Market vs Culture

Basically, the real key difference between the "Old School" & "New School" planning & advertising is the following core belief:


"Old School"            >>>         "New School"

Believes that              >>>          Believes that
brands operate in markets         brands operate in culture


Now, you're probably used to planning blogs glorifying "the new way" as the substitute of "the old way". That's not what I'm trying to say here. Kant doesn't substitute Plato.
Practically, if you work in the UK for British clients, which I don't , you should embrace "the new school" every now and then. If you work somewhere else - e.g. in Germany -  it's healthier for your bottom line & new business to think of brands as operating in markets and being a means to sell products:-)
Same difference could be drawn between different businesses you work for. Etc. 

Of course the two views overlap all the time. Markets are embedded in culture and all that. You could also mix the two views. But then my headline loses "vs". And I like "vs".

Learning from Planning Cases

 Planning & communications are often seen as art rather than science. And it's absolutely true. (Though this implies a slightly wrong picture of science as unimaginative and repetitive in its methods.)

Taking on from here I have been thinking about how "art" is tought. Not "art hostory" but art itself. As far as I can see, it's tought through letting people make art and then criticizing it, and secondly through making people look at art - no, rather see art. For some art forms there naver has been any other form of learning than through looking. For instance in hip hop spraying when it took off. You simply looked at what others did and went on from there.

The first method is exactly what we do in an agency all the time: we let people simply "do strategy" and then criticize it - if we get money for this, we call it "workshop" or "bootcamp". The second method would be to let them read case studies. It's hard to find authentic cases studies with little retrospective rationalising. But it actually doesn't matter if they have been polished or claimed by planners though it was a creative's idea, etc. It's like with fine art - very often we actually do not know how and who painted those pictures (There are around 12 versions of my favourite painting ba El Greco.Most of them not made by El Greco but by his pupils. Mozart's Requiem might be not composed by Mozart himself but by a "Junior in his team"- seriously, he was too sick at that time. This doesn't matter much, his apprentice must have studies Mozart's "case studies" pretty well.) We also don't know how messy the process has been in reality. (Lots of paintings have 3 layers of paint - hiding different versions and the artists insecurity.) Doesn't matter, it's the brillance of the result that will influence us.

So this is it: case studies, or rather "study cases!". It's hard to get them, I know. Here's just one link that could help. SOME CASES HERE. There are probably other sources out there. I wouldn't go for the Effie cases and prefer planning cases dealing with planners' insights and ideas.

By the way: can anyone help me out with the APG UK awarded cases/papers? I don't have any WARC access any longer:-(

The Birth Of A Grand Strategist By Waqar Riaz

Check out this SlideShare Presentation.
It contains rather "classic" planning frameworks - esp.the JWT planning model from 1974 -  starting from the middle of the presentation (after the "planning-is-like XYZ"-talk). Lots of interesting details in that one. Thank you, Waqar Riaz
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