Image: The essence of our current planning model, based on the metaphor of the market as a party
“That old planning exercise of asking who the brand would be at the party is no longer relevant. To connect today, marketers should be asking what their brand would do if it learned they had only one year to live.”
This is John King, Director of Innovation at Fallon, talking about the backdrop to their new agency philosophy, which they have eloquently named “Generosity” (subtitled “Modern branding is Learning To Give Instead of Take”). And of course it’s brilliant.
Apart, perhaps, from the fact that it’s an unforgiving whack in the head at the planning model I’m currently employing. I even used to be pretty proud of that ol’ model of ours; it’s simple and intuitive yet captures the essence of what you need to lay down in a communications strategy.
But I had a feeling this was coming. I haven’t been happy with Cocktail (that’s the model) for quite a while now and, courtesy of Mr King, it’s time to give it a decent burial. All that’s left is to figure out what should replace it.
Maybe I should call it “The Bucket List Model”? Hm, I could be onto something.
“Bucket list” = A list of things to do before you die.
Do not fear mistakes, there are none 