Evan Carroll

Good morning. We’re starting today with Mark Earls on stage presenting “Making More of the Date Hydrant.”

Now talking about how planners ate responsible for making sense of data for clients and how much data is available.

If you’re doing strategy, you need big conclusions. For tactics, you need small, detailed conclusions.

Big pattern spotting: when looking at a huge dataset, we tend to look a molecules instead of understanding the big pattern.

Pattern spotting: Is your audience shaped by independent choice or copying others?

Short tail distribution of sales vs. rank is an independent choice. A long tail is a sign of copying others.

In terms of sales over time, independent choice is a diminishing curve and social influence is a bell curve.

Talking about Bentley and Ormerod’s studies of name popularity in the US. Showing a celebrity effect on the name Tricia vs. a social effect on the name Kristi.

The shape of the data is what you need to understand it, not how high the numbers go.

Human-shaped data. Humans are bad at interpreting numbers.

Showing a visualization of several data series over time, presented simply in a way that people understand.

Presenting data differently allows people to engage with it emotionally.

Data stories – use data as fuel for a story.

Discussing how we need to enjoy our work. Clients can tell when we’re frustrated.

Now on to a case study for The National HIV Council from Jonas Nyvang.

Learned that they needed to talk with the community, not to them and offer interesting content. The client was also willing to push boundaries.

Note: This was the National HIV Council in Sweden.

Decided to avoid facts as that sounded like “big brother. Wanted to be personal. Also chose to be graphic.

They used a Facebook app to show a tree of sexual partners. Made it human by using photos of friends in the tree.

EC: That’s daring. And the video they’re showing right now is quite graphic.

Heading into workshops now. I’m going into one on “Lean Planning.”

Lean Planning is comparing planning to lean startups, fighting the waterfall model of software development.

It’s easy to talk about being lean, but it’s really hard to be lean.

Lean startup thinking is full of jargon. Let’s avoid that in talking about lean planning.

Agencies aren’t built to be lean. No surprise that we don’t have lean agencies. But all agencies sound lean in a pitch, but then you win and it’s back to a waterfall process.

Our business is ads. Client orders. Agencies design. Vendors execute.

Advertising is complicated. Lots of people involved. Lots of twisted connections.

Agencies get fired for bad strategy, bad creative or bad service, for the most part.

Business is complicated. Agencies rarely think about the big picture of business and often have short-sighted strategy.

Research is often used for support, but not for actual, actionable insight.

We need to start asking clients, “What do you actually want?”

Economic buyer is the client. End user is the consumer. We have to design for both.

We need to focus. How do we seek an effective campaign model with as little waste as possible? How do we create a minimal utility or experience that can create the most impact for our clients?

Less like Don Draper and more like Gregory House. Figure out the REAL problem and how to solve it. The brief is not the product.

We assumed that the client was right about their audience and what they want to sell. But we don’t test these hypotheses and create real value. Then we get fired for bad strategy.

Research doesn’t have to be a science.

First develop a vision. Clearly articulated. Big enough to matter. And shared by everyone.

Then figure out what parts of that vision are based in reality. That’s the brief.

What are we trying to do? Who do we think will do this? Why will they case and do they care enough to act? How will we know when we win?

Step One: start guessing. Generate hypotheses about how customers live their lives and what matters to them.

Commit to your guesses. Be transparent about the hypotheses and get ready to test them. Figure out exactly what success will look like?

How often do we come up with marketing ideas that are also a part of the business?

Step two: Talk to people. About 5-10 people. Not in a facility and through a recruiter. It’s not market research, it’s just for getting information and validating ideas. After 3 people prioritize the top three issues, after five you’ve heard 85%, so change your questions. Remember it’s about learning.

Prepare to be wrong. You’ll be wrong more often than not. Be honest. Are these really your customers? Don’t talk to die-hard iPhone users about Android. Does our problem really exist? Are they really making considered, individual decisions?

It’s not market research. It’s pressure testing our ideas.

Have a reality check with your client and know when you need to start over.

Know when it’s time to make stuff. How do planners make stuff?

It’s an unfinished prototype that’s enough for people to react to. Drawing or description. A sketch and a few sentences.

Get these things in front of some people and let them provide feedback.

The goal is not perfection. It’s the minimum product that makes the most difference and can react to. Deploy something that you can test and learn from.

Pivot: Know when you need to change direction. Avoid the local maxima and move to a new idea when it’s the right time.

Now we’re transitioning into an activity. Going offline for a bit, perhaps until after lunch.

Now hearing about the branding of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas who built the profile of “The Curious Class” as their target. Client embraced the concept and wrapped the entire hotel experience around it.

Their idea, “Just The Right Amount of Wrong,” brings class back to the stereotypical Vegas experience.

I skipped out on the five-minute presentations and now we’re on to talking innovation with Google, which is the last session of the conference.

Google showing their “Dear Sophie Lee” video. Shows the human side of Google’s products and services.

EC: I love this.

Google showing their “Dear Sophie Lee” video. Shows the human side of Google’s products and services.

EC: I love this.

Companies like Facebook and Google are helping us curate of lives for posterity.

15% of Google queries are brand new, or the first time that phrase was searched on Google.

We’re wrapping up here. That was a great presentation from Google.