On Woods and Trees
An overuse of clichés
Gemma’s blog about Selfie Sticks got me excited for two reasons:
First: I’ve been fascinated by them since I first encountered them in London earlier this year and even contemplated getting one during my first few weeks here when all my looking-excited-in-front-of-a-landmark pics resembled Mother’s attempts at taking any family photo.
Second: It completely echoed a lot of what I’ve been thinking about. Being here in New York is like a meditative retreat, where you get to take a look at yourself and life from a different viewpoint. Granted, it’s the kind of relaxing meditative retreat where you work all day, stay up til 2am sightseeing and then get woken up at 4am by street noise, but still, silence isn’t for everyone.
I do like a good cliché, so let me translate Gemma’s brilliant post, into one — sometimes,
You Just Can’t See the Wood from the Trees
But this applies not only to the individual, but to all the work we do within Media Agencies.
Anyone who works with me knows how much I love to know the detail. I want to know Who, What, When and How — often to the expense of my time and stress levels.
As Client Planners, I think our job is in juggling both seeing the detail and the bigger picture, which can be difficult. So the team set up here really interests me — Client teams are bigger and more heavily staffed (even bigger than behemoth that is the Arena Domino’s team) but their day-to-day jobs cover quite a different range of responsibilities:
Junior members focus on implementation in every detail of campaigns, from planning directly with media owners to tagging and trafficking digital. We regularly talk about the importance of being Digital at the Core, and following an integration of online and ‘traditional’ teams here earlier this year, these guys really begin their careers in that way — they know the ins and outs of digital implementation, means they know everything’s done properly, or can spot where there’s likely to be issues.
Following on from my Show, not Tell musings, this makes complete sense to me (although it has given me a new found appreciation of the work our London AdOps team do). There’s obviously a risk of getting bogged down in the admin detail of media though, but the teams here are really good at showing and explaining to everyone the role they play in any project.
I love the fact that process and fundamental knowledge appears to be really nailed (I’m in awe of some of the status sheets and project lists I’ve seen) but the detail/bigger picture juggling act is difficult, and it seems to take until a more senior level until people get to a level of understanding client’s business, their place in the category and develop a view on their strategy and direction.
As an example, whilst competitive reporting is treated with a high level of importance and is carried out by specialist teams here. In my time at Arena, competitive monitoring and insight has meant I’ve developed an almost unhealthy level of knowledge on everything from weightloss to takeaway, tigers to cruises, genealogy to getting business insurance. Whilst we should be media specialists, rather than trying to be client-specialists, understanding the complete picture, being able to take a bird’s eye view and see everything in context is so important.
So how do we do this, not just in dealing with clients, but in our day to day jobs? I think it has to take a conscious effort to see the detail and its place in the bigger picture:
- Make sure we understand the behind the scenes detail of how things work; that doesn’t necessarily mean the technical detail, but if you don’t know the how or why something happens, it’s much more difficult to understand its significance or question it fully.
2. Take the time to help everyone understand how everything fits into the jigsaw, it makes much more sense when you see the context.
3. Educate ourselves about client and category, to see the context to help develop opinions on the future and direction. If nothing else, it leads to inspiration in the most unexpected places (and gives you great pub-trivia ammunition)
4. Stop. Just like spending time New York, it’s all to easier to get swept away with the tide of your surroundings. Take a seat on a bench, and work out where you’re going and why.
