A talk given at LHBS Vienna on the subject of Agile Communications Planning, as part of their series of 'Uncomfortable Talks'.

1. Agile Planning July 2011 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/

2. neilperkin.typepad.com @neilperkin

3. This is not about promoting a new process “There is no singular process” John Jay

4. A Perfect Storm

6. 8 out of 10 CEOs saw significant change ahead, and yet the gap between the expected level of change and the ability to manage it had almost tripled since the previous study in 2006http://www-935.ibm.com/services/uk/gbs/html/ceostudy

7. The relentless digitisation of products, services and communications Disintermediation & disruption: A journey away from linear, one way, interruption, frequency, inflexibility …towards what? http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2007/04/beta_tees_and_l.html

8. Experiences not messages “I suspect 2011’s Cannes Lions festival may be looked back upon as the year advertising and technology agreed to meet and get married on the beach.” Mel Exon, BBH

9. "The internet is a the great dis-intermediator – it connects everything to everything else…Previously mass media aggregated attention and brands bought it. To earn your own attention you have to do things, create content, that people elect to spend time with.” FarisYakob http://blog.marketing-soc.org.uk/tag/digital/

10. Big isn’t necessarily better Broadcast rules don’t apply Advantage doesn’t always come from scale “My job is to help brands remember what it was like when they were small. Because on the internet they are.” Bud Caddell http://little-people.blogspot.com/

11. The Changing Role of Media = Attention Content = Attention, participation, interaction, content Content, tools, services http://www.flickr.com/photos/wespionage/

12. Media As Facilitator “Media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals, and more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups” Clay Shirky

13. “The other guys think the purpose of communication is to get information.We think the purpose of information is to foster communication.”Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook http://www.flickr.com/photos/danarah/

14. A massive opportunity to have a different relationship with your customers Co-creation, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding

15. The Data Explosion Marissa Mayer: it’s ‘bigger than Moore’s Law’: Speed (real-time data) Unprecedented scale built on unprecedented processing power New data (uploaded from sensors and objects - the internet of things) "Between the dawn of civilisation and 2003, five exabytes of information were created. In the last two days, five exabytes of information have been created, and that rate is accelerating” Eric Schmidt

16. Real-time Content creation is quick and easy Cultural latency is reducing “There is a correlation between the amount of time it takes for information to be transmitted, the amount of time it takes to have an effect, and the corresponding cultural decay rate. The real-time web of twitter and facebook has brought the cultural latency rate down to almost zero. In response, companies must act faster, responding in real time, to keep apace with its customers.” FarisYakob http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright/

18. http://sysomos.com/insidetwitter/engagement/

19. The more interconnected our social graph becomes, the faster new ‘parasitic’ applications and new ideas spread

20. Struggling to get his 2-year-old daughter to sleep, Mansbachlet off some steam in the form of a status update: "Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, ‘Go the — to Sleep.'

21. Hit Number 1 on the Amazon best seller list one month before release – due largely to a pirated PDF version

22. So what Is Agile Planning?

23. So what Is Agile Planning? …not a new process, more a set of guiding principles

24. 7 Principles… http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/

25. But first, a little context… The Agile Manifesto (Redux) Individuals and interactions Processes and tools over Working outputs Comprehensive Inputs over Collaboration Contracts and hierarchy over Responding to change Following a plan over http://agilemanifesto.org/

26. 1. Ideas From Anywhere

27. Porous Enterprise - Chance favours the connected mind The Eureka Myth – the myth of the lone-creative genius with a spark of sudden inspiration Ideas take a long time to mature, sometimes laying dormant (in the form of 'partial hunches' or half-ideas) for years. It is the collision of these half-ideas that enables breakthroughs to happen. Rather than being a single thing, ideas are networks, or new configurations.

28. Porous Enterprise - Chance favours the connected mind The great driver of innovation has been the historic increase in connectivity between us that creates infinite possibilities for ideas to be swapped Agile enterprises that understand this create and enable spaces (physical and virtual) where ideas can mingle (in the way that coffee houses did in The Enlightenment)

29. Porous Enterprise Employees who increasingly recognise the value of being connected to the interesting ideas in their own and related markets Employers who encourage their employees to connect http://thisisindexed.com/

31. Allows for innovation at the edges – non-core thinking

32. Relationships seen as valuable assets

33. Flow of ideas into and within organisations

35. No silos We compartmentalise creativity Try to control it, set targets, apply rules Make it the domain of particular job titles Or box it into brainstorming sessions “The longer you work, the more people want to put you in a silo so they can define who you are on their terms – our job is to never let anyone determine who we are by their terms” John Jay

