I totally agree with what you and Anjali say about thinking in terms of digital or channels. I probably should have made it more clear but I’m definitely arguing for a non-silo approach where digital isn’t a separate channel, it is just part of what we do (if it needs to be).

I’ve been doing some trends work for 2010 recently and arguing that it’s not social media any more, it’s certainly not new media (!) any more, and it isn’t even digital any more. It’s just ideas, experiences, engagement and conversations.

Real people don’t know what “media” really is or the granular differences between online and offline media, user generated or publisher content.

Almost one in three Britons listen to the radio online, according to Rajar, if you ask them what they’re doing they’ll just say “listening to the radio”, just like all those “timeshifting online video watchers” will say “Err, I’m watching TV” as they use BBC iPlayer.

People don’t care what your platform is, whether it is online or offline, Facebook or Ning, open-source or proprietory, they just care what it does and how well it does it.

It’s not digital to them, it’s just life.

I wrote this week on this, in a post called “I’ve got a new job…and so do you:”

http://take5interactive.com/wordpress/?p=534

I was working for an “interactive agency” that now wants to become more of a “marketing agency.” I disagree, and quit this week.

It’s time to find the first companies–Amerprise, Autodesk and others are starting the journey–and get to work.

Thanks for the great piece, I’ll quote and credit liberally–RJM

I fully support your emphasis on doing – it’s clear that planning needs to adopt the mantra of less talk, more action.

However, the one challenge I’d make – and it echoes a point that Anjali makes in her comments above – is that we need to stop thinking in terms of ‘digital’, or any other channel silo for that matter.

Channels exist purely in the world of advertising. They confine our thinking to a ‘media menu’ that restricts our ability to connect with the people we want to engage and influence (more on that here).

Instead, we need to begin all our planning in the world of our audiences, and make sure that our subsequent ideas stay true to that world. Non-advertising people don’t delineate their world into what they do on- or offline – to them, it’s all just part of their life – and we need to see things that way too.

If we want to connect with people, we need to engage them on their terms: speak their language, do things they can understand quickly and easily, and wherever possible, show them that we’re on their side. Our greatest opportunity is to find out where the things we want to share with people are most relevant, and then decide how to share them in that context. If that means developing an entirely new ‘medium’, then we need to be open to that. TV, press, digital etc. are simply means to an end, and they’re not the only choices we have.

In a similar way, I think another key challenge for planning is to align itself more closely with creative teams and their processes. As you so rightly point out, our ideas mean nothing unless they actually come to life, and even though planning plays a vital role in making brand communications more effective, we’ve got to communicate better with our internal audiences first if we want to see those ideas have any impact. Our contribution to those creative teams should be focused on offering them new opportunities to bring their ideas to life too – through new connection points and new contexts.

I think your closing comments capture the essence of that beautifully:

“We need to be the most effective people in the room, not the most intelligent.”

Back when I was a Creative Director I used to say that the best interactive creatives were the ones that could instinctively answer a brief but then ask “wouldn’t it be fun if?”.

People that ask “what if” and have a playful feel for “things that are good enough to share”, they seem to produce the best work – as long as it delivers against a real business (not necessarily a comms) need.

People like this are hard to find as individuals, they’re even harder to find as whole agencies.

These days I think that this should really be the collaborative DNA of an agency, and especially the strategy department who can hopefully see the challenge from the widest perspective across the silos. This is how we can add true value and get access to the top decision-markers who influence the direction of client organisations.

Then we can help create real change and results.

Because a killer design doesn’t open bank accounts, sell more milkshakes, etc.

Its been my experience that digital shops, before they became too “Web site / online ad” focused, approached clients with an open, free of pre-determined solution, mindset. They usually approach a client engagement with strategy, user experience and architecture folks who didn’t see a web site, they saw a solution to a business problem.

And for that a planner’s role in the new normal should be to ensure that a tactic isn’t considered unless it accomplishes the objective of the client. Instead of hearing, or even briefing “I need a TV spot” it should be “the client needs to sell 300,000 more shoes this quarter. and then be part of the solution team to figure out how that could happen.

Some agencies have become high-level consellers, joining the ranks of the McKinsey’s and Accentures of the world. And those shops, like BBH Labs, Farenehit 212 and Naked, even Interbrand, are all planning and strategy driven firms, who open the world to all sorts of possibilities.

A few good thoughts floating around this post. For me, the key ones are how planning needs to be more about doing – shifting the role of the planner from pre-idea to a complete circle that only ends with the finished product – and even then it may not end, because we need to generate ideas to continue the audience’s engagement with the product/brand.

The other thing I think is important and very much a part of our roles as planners now: is “recognising relationships that are already there or that can be created when two disparate facts/conditions come together”, as you say. It’s the most fun aspect of what I do, and something I notice isn’t easy to find in too many people. Making those connections is important, it’s the way we can help a client distinguish themselves from others due to our unique contribution. The connections I make between two distinct things is likely to be very different from the connections someone else makes, and so the ultimate product may be quite different depending on which planner works on the project. So yes, maintaining “the deep dive, research methodology of good strategic planning and insight generation” as you say is important.

I don’t think we should worry about the definition of strategy and planning: each person’s definition is likely to be different depending on what kind of planning they do (research/insight, consumer, connections, engagement, propagation etc etc). The ultimate aim is that we are the ideas people – and the role of an ideas person never ends really. As a human being, I still make connections between random things I see when I walk around – it doesn’t necessarily relate to what my day job is. The idea could be digital, or it may not. Its a reflection of the way we as a society are evolving that it is often digital.

We have had digital marketing around now for nearly fifteen years (I count 95 as the birth of the industry and it was also the year I entered it as well). Since that time various boutiques have grown up as markets peaked and dived, so we have web design, email and eCRM, Social Media, Display advertising, Search etc. All of these are fine as tactical solutions but that isn’t what clients are asking for. Clients are asking for someone to come along and start with a bunch of people who have never heard of Brand X and create a journey using digital media (all of it) that moves them along to first purchase, regular purchase, retention and referral. That requirement is for a magent, not a megaphone.

Social Media is a part of that, but it is only a part and it is a tactical part not a strategic part. The strategy is to win more customers, or retain more customers, or win more referrals, or increase customer spend and regularity of purchase.

We launched our digital marketing agency with this very aim in mind a year ago and at the time I used to look out at blank faces as I tried to explain why clients needed a complete solution and not just a ‘web guy’, but as the year has gone on more and more people now look back at me with understanding and agreement on their face, so I am definitely hoping that this is the year that digital finally grows up and stops being led by fads.

Check out this neat little animation explaining the concept of integrated marketing at http://www.cube3marketing.com