The older I get, the more I feel disconnected to the advertising industry.
Actually let’s be more specific …
The older I get, the more I feel disconnected to the planning industry.
Before I begin, I need you to watch this …
That clip is the first part in a series the great guys at PSFK have pulled together and whilst there are a whole heap of very clever guys on it – all making interesting comment – I can’t help but feel Piers words right at the very beginning, are the most accurate and appropriate.
“I don’t know what planning is or really does”
He’s so bloody right.
A while back I made a comment on some blog about why I thought Daddy NP was a brilliant planner and in short, it was because he was working outside of London in an agency that didn’t have the most glam of clients.
My main point was that all the odds were against him, but with tenacity, passion, intelligence and sheer bloody action, he made them not only value it, but care.
Now here’s the thing … whilst I am in awe at many of the planners out there, I can’t help but feel there’s too many who are basically just lazy.
They don’t leave their desk … they don’t ever try stuff … they don’t explore or interact with the real side of life … they just sit there, talking about the latest theory they read in someone’s book/ blog/magazine then either complain that they are not getting the acclaim they feel they deserve and/or bitch about how the creatives are not doing what they were told.
A while back, as part of a project I/we were doing, I asked people to answer some questions about their personal employment situation.
We did this mini-survey across a multitude of industries and yet the answers were the same.
Regardless of whether people liked or disliked their bosses, in the main, they didn’t want their bosses job as it currently stood –because they felt it involved things they didn’t want to do.
Hahahahaha!
What a bunch of entitled little Prince and Princesses we have in the World.
Of course everyone wants glory but there’s way too many out there who want to achieve it with minimum effort.
The irony of this attitude is that I truly believe you cannot truly feel achievement if you haven’t gone through some pain to get it … so in my theory, it means we have a generation of planners who will either never achieve the acclaim they seek and/or believe they are justified to have … or they will get, it but never truly appreciate it because they’ve just had it easy.
Fuck me, I’m ranting like a 90 year old aren’t I!
One of the best things about living/working in Asia is that there is no real ‘planning culture’.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some truly great planners out here, but because the Asian business dynamic is ‘do’ rather than ‘say’ – we have to, like NP – prove our worth on a daily basis as opposed to just getting together and ‘naval gazing’ and/or ‘back slapping’ like so many in Western markets do.
Of course not every planner in the West is like this … just like not every planner or client in Asia is how I’ve described either … however as much as I pray at the feet of the wonderful and clever Gareth, I have to say I don’t quite agree with his comment that clients don’t know how to use planners correctly because ultimately we – as a discipline and an industry – have allowed this to happen and unless we take action so they – and people like Piers – see/hear/feel what we do [and as a byproduct LEARN how to get the best out of us], then it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets worse.
Too many planners have the ego and pretention of Bono, but at least the Irish fuck does stuff rather than just talks about it – I hope more in adland takes note.