Tattooed You

Is it me or have tattooes become so widespread that that they are due to go out of style any minute now?. Thanks to the low riding jean phenom, we can now see that every third women has a tattoo on her lower back. Guys tend to be a little more covered up - but a lot more people seem to have them (the Palms casino in Vegas has a tattoo parlor right next to the craps table, but I guess that's not saying much). Even better, the quality and imagination put into the tattos is pretty amazing.

It may be easy to say that all this inking has coincided with the populist rise of more punk influenced music (starting with grunge) - to show they belong to that (or a few other) sub-cultures. Or that it is just another example of peoples needing to make a defiant statement to society - to self-express or individualize in a world where towns, stores, workplaces, brands and products are more ubiquitous and identical.

But they may be a different reason. Myabe there is no in depth meaning -no statement of rebellion. Most people say they their tattoo just looks damn good. Lets face it, we live in a society where faith in politics, media etc. is at rock bottom. Most people feel there isn't a point making a bigger statement - they are powerless. So why not just do something for themselves.

Anyway, should a fit of nihilism take hold of you this little viral idea will help you find out which one is right for you.

agencies don't need planners

I put this title up there to be provocative. Maybe it should have been: "why clients need planners more than agencies." But making the title provocative illustrates the point I want to make: that what planning can do best these days is make marketing strategy creative and facilitate the creation of big branding ideas. And that may not have anything to do with advertising.

I think all planners would agree we're way past the "voice of the consumer" label. And one big reason for this is that research reveals less and less about so many product categories. Of course there are issues with research we are all trying to sort out: consumers are bad at projecting forward, research is artificial blah blah blah. But we have ways around this that we are experimenting with - by listening in on conversations, being part of things, observing people etc.

Research reveals less because we live in a world of product parity, where sub-conscious habits drive a lot of behavior. So the insights into how people use the product are not as interesting. Sure - where there are new categories or category changing products then there are insights to be had. But the insights exist at a cultural societal level as much at a product one.

OK - so what you say: you're a planner, you're job is to meld this together to put an interesting creative spin on the boring insight you have. To which I reply, that this is ignoring the elephant in the room. The world is full of parity products with parity marketing strategies. Wouldn't planning best be served at the client level. Energizing product development, marketing etc. departments with cultural bservations, creative startegy ideas, big purposeful brands etc? Isn't it much harder to be relevant to consumers with just advertising than it is with the product and advertising together. As they say, npthing makes adveritsing fail more than a bad product.

This is not to excuse bad ads. But at a time of immense cynicism about marketing nothign works better than the real deal - a good product that does something cool. ipod ads are great but Starbucks Google, Whole foods and other iconic brands were built with gerat products, not great ads. The best creatives are good strategists and can come up with cool twists on little observations (did a planner really help come up with: "the slag of all snacks" for Pot Noodle in the UK - maybe?)

The earlier planning starts in the process the better. Unfortunately, agency power has slipped over the years so we don't have those kinds of relationships. And MBA educated clients shun the kind of intuition we cherish. But hope springs eternal - Coke, Nike, Nokia have all just hired planners. Is this the future?