What is Planning: 4

Planning is about commercially astute and consumer-relevant ‘zigging’ when everyone else is ‘zagging’.

A few examples spring to mind:

Dove’s campaign for real beauty showed normal ladies in their unsexy knickers when just about every other product showed airbrushed models at their unnaturally most beautiful.

Lurpak made its ads all about good food when pretty much every other butter went on about the taste or the fat content of their particular butter.

Old Spice’s new TV commercial (aired first during the 2010 Superbowl) for body wash communicated directly to women about the men of their dreams, rather than appealing to men’s masculinity and magnetism with the ladies.

Compare the Market created a meerkat when all the other comparison sites were merely trying to shout louder about the money saving value of their particular site. In that case, all the other sites are now trying to ‘zig’ too, but when they all do it, it’s still just ‘zagging’.

There’s loads more, but I’m sure you get the point.

From Citizen Child to Influential Customer

This is not a political blog. But the prevailing climate that we live in undoubtedly impacts on consumers’ – all of our – attitudes, beliefs and feelings.  Banking and politics seem little more than legitimatised criminal activities; people in power have deceived the public over matters of war and torture; public taxes are squandered on projects the public sees little benefit from; the man in the street fears teenage thugs, and innocent people standing up for their property rights are the ones that get arrested. Just this week, one of London’s police Commanders was convicted of misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice.

I myself a have an uncomfortable feeling of being what I can only describe as a citizen child. The kind of child that grew up in a strict home – none of this modern day democracy-family style parenting. Where the mother said do as I say not as I do, and the father expected children to be seen (pay taxes) but not heard (best interests ignored). A confused child who didn’t fully understand the dictatorial and double-standards parenting they were subjected to. Only result: frustrating powerlessness.

So I think the ‘Windows 7 was my idea’ campaign by Microsoft is extremely relevant and, in its own way, empowering for consumers.

(The example above is just one of a series) I don’t know whether this sentiment influenced the campaign at all, or whether Microsoft as a market oriented organisation took users’ views into account when developing the product (which I am sure they did) and just wanted to the agency to communicate their approach.

The brief could have been:

Communicate how user-centric new Windows 7 is

Or it could have been:

The average man in the street distrusts pretty much every powerful institution in the world right now, with good reason. Microsoft itself is such a powerful institution and its had its fair share of negative publicity around abuse of power in recent years. To launch this product, we have a real opportunity to tap into consumers’ need to be acknowledged and listened to, and we have a product truth in that Microsoft actually did listen to customers in developing the new version of Windows.

Same essential message, but the first brief could have lead to work with a very different, and possibly less empathetic, execution.

But that’s not where it ends. I would be interested to know how the ads were received by the average software purchaser. Because I think brands have a huge opportunity to tap into this citizen child feeling and really GENUINELY engage their customers by GENUINELY putting their opinions on a bit of a pedestal. Customer forums, user panels, discussion boards, even crowd sourcing it’s nothing new, it’s just a lot more relevant today. The examples are also not related to specific products, brands, customer groups or situations. Every brand should find its own unique way to best help customers feel empowered, influential and back in control. My bet, however, is that the solutions aren’t going to be found in a TV ad. Rather, this is where digital can really add a new dimension to brands defining themselves in their customers minds.