The pearls of perspectives
This week at Havas Health Plus there has been a lot of discussion about valuing perspectives.
With Pride is just a few days away.
For Havas Plus Pride is about celebrating diversity.
Celebrating different perspectives.
And whilst I’ve been here I have learnt a lot about valuing perspectives.
As a network use similar tools, techniques and processes to develop our strategies.
But we arrive at different answers.
On the surface it’s easier to see why that happens — different people, with different experiences.
They all bring something different to the table.
To create winning strategies.
But there is one tool where I wanted to see how differently we approached it.
That’s with our most powerful tool the Creative Business Idea aka. The CBI.
The CBI is our way of developing transformation business ideas.
Ideas that change course of a category, of businesses and consumers.
Ideas so powerful that, at their best, they is capable of persuading consumers to actively pursue a relationship with the brand, not vice versa.
So CBI is a big deal.
It’s a really big deal.
It’s an especially big deal to planners.
It’s the most challenging and rewarding part of our job.
Which is why I wanted to learn how other agencies within the network use it.
But having the same tool doesn’t mean we live by the same rules.
I learnt this from my mentor.
He is the sort of man who reads 20+ strategy books a year.
He has read the first editions to the latest ones.
He is a veritable strategy machine.
Each meeting we have together is about 2 hours long.
In our discussions he has shown me how to look at the CBI differently.
How can it bend and flex based on what the product is capable of.
Are we delivering an uber promise, a directive, a point of view?
Where can you bend the tool? How can you interpret the inputs and outputs to offer something unique.
I had never considered that I might have been formulaic in how I approached the CBI before.
But now I see how you can take this tool to other levels, once you free yourself from the checklist.
And that’s a completely new perspective for me.
One that I would have got if it wasn’t for Lofts.
