Curious to learn how other advertising agencies structure this discipline and thought process internally, I headed down to New Orleans to attend the first ever Connection Planning conference to find out.
The conference was titled “Polygamous Weddings” a suitable name considering we were all there to “celebrate the union” of three departments — Strategy, Media and Creative.
The conferences were hosted by a “brand studio” called Trumpet, an agency in New Orleans, that commenced the day by stating that our obligation to our clients is not to simply advertise to people, but rather to connect with people.
The speakers included a diverse mix of people from a range of companies, including traditional advertising agencies, digital agencies, communication planning agencies, design shops, brand studios, consultants and media properties.
It was a day filled with sincere, provocative and passion-filled presentations that each lasted a maximum of 20 minutes. There was a willingness to share ideas and tools with one another in ways never seen before. Agencies “invited” us to go to their “back rooms” and reveal how they’ve adopted this discipline.
One of the boldest speakers was Lisa Seward of Mod Communications. “Connection Planning is starting with the REAL problem,” she said. “Yesterday, media budgets were used to ‘buy an audience’. Today it’s about developing actionable ideas that attract audiences to your brand - investing in ideas that bring people to your brand. Many agencies are tired of being asked for ‘New Media’ opportunities. Connection Planning today is the New Creative. New Creative means that ideas are the medium, not the message and not the media channel. However, media channel recommendations can’t be absent from the idea,” she explained.
Today, Connection Planning is a marriage between media, creative and account planning. Its specialty is “invention” and its deliverable is “actionable ideas”.
There is a shift from the creation of a message to the creation of content. Connection Planning is a protocol to ensure different creative output that doesn’t have to always stem from the creative department. In her mind, giving a team or an individual the title of Connection Planning misses the point — as it’s a way of thinking, free of titles, job descriptions and processes.
The Zeus Jones Company, which approaches communication strategy as a service, also brought forth a unique perspective on how they connect brands with people. Considering that many people who live in major metropolitan cities across the United States are exposed to over 3,000 messages every day, people have become good at looking past the messages that bombard us, and instead focus on real experiences and interactions with brands they want in their lives. Knowing that brand interactions are more powerful to many people than traditional branding communications, Zeus Jones focuses on designing interactions instead of designing communications.
Another arresting approach came from how Modernista, an independent ad agency, approaches Connection Planning. The agency practices the philosophy that there is no such thing as “the big idea”. Brand and product advertising should not exist in only one medium or consumer touchpoint. If brands are like molecules, each with a multitude of various consumer touch points and interactions, then why do companies create only one or two touch points and expect instant success?After all was said and done, there was one point that stuck with me — replacing the word “integration” with the word “interaction”. Many companies want to run an integrated marketing campaign. The issue with this approach is that too much time and effort is spent on the media mix, while ignoring the real business or marketing problem, as mentioned earlier. Instead, companies should be thinking about the interaction between the things a brand does and stands for, and how people can interact with the brand and its products.
By Marc Allen
Connections Planning Manager, Cheil USA
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