Creating tools for doing.
Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eliazar/
Regular readers may know that I have a huge fondness for tools and models, however, in my experience, this has been a somewhat unpopular position to hold in the planning and strategy community. Many planners I know run screaming from anything vaguely model-like because it, “limits creativity” or “binds you to some rigid inflexible process” that “always leads to the same answers.”
I must admit, I used to say the same things but over time I realised that NOT using tools is a much surer way to limit creativity or deliver the same answers and that the right tools will ensure that you ALWAYS end up in a more interesting place than you were before.
For me, tools are ways to turn philosophy into action. A great example of this is the tool Brad uses for identity design.
The idea of this is that a great identity is a visual story about the brand. That it brings together essential and important ideas about the brand into a holistic and visually appealing way. That it tells a story. In the above example, this was the model he used for one of our early clients ImmunoViva. On each axis are the ideas that we had decided were important parts of the brand. The idea is to work through the various iterations and combinations of ideas, drop + shield, drop + seed, human + IV, etc. The important part of this is that this isn’t just a tool that’s used to develop the identity, it’s also a tool that’s used to explain the identity to clients. So rather than telling clients we want their identity to tell a story we simply work through this exercise with them and avoid the philosophical discussion and focus, instead, on the work.
I tried a similar thing on an Audi pitch that I worked on in my last days at Fallon.
The goal was to turn Audi into a modern brand, a brand that brings its values to life in unexpected and surprising ways, rather than simply making everything it does build to one simple idea. The last thing I wanted to do was to have a philosophical discussion about modern brands with anyone so I created this magnetic poetry-like brand model that could be taken apart and recombined in different ways. The idea was we could express performance + craftmanship + sophistication in one area and maybe design + progress + authenticity in another area. These would lead you in very different places yet could still be reconciled to the larger idea of Audi.
Some tools are more successful than others and it’s important (I think) to continually evaluate the tools one uses to see if they’re still relevant and productive but I think the absence of tools is even more damaging. In today’s world where there are so many opinions and philosophies about how to develop great marketing and great brands, the need for tools is even greater. I think we as strategists and new marketing thinkers need to translate our lofty ideas and thinking into practical tools that anyone and everyone can use. It is much more difficult to describe hammering in a nail than it is to pick up a hammer. I believe the same is true for how to market and brand your company in today’s confusing and high-tech world.
What are your thoughts?
