas day last year, a great present to the brand and agency teams. Our engagement rate has remained within a fantastic average, even as the page has grown enormously. And now over two million people have agreed to keep conversations going with Nescafe.

What we have been allowed to to right on this brand 

• Pay attention to BITE-SIZED. It is difficult to allow little bits of content to speak for a brand, especially for traditional agencies who are used to "pasabog", "bigness" and executions that draw "libog" (as our Chairman often demands). This is completely valid but it doesn't mean that individual status updates that are culturally-relevant and even brand-focused can't draw attention, generate participation and develop affinity. 
• Think LONG-TERM. Instead of focusing on app or webisode one-offs, we have been able to craft year-long plans that have continuously built up to our current standing. I don't know if I would ever be able to prove this, but I imagine communities can feel when they are being engaged in a "promo" or "campaign" rather than in an ongoing conversation. And this might make fans more or less willing to stay involved. But our community has seen the commitment to keep the conversation going for 2+ years, and understand that the brand is committed for the long haul.
• Be open to STRATEGY-led initiatives. Nescafe Points and Nescafe Insights are two efforts I'm so proud of having been the planner for. It is amazing that we have been able to keep trying to change behavior and learn from our community. We are so lucky that our internal partners and clients allow Planners to have our own point-of-view.

• Allow creatives to PLAY. At the same time, our creatives have gotten their own play time as well! The second iteration of Points, Kapihan, and two recent videos (one starring digital sensation Petra and another featuring Ramon Bautista & Frank Magallona) are proof points to this.

Exciting times - we are now in the process of mapping out 2013. Here is hoping we can keep fans engaged and happy for a third year and counting.

extracurricular activities

The case for continuing education


Our whole team is studying!
Beau, our Strategic Planner, is enrolled in Gamification on Coursera.com,
El, our associate, is reviewing Idea crafting on Skillshare.com, and 
I've just started graduate studies at The New School. 

Given our insane work schedules and frequent overtime, actually going back to school even just for one course at a time would be impossible. But because we're able to take classes virtually at the time and place of our choosing, we can keep studying.

I get a dorky kick out of how we're digital practitioners studying in such a digital way, but it really is exciting that it is now easier than ever to keep learning about practically any topic through self-initiated research and even formal study.

Being digital means constantly refreshing.

Ongoing learning is something I feel really strongly about, especially in the service of gaining fuel that will help us master our craft. And for people like me, there is joy even in the learning process alone :)

Throughout my career, connectivity helped me deepen my understanding of digital. Reading blogs and Twitter feeds keep me updated about marketing and tech developments. Online classes have allowed me to explore topics in-depth – HTML programming in 2008 to understand the building blocks of the web (on Sessions.edu), and a Certificate in Digital Media Marketing at New York University (partly in person and partly online) that exposed me to digital mechanics and "How"s of marketing in this space.

Now that I have people working with me on our digital team, I'm glad I can infuse their work paths with this same value. As strategic planners, we need to have a handle on new technologies and a working understanding of new behaviors created as a result of interaction in this space.

Digital is completely new and thus requires some amount of study and critical thinking - could be informal, could be at a school, but serious digital practitioners need to put the time in to understanding the space. And as things are constantly changing, we must study, re-tool and re-fresh continuously.

digital by design

My high school aspiration was to become a graphic designer. I played with Adobe PageMaker a lot and tried my hand through our high school newspaper and yearbook. Interning at a design firm taught me the importance of knowing WHY. Why this color, that font, these columns. Nothing frivolous, as our supervisors would certainly demand the rationale behind a chosen arrangement of elements.

I thought I could practice graphic design within advertising, my college focus. As an ad agency intern, however, I learned that agency art direction is pretty different, more about impact than typography or color theory. It was not the kind of design I wanted to practice, yet I have spent the last five years in this industry.

My advertising focus has been digital marketing. Our work must not only disrupt, but educate, guide and lead to action. As a strategic planner, I feel that this discipline marries the creative function of divergent thinking to find new solutions while directing communication toward an end-goal achievement or “conversion.” This is something I thankfully get to practice and teach everyday. I see my team as a stealthy group of Information Designers who set directions that steer our creative output not toward (just) flash or attention, but usability, clarity, relevance and function.

It may sound like I sacrificed my design dreams by staying in advertising, but it is has become clear over the years that what I enjoyed most about graphic design was its problem-solving focus through directed creativity. I may not be practicing the way I originally projected but I am realizing my design aspirations in ways I never expected.

---

That was the autobiographical statement in my application to Parsons School of Design Strategies. Though the school's equity is founded in fashion (thank you, Project Runway), its offerings span a holistic design expertise including Architecture, Urban and Environmental design, Interiors and Product Design.

A new offering: Business Design, specifically for those in the design and creative industries.

I have been looking for my next educational venture since completing a Digital Marketing certificate at New York University. It felt like it was time to move from mechanical (the how's) into conceptual thinking (the why's) to figure out the principles that drive not just the digital space but digital business. It comes at a great time, as it looks like most ad agencies are doing various forms of restructuring in order to "integrate" with, around, and through the new media landscape. Maybe this way I'll find some ideas about the best way to do that.

Class starts this week, hopefully, if I can submit all my records so that they will finally allow me to pick my classes. I've come across so many new questions about our work in the last few years and this should be one way to formulate a few answers. Am very excited!

Here we go.

technology crafts

Spent a few days in the tech wonderland that is Tokyo, a city that is so high-tech that it doesn't feel tech at all. If that makes sense. Nothing flashy or even that many touch screens, just tech embedded into daily life - mobile phones while commuting, to pay for the train rides, to open up promo codes and coupons, to buy a softdrink, cup of coffee, pack of cigarettes. Anywhere.