36. Creative Culture… Creative process involving a large number of people Often from different disciplines Marshalled around a vision Working as a team “The notion of ideas as this singular thing is a fundamental flaw. There are so many ideas that what you need is that group behaving creatively. And the person with the vision I think is unique, there are very few people who have that vision.. but if they are not drawing the best out of people then they will fail.” Ed Catmull, President of Pixar

37. Creative Culture… "We say we are director led, which implies they make all the final decisions, [but] what it means to us is the director has to lead.. and the way we can tell when they are not leading is if people say 'we are not following'.” Ed Catmull http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviddelarosa/

39. Project leaders pitch developers to generate interest

41. Agencies as incubators Tech startups get: $18,000 Office space Access to industry mentors Access to big brands W & K get: Access to startup talent & pixie dust

43. The need for organisations to be far more flexible with structures / overheads

44. The opportunity for organistaions to work in a new way is properly viable

46. 2. Users at the centre

47. “There are two ways to get bigger as a company – look at what you’re good at…or start with the customer and work backward…even if it requires new skills" Jeff Bezos http://www.flickr.com/photos/legendmedia/

48. Observation in context Not out of context (like a focus group) Actual experience Learning from UX? Google Firestarters – Design Thinking in Planning http://neilperkin.typepad.com/only_dead_fish/2011/06/firestarters-2-design-thinking-in-planning-the-event.html

49. Challenge The Question – Find The Problem To Solve “Marry the problem, not the solution” Dan Greenberg, Sharethrough

50. 3. Not a single solution but lots of choices

51. “Path dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant” "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution” Clay Shirky http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/

52. Abductive Thinking Business schools tend to focus on inductive thinking (based on directly observable facts) and deductive thinking (logic and analysis, typically based on past evidence) Design schools emphasize abductive thinking—imagining what could be possible. Helps challenge assumed constraints and add to ideas, versus discouraging them.

53. Creating and curating choice What if, instead of generating one solution to one problem, our job was about creating as many choices and options as possible for clients? Tom Hulme http://vimeo.com/14138667

54. 4. Test and learn

56. Every company, regardless of size needs to act like a start-up

57. Combine of the use of open-source software, agile development methodologies and ferocious, customer-centric, rapid iteration. "My own definition of a start-up is an institution asked to create something new under conditions of high uncertainty…This has nothing to do with company size.” Eric Ries http://startupquote.com/ http://madebymany.com/signals/the-lean-startup-movement

58. Agile working practices “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Agile processes are becoming more and more central to how content and services on the web work Advantage from responsiveness and adaptability rather than scale

59. Failure is useless unless you learn from it

60. Traditional ‘Waterfall’ Approach Concept Detailed Design Build Ford Motor/Razorfish agile principles http://www.slideshare.net/razorfishmarketing/razorfish-ray-velez-and-laura-fraga-ford-motor-on-agile-processes?from=ss_embed

61. Agile Processes Agile processes are based on a continous process of Design it, Build it, Test it, Ship it Concept DetailedDesign DetailedDesign DetailedDesign DetailedDesign Build Build Build Build Sprint Review Sprint Review Sprint Review Sprint Review Design with vision, optimise with feedback Ford Motor/Razorfish agile principles http://www.slideshare.net/razorfishmarketing/razorfish-ray-velez-and-laura-fraga-ford-motor-on-agile-processes?from=ss_embed

63. Iterative approaches, prototyping

64. Not just crafted big pieces, but smart combinations of smaller executions

65. Better end product through flexibility and collaboration

67. Making Stuff Hackable Research by M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management: over a three year period the amount of money that individuals spent making and improving products was more than twice as large as the amount spent by all British firms combined on product R & D. …it doesn’t need to be perfect

68. 5. Always On Marketing

69. Speed Bumps Less emphasis on campaigning, more on continuous communication

70. Build brands from the bottom up rather than the top down Be useful, interesting, entertaining and playful in the service of people Think about what communication strategy can learn from UX design Do something and interesting things will happen Build a culture of experimentation not planning Realize perfection is the enemy Be rewarded for good behavior Small ideas build long ideas http://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/2011/05/how-to-think-and-make-small.html

71. "ideas as unfolding stories, a stream of iterations and interactions that invite people into the process” “Do stuff and learn from it rather than learning and doing.” Gareth Kay http://www.slideshare.net/garethk/think-small-7958212

72. Bonfires and Fireworks John Willshire http://smithery.co/ http://www.slideshare.net/gamages/what-is-media-planning-7502182

74. PPC in relevant, non-competitive environment leading to a continuous series of content microsites, connecting with the audience in playful, informal ways.

