courtesy of JesseWarren from Flickr
Mike Follett is a great British guy who works at Tribal DDB. When I was in NYC we had a quick chat at an ING Direct store drinking a coffee and sharing ideas about our planning activity. I was curious to know more about his work once he moved from account planning to digital planning and how he experienced it.
Instead of talking about the relationship between people and technology, he talked about people and brands and people and their interests. His perspective about the experience was and is rich and I’ll put it in two terms: first, the thing is about people; second, it’s about creating value for them.
People do not divide the lines. Their interests and needs are the driving force behind how they behave concerning technology. Understanding people is the currency for the planner, be it on analog or digital space. This is how Mike adds in the process, for instance, not just throwing his insights, but knowing and predicting what kind of ideas connects to people’s interests on the digital space.
What leads to the second idea, about giving people something that will make part of their natural activities. And I’m not (as he wasn’t) talking about huge digital platforms or huge big ideas, but anything that could mean something to a specific group of consumers.
To exemplify that, Mike told me about a project they did in which the client had to connect to teen girls and they created a series of messenger gimmicks for them to use on their daily chats. Big idea? No. Meaningful idea? Hell yes.
I would say that these two points made by Mike are part of a conversational approach. One in which people has to be put as the main part so brands could really participate in.
