Lisbon Planning 101: Be Clever AF
As a creative strategist, I know planning is a hard job. You are responsible for inspiring the creative team to make amazing, insightful, emotionally resonate work while finding ways to positively impact a client’s business goals. It’s a big job. I also know that when it comes to garnering insights, it’s really easy to fall into a rut. An insight you think is intimately tied to an understanding of human experience, may be too heady for the consumer. A trend that you think is a no-brainer, might not inspire a brainstorm worthy of your creative team. Again, it’s a hard job to get right. But, not here in Lisbon.
This blog post is dedicated to paying homage to the great work done by the planning team here in the Lisbon Village. They are truly some of the best planners I’ve ever had the pleasure to learn from. Don’t get me wrong, I love the planning team in Chicago but here, with just 4 planners doing work on roughly 20 accounts and new business, they deserve a round of applause. They don’t have a bevy of fancy research tools, a room of planning interns to draft briefs or consultants bringing them weekly trends, they are just well trained, experienced planners who live in the world and integrate culture back to their work in a smart way….they are admirable.
What I love about them is that they wholly represent something I’ve always been striving for, being clever AF. I know that sounds lofty and edgy, but it’s really built around the idea that the best insights should be simple but not basic, emotional but not so much that the product gets lost and they should be rooted in an overarching human truth but specific enough for your core audience to really get it.
One of my favorite examples of this type of insight came directly from my mentor Joao Coelho, Head of Planning here in Lisbon. The project was for NOS, a major telecom provider in Portugal who has recently repositioned themselves from brand that just sold TV, internet and mobile bundles to a brand that is seen as the “ultimate” entertainment provider. Last year, Joao and team were tasked with creating a relevant campaign to target teens and pre-teens. The goal was to encourage them to choose NOS as the provider for their first mobile phone (in turn influencing their parents to actually purchase it). One thing to note is that, in Portugal, when you get a cellphone, you aren’t just given data, apps and access, it’s an additional cost. Luckily, with this offer, NOS provided a data package complete with everything a teen would want: WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Uber, etc.
When approaching this challenge, the team knew they couldn’t just speak to teens in a practical way, they needed to dig into the emotions of what a teen was experiencing. They knew teens are at a weird place in their lives, they are culture grafting, exploring their personalities and curating the identity of the person they are becoming. The clever AF insight that drove the campaign was around the inherent tension surrounding your teen years…..A desire for freedom, but your parents literally give you everything. An insight as old as time, but super hyper relevant in today’s society of influencers, social media and technology.
The result: Uber or Mama….a music video and 360 campaign, featuring Portuguese teen influencers, rappers and other musicians asking the simple question….Do you want to have your own transportation via Uber (and NOS) or are you going to keep relying on Mama to drive you around? Brilliant.
It was done in such a culturally relevant way, speaking to that age old tension around what it means to grow up. It’s these types of insights and creative executions that planners strive for and just one of many campaigns brought to life by the Lisbon Village. Bravo Lisbon village, you truly embody the essence of planning….Being Clever AF! Check out the Uber or Mama music video below.