76. VW hid secret tickets across the entire city, and then displayed them on a microsite using Google Maps. The only way to zoom in was to have the community band together using the #foxatplanetaterrahashtag

77. A race in the real world to get to the location first. Ran day and night for 4 days.

79. Fiat Mio – Crowdsourcing A Car Fiat in Brazil asked people to contribute ideas for it’s new model – 17,000 did Refining the brief, entering into a dialogue with Fiat’s designers Brought to life as a concept at the Sao Paulo Automotive Show, November 2010 http://www.fiatmio.cc/en/

81. The first time a major car company has forgone an auto show for a new car reveal

82. The day the car was revealed online, searches for Explorer more than doubled

83. Compared to a typical double-digit increase seen after a Super Bowl adhttp://mashable.com/2010/07/26/ford-explorer-facebook-reveal/

85. Community of 3,600 contributors submitted 44,000 designs

86. Build and sell through network of local centres

87. Development cycle 5 times faster than traditional car manufacturers

89. Business value will come from not only breaking down the silo's between our people, but in joining up, and opening up, our data. http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxymcslick/with/3180482810/

90. Catalysts for Innovation: The Open Web A total of 1,019 APIs were added to the Programmable Web API directory, that's double the number added in 2009. http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/01/weekly-poll-new-apis-doubled-i.php

92. Smarter use of data = the better digital based services can get at delivering personal value

93. Offline/online single customer view creating real customer centric experiences

94. Generate better models for value attributionhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/22158928@N00/2941827863/

98. This can be displayed on profiles, or shared through widgets

100. Professional + Social Curation

102. Referencing information like how many times people visit, return and how much they spend. By comparing an outlets prices the service can point to locations that are better value.

103. Intelligence for outlets - a breakdown of where customers live as well as average incomes of the residents in that area. http://www.bundle.com/

104. Social Recommendation Services A movie recommendation service built on top of twitter Moving beyond ratings/reviews to sentiment analysis driven recommendation

105. Data + Social + Gaming Designed to let fans interact in real time with the action in the UEFA Champion's League A game that syncs automatically with the TV, and allows you to predict what will happen in the game

106. Using data to deliver better user experience “A visual record of what people are currently finding interesting on guardian.co.uk at the moment”

107. Google Prediction API Provides pattern-matching and machine learning capabilities Categorise, analysebehaviour, power recommendation

109. Taking account of the rate at which messages were posted about it could predict the box office takings before the film opened.

111. Measuring the mood of the 'twitterverse' on a given day can foretell the direction of changes to the Dow Jones Industrial Average three days later with an accuracy of 86.7 %http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ball

114. Or input a search query, converted into a data series of searches over time, and this time series can then be put through the same process in order to identify a list of correlated queries over time.

117. Far from leading to more accidents, behaviour is more positively affected by the built environment and human interaction than through rigid controls and artificial regulation.

118. Individuals reduce their speed, are more aware of their immediate surroundings, seek out eye contact with other road users.Makkinga - Netherlands Ref: Martin Thomas ‘Loose’

119. …a bit like budgets "We're losing our capacity for socially responsible behaviour...The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people's sense of personal responsibility dwindles.” Hans Monderman

120. Unplanning Plans are rigid, set far in advance, take up huge amounts of management time Assumptions and predicted outcomes are out of date Detailed plans are the enemy of adaptability http://www.flickr.com/photos/82202517@N00/

121. A Way In To Agile… McKinsey :`Boosting Returns on Marketing Investment’ Recommends brands spend 80% of their budget on banker strategies and tactics, and 20% on learning through well structured tests. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Boosting_returns_on_marketing_investment_1602

122. Thank you neilperkin.typepad.com/only_dead_fish/agile-planning.html @neilperkin

123. Appendix: Resources Books: Steven Johnson – Where Good Ideas Come From The Game Changer – AG Lafley, Ram Charan Martin Thomas – Loose Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody The Power of Pull – Hagel, Seely, Brown Blogs: Paul Isaakson… http://paulisakson.typepad.com/planning/ John Willshire… http://smithery.co/ Mark Earls… http://herd.typepad.com/ Gareth Kay… http://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/ MadebyMany…http://www.madebymany.co.uk/ FarisYakob… http://farisyakob.typepad.com/ Ian Sanders – Unplanning http://www.scribd.com/doc/27810926/Unplan-Your-Business