I think this same rule applies to advertising as it does to designing; especially for planners.A while ago I found this thought on the role of a good planner. Unfortunately I can’t remember where I stole it from but it really resonated with me:
“Part of the job of a good planner is to have their eyes and ears and mind open to all conversations, all possibilities and opinion because our primary role is to always be in touch and moving with not just what's going on with the world, but also how people feel about it all. We take in these movements, and then use them to fuel creative thoughts within our teams of writers and art directors and subsequently solve business problems - not always with ads.
In essence, planners are inspired by everything, and we use this inspiration to inspire creatives, who use that inspiration to inspire consumers to act.”
I think this is spot on. It’s the essence of what we do. It’s also what makes the job bloody fantastic.
On that thought here are 8 of my favourite sites for inspiration, ideas and learning about “everything”.
POP!Tech - a one-of-a-kind conference, a community of remarkable people, and an ongoing conversation about science, technology and the future of ideas. I’ve included one of my favourite talks below. It’s by Frank Warren on the story of PostSecret & the spin-off projects it inspired.
TED – riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world. As an introduction watch THIS entertaining talk by Joachim de Posada.
Business Innovation Factory – this year’s Innovation Summit brings more than 25 storytellers together for two days of rapid-fire storytelling about what it really takes to innovate. No keynotes. No corporate infomercials. Just real talk about innovating in tough economic times.
Good Experience Live - a conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms: in business, art, society, technology, and life.
BIL - an ad-hoc conference for people changing the world in big ways. It's a place for passionate people to come together to energize, brainstorm, and take action.
ideaCity - 50 Presenters, 3 Legendary Parties, a Ton of Inspiration. ideaCity, also known as 'Canada's Premiere Meeting of the Minds', is an eclectic gathering of artists, adventurers, authors, cosmologists, doctors, designers, entertainers, filmmakers, inventors, magicians, musicians, scientists and technologists.
Sputnik Observatory - educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture.
Fora.TV - the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences.
And if that isn’t enough there are plenty more sources HERE!
Via Mashable.
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3 comments:
Great stuff Tom! I've been thinking about this for a while too. It feels like all the revolutionary ideas - the real break-through moments - come from something that seems totally unrelated.
As planners, I think our most important contribution is to construct ideas that can resonate regardless of the way they're shared - in other words, to identify impactful ideas that have the broadest and most varied applicability.
So, it follows that we should be able to take ideas from anywhere and put them to use with the briefs and questions that we're trying to answer.
Discovering new ways of combining the apparently unrelated is not a new idea though - you can see it being deployed in early C20th historiography and cultural criticism [via Surrealism, Dada, Eisenstein etc]. The theory was to take seemingly unrelated things and spot or create meaning in the gaps between them. Why? Because no-one trusted narratives any more [via urban life, commerce, early mass media, social mobility, WWI].
Prime example is Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arcades_Project
It's an amazing piece of work, with an amazing story behind it. It also bears interesting parallels to the Internet in terms of its readers' unstructured access to the content.
WB would have been a good planner too, but unfortunately it didn't exist back then, so he had to settle for philosophy...
Thanks for your comments guys. Simon completely agree with what your saying. The best planners seem to be magpies for ideas and inspiration from as wide a source as possible.
James I don't think the point is that planners came up with the idea of combining seemingly unrelated things. In fact true to being a planner we stole this idea from scientists and artists as you said!
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