a way forward

Over the last two days, Gareth and I have been throwing out the ideas in this slide show at the AAAA planning conference. A big thanks to everyone who came and especially to those who asked questions. Our whole motive was to provoke discussion so please keep pushing and arguing with us on this stuff. We threw out a lot of ideas (and a fair bit of theory) but hopefully engaged folks enough to try some of it out.

What we were talking about was the need for a very different model in marketing and some suggestions about what that could be- something that embraces uncertainty and randomness, is humble, that is less focused on messaging and more on a social mission. But we certainly were not the only ones thinking in this way.

Mark , Domenico Vitale, Adrian Ho and Rob White and others were all (in different ways) talking about changing the way we work. Collectively we seem to be landing in a place where marketing:

- is built on belief and passion
- does something useful as opposed to saying stuff
- is focused on building brand energy and is therefore more complex
- embraces the small not just the big
- recognizes that the way people interact is more important than how they are as individuals
- uses the notion of the behavior meme

In a really useful chat with Mark and and Jason after the session, we got round to the idea that maybe marketing needs to be treated like R&D (vs. say sales) in order to do this.

I got a chance to see some of Mark's brilliant session and view on all the above today. He really brought home the point to me about getting out there - ideally in the most fun way possible - rather than tying to create some road to Damascus conversion. We are after all, according to mark, in the circus business, not health care.

I also got to see Adam Morgan speak about new ways to see opportunity. It serves a great reminder that we all have myopia because we don't question enough assumptions. One lovely point/example was the idea that a micro target can be an opportunity to shape the future of the industry. Specifically, an epee (fencing sword) designed for disabled people was so much better it became the standard sword used by all fencers.

This has been one of the better planning conferences not necessarily because of the main stage speakers, but because of the discussions hat came from the break outs. Now the challenge is to go and live this and keep learning.