Unlike a Mr Lowery, who believes speculative online discussion is detrimental to the serious business of planning, I am seized by the opposite fear: that the tedious demands of daily work may be distracting planners from their all-important blogging.
This is not a facetious point, by the way.
One of the most useful contributions to discussion of "brand ideas" is the notion of the "generous idea": an idea which is neither self-contained nor finite in its means of expression, but which allows for repeated, fertile adaptation and development in almost any medium or discipline - and by people other than those who conceived it. It is no surprise that this notion arose first in the blogosphere.
Now it might have been Russell Davies who came up with this vitally important distinction in the world of ideas; it might have been Richard Huntingdon or someone else entirely. More likely, given the nature of the community, the concept arose through discourse. But, what's really significant is that, when I publish this on the Campaign blog, I won't get 25 whingy letters from different planners claiming that "I came up with the concept acting entirely alone and unaided and Russell/Richard/Mark just stole it. The Bastard"
And, say what you like about the planning blogosphere, it is this which distinguishes them from almost everyone else in our business. They are simply a little more 'generous' with their ideas.
By and large creatives don't blog; account men don't blog; media buyers certainly don't (though channel planners probably would). Why not? There are plenty of reasons - but one likely factor is that these other people are typically more interested in using ideas to secure individual advantage within their field than to advance the overall sum of wisdom.
The typical creative team treats its latest idea with the kind of furtive secrecy that is normally unknown outside an Al Quaeda cell, selfishly guarding their every thought lest someone else apropriate it. Planners, by contrast, are more generous, more eager to share.
It is for this reason that they are displacing creative people as industry rockstars. For while many creative people (in the UK - not so much the US) selfishly confine their thinking to the brief-by-brief level of execution in one medium at a time, it is planners who open up their minds to whole-brand questions, in the process becoming the greatest force in promoting effective integration between disciplines.
There are, of course, generous creative people: in fact a kind of generosity of thinking and a readiness to collaborate is what distinguishes a brand-level creative from an ad-level creative; those rare generous thinkers are also priceless in media and, of course, in digital agencies. There may well be generous account people, though as "Nature's BMW drivers" they may find the concept of giving away thinking as unnatural a form of behaviour as slowing down to let someone out of a side-road. But planners seem more possessed of the quality than anyone else.
It is quality which, in a world of 'polyphonic' brands (another blogosphere concept) will be more than just valuable, it will be essential. Because the notion that an entire brand can be reflected through one idea from two people in three media is fast becoming untenable. The people whose thinking is generous enough to co-opt lots of other people in the co-creation of a brand will be the people who suceed.
So don't complain if your planners are blogging. They are just practising for the future.
