Thinking collectively.
Because I work in a small company with no research library or resources and because this is a blog, I can make (possibly) spurious claims with little or no substantiation and then wait for someone with more resources publishing for a real journal to come along and tell me I’m wrong.
So here goes: I think that the collective intelligence of the planning community has taken a massive leap forwards in the last few years. It has gone from a discipline that gave (perhaps too much) reverence to the giants that created it, to one that has built its own fresh understanding of the world and the possibilities for marketing and communications within it.
From Russell’s thinking about complexity, to John’s new model of brands, to Mark’s ideas on social behavior; our collective awareness and consciousness has been expanded dramatically. Because they have been generous enough to share with all of us, and because they have inspired us to share in turn, we have leapt forward at an astonishing rate. I believe that the understanding planners have today is unique within the industry. While, many are still grinding their teeth and losing sleep over how to deal with fragmentation, etc. etc. planners have moved on.
For some reason, Rob and I were given the dubious honor of presenting The Future of Planning at the AAAA account planning conference in San Diego next week. If we manage to escape without embarrassing ourselves too much, it’s because we build upon the work of a new set of giants and are informed by the collective intelligence of hundreds of others who have generously shared their thinking on top.
Hope to see you there.