What is clear is that the infrastructure, specifically mobile, has slowly but surely been built into the structures of their everyday lives - trains, convenience stores. And while that has been inspiring and amazing to see, I haven't quite figured out the actionable learning for a city like Manila or a country like the Philippines. We are social, sure, but that happened in spite of a crappy telephony infrastructure. So how do we create value-add mobile solutions when there is nothing to build on? 

Just came across a TED talk about technology crafts:

Two-thirds of the world may not have access to the latest smartphone, but local electronic shops are adept at fixing older tech using low-cost parts. Vinay Venkatraman explains his work in "technology crafts," through which a mobile phone, a lunchbox and a flashlight can become a digital projector for a village school, or an alarm clock and a mouse can be melded into a medical device for local triage.

Maybe there is hope after all.

Hollywood says? This is the Philippines

The Philippines is blipping on the global radar (by "global" I of course mean American). But in true Filipino fashion, our Hollywood-ized identity is confused and a little bi-polar.

GRITTY.
Earlier this year, blockbuster production The Bourne Legacy was shot in several locations around Manila. Facebook and Twitter were abuzz with celebrity arrivals (from leads Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz, who star in the film, to Weisz's beau Daniel Craig), shooting schedules and casting calls for extras. When the trailer was released (below), we were all excited to see that Manila was featured prominently, replete with chubby cops, shanties and our iconic jeepney. I don't know how many people stopped to consider that the film actually portrays our city as an ideal escape for Americans on the run. The film wasn't shot here only to be billed as some other third-world country. It is absolutely, clearly, iconically the Philippines. 



QUIRKY.
On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, we have a glorious product "innovation" that could only have hailed from the Philippines. KFC has started offering a cheese top burger. Yes, a CHEESE TOP BURGER! Somehow, this is not a joke. Where does the wrapper go? How does anyone eat this? Is a sandwich made without meat still a burger? I can't imagine who came up with this, how it got approved and produced. Surely someone along the line would have realized what a ridiculous product it is? But it is actually available as a "Streetwise" offer and is so preposterous that it was recently featured in a Jimmy Kimmel's sketch.





From our gritty streets to a quirky product, the Philippines is all over the map in terms of Hollywood's assigned / derived imagery. Though I guess it wouldn't be possible to wrap up our personality in a neat little package. But you have to admit, this is a little confusing.

Maybe what we need to remember is that, with our world-class athletes, singers and internationally spread blue- and white-collar professionals (domestic helpers, nurses, teachers, entertainers, salespeople, etc.) and the unending string of American celebrities that have made it out here to be featured on our cityscape billboards, we are quickly gaining a voice in the world/American pop culture stage. Even our food is supposedly the next hot international cuisine. But with our massive representation on social media, through Twitter hashtags and user-generated YouTube videos, we get to set the agenda. We can shape how the world sees us. What that image will eventually add up to be, only time will tell.

ballet stretch

After getting addicted to a certain reality show, I've really started to appreciate all sorts of dance. And what better expression for Levi's stretch jeans than ballet? Gorgeous.



Watching this made me wonder, What was the brief?
It doesn't seem to be the most complicated leap to go from a product feature like "jeans that stretch" to a proposition of "the most flexible, graceful dancers can dance in them". Which made me wonder what the creative brief was. Did the client call out stretch as the best feature? Or was than an agency recommendation? It makes me wonder if dance/ballet was the creative leap or if the planner included that in the proposition.

Or is that the trademark of great creative work - so (both) clear and captivating tat you think that the idea practically wrote itself? Then again, this probably isn't the first time a brand has used dance to demonstrate the flexibility. So is the brilliance in the execution? Gorgeous music, storytelling within a simple narrative, excellent casting, a strategic partnership as credibility?


Or is the real lesson here that planners generally overthink?

Understanding Designer

My mom is amazing. She is a teacher by profession and she is, I am convinced, the best teacher in the world. She was encouraging and loving yet tough on us as we were growing up, like many moms I'm sure. But the best thing she has given us is a lifelong attitude for finding joy in learning. That the pursuit of knowledge and finding applications for anything we read or studied could be a pleasure and passion in itself.

From my mom's example, I know what it means to be a good teacher - understanding concepts and subject matter so well that you could break it down and re-assemble it in a way that would make it easy to understand. Not like those teachers who only knew how to read out loud from the text book, or the ones that handed out A's for memorization. Even if her own specialization is Math, my mom could teach us any subject we were having difficulty with because she knew how to extract the essential understandings and teach those to us instead of the formulas or facts that our teachers were dishing out. From her own understanding of French, which she speaks (formally) pretty fluently, she explained to me language structure and was able to teach me Spanish. With not nearly as much knowledge, but complete understanding.

Even if I work in a completely different field, I feel like our work is now very similar. She needs to get people to understand concepts, I need to get people to understand brands X, Y and Z. Not just to know that they exist, but why they matter. What I would venture to call both of us is Understanding Designers - not just purveyors of information (academic facts for her, market data for me), but strategists for essential understanding.

And lately I think it has been my turn to infuse her understanding through my knowledge of the digital space. Even if she is pushing 60 and is completely devoid of any social media accounts, she is well aware of the changes happening in the education world, in students' world as a result of digital, and the possibilities now available to facilitate and operationalize learning. She opens many breakfasts, when I am usually still half asleep and unwilling to enter any intellectual conversations, with questions like, "What are the big ideas of digital?" - that seem too big to answer but do me the valuable service of helping me processing this space that I try to be fully engaged in.

It seems futile to answer a question like that about a space that changes too fast, in too many variables to even be aware of. But maybe the trick is to distill into essential concepts... That, guided by my mom's great questions, I one day I hope to be able to answer for myself.

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.