By Saurabh Varma
Are you ready for the new world where marketers are slaves to consumers, consumers become creative leaders and planners take on a reactive, not strategic, role?
Having originally conceptualised a “death of planning” article, I must say I am relieved and excited by what I truly think the future holds for planners. Having said that, I do think we are a dying species. Many of us who love understanding consumer behaviour and chase the evasive insight find our world shaken to the core. Our search for truth has actually turned out to be our Achilles’ heel.
Our principle challenge lies at the heart of our fundamental premise, to transcend the specific situation or tactic. For years, our reason for existence was defined by our ability to chaff through the confusion, building long term and hopefully, everlasting strategies. While we were busy honing our skills and developing our tool kits, the consumer and the world changed forever.
At the heart of the argument is the emergence of “The Consumer Incorporated”. User-generated content changed the very bases of economics. Andrew Keen in his controversial book, “The Cult of the Amateur” argues that Web 2.0 has led to the blurring, obfuscation and the flattening of truth. Truth is what each one of us creates for ourselves. Perspective, the one thing agencies owned, is today dictated and shaped by a billion blogs. The thin line between commercial messages and content is getting even thinner. Content is owned, twisted and interpreted in ways we had not bargained for. “Radical trust” and “Authenticity” have become the new buzzwords. Marketing has become a slave to a new consumer who is in absolute control. This consumer is in effect the only gatekeeper in this new world.
Even as the world changed, we struggled with our understanding of touch points, debated the evolution of engagement planning and plotted new ways of understanding behaviour in the digitised world. We carried on, thinking all the time that we still had the power to influence. The planners — supposedly the visionaries — were not leading, they were adapting. And in the process they were losing to the democratised consumer.
My sense is that the new world needs a comprehensive new planning model. It has to start with the right definition of collaboration, or co-creation if you choose to call it that. We will truly have to change the superficial consumer involvement our brands have so far managed with their consumers. Our primary challenge will be finding ways to engineer public involvement. Sure, there are examples around us of brands trying to connect. We know of how Sprite and Jones have featured user-generated artwork on their cans. And of how Boeing is using aviation enthusiasts to develop new models. These are worthy examples. But for me, the challenge remains in how we can unleash citizen creativity. Planners will have to take the mantle of involving the consumer not just in the research and the testing but also in the process of creation. And we will have to do it in the consumers’ terms, not ours. The stories will be told. But they will be of the consumer and through the consumer. The implications of such a move will mean a directorial approach to creativity. Our tools and processes will need to be reengineered to begin and end with the consumer. This would obviously mean challenging the very definition of what we think today as creative champions. Imagine seeing a consumer picking up a Cannes Grand Prix instead of your usual creative director.
Our other challenge will be finding ways of leveraging and managing our brand’s “share of today”. Truth as we know it will be defined and redefined in the blink of an eye. Immediacy will throw opportunities and pains, everyday. The job of a planner will be in maximising the windfalls and minimising the pains. That is the concept of “share of today”. So if MySpace member Christina has one million friends and suddenly counts Axe Deodorant as her favourite, the job of the planner will be in finding ways of maximising this opportunity. The planner will have to be nimble enough to use the fizz created by Coke and Mentos to his brand’s advantage. On the other hand, when your brand gets caught on the wrong side of the stick, like what happened to Pepsi when it sponsored the MySpace comedy page, the planner’s role will be in the way he has planned for the contingencies.
So by definition, the role of the planner will become opportunistic, reactive and tactical. Not strategic. That in my mind will be the biggest change in the role of a planner. Yes, we will still need to understand behaviour and hunt for the insights. The difference will be in the way we do it. It will no longer be about understanding the life of static consumers. Our effort would have to be contextual. We would need to understand the effect of some completely unimaginable spark triggered by or in our consumers’ life.
Yes, I know that the notion of becoming un-strategic robs our jobs of the attached glory and maybe a wee bit of respect. But personally, I am excited by the change and the dynamism the next phase of planning will bring in. In the ultimate analysis, it will be what the consumer lets us make of it.
