Hej Stockholm!

Ramblings from
the Black Wolf
Creativity + Planning + Planning for Creative Campaigns

Heidi Hackemer / @uberblond

a little about my path grew up in the woods of
Wisconsin amongst a von Trapp-esque family of
musicians, Bach and pigeons, wanted to be an
astronaut, ran a lot, studied Advertising and English
Literature, came to NYC, waitressed for two years,
started at FCB as a copywriter, two years later I
flipped to planning, went to Fallon London, decided I
liked the sun, came back to NYC to BBH, loved it, quit
my job, bought a big black truck (the Black Wolf),
drove around the country for four or five months,
slept in the back of the truck most nights, met a
spiritual guru in the swamps of Louisiana, came back
to NYC and now I’m a freelancer. got it?
after the journey of the past year, the
good news for me is that...

I love planning
the obvious
I love culture
I love people
I love cracking a problem
I love working with creative, smart people
but the real reason
planning is a wide playground where, once we get our core
craft down, we get to define what we’re all about
professionally... and many definitions are valid
we’re a motley bunch
beyond the craft, great planners seem to have
something in common: they are brave enough embrace
who he or she really is. that leads to a pretty diverse and
insane community

I love that
planner me
gut instinct planner
very inspired by primal human truth and culture
love the big story of a brand + culture; love making it work
love the possibility of digital (it’s so human)
love the creative process
love winning
*this will be important-ish in about 15 slides
it’s a great time to
be a planner
why?
we’re needed
the problems are much more complex
the solutions can be ridiculously relevant
 so let’s get into it

creativity, planning
and all that jazz
three muses tonight
1) Steve Jobs
2) Dumbledore
3) Judy Garland
Steve Jobs
In the past I’ve talked about the Mother Effin’ Wolf Pack*...

teams of smart, amazing people bouncing in and

out of a collaborative environment, all working
together to slay the problem at hand

* yes I have a thing for wolves.

wolf packs work when each individual brings something
unique to the process and has an output that they’re solely
responsible for

creative wolf

account person wolf

production wolf

planning wolf and media wolf

and digital experience wolf
and legal wolf
... you get it.
let’s be incredibly simplistic
account peeps uniquely bring an understanding of
process as well as the client’s/biz POV...
creatives uniquely bring the capacity to turn a strategic
solution into magic...
and what do planners uniquely bring to the table?
we bring the
divergent thinking
in from the outside
divergent thinking
helps us create
provocative lenses
for problems
divergent thinking
is the oxygen that
fuels exceptional
creativity
this is ridiculously
important,
especially now
why?
creation has been democratized
anyone can put an idea out there
there are more ideas fighting for attention than ever before
as ubiquitous computing rises, this is only going to be
more acute of an issue

now, more than ever, we as an industry have to be really,

really good at what we do: making ideas that people pay
attention to and are motivated by
creativity isn’t cute
creativity is how we win and our clients win
(read Sir John Hegarty’s book)
I don’t believe we can be truly creative and win when we’re all
working off of similar, processed inputs
 we have an industry problem

institutionalization
 Black Wolf Epiphany #1

I was very close to

becoming, if not
already, a fraud

(wyoming)
remember this?

planner me
gut instinct planner
very inspired by primal human truth and culture
love the big story of a brand + culture; love making it work
love the possibility of digital (it’s so human)
love the creative process
love winning
feeds, back rooms and
Mintel reports had
become 90% of my
cultural understanding
(pretty arrogant)
personally, I was
losing my perspective,
my gut. for my teams,
I wasn’t authentically
bringing the oxygen
Terminal 5 & MoMA
were the primary
brain stretch venues
(they’re about five avenues away from one another btw)
how terribly
divergent of me
this happened largely
because I was
succeeding in the
institution of
advertising
advertising values a
linear path. I did it
I stayed in the advertising walls and steadily moved up
jr planner > planner > senior planner > planning director
advertising values
the 60 or 70 or 80
hour work-week
yeah, I’ve done that too. a lot.
advertising values
being busy, hectic &
doing advertising
there’s something really noble about busyness culturally and
especially in our industry
creativity doesn’t
value these things
so much
 not only was I not bringing the divergent
perspective, I had a hunch that I wasn’t living a
life where creativity could really happen

so how does that make me good at what I love,

ie planning?
 Black Wolf Epiphany #2

it’s in the dots stupid

(south dakota)
the south dakota crisis
“It’s been two months on the road. what do I have to show
for it? I don’t know what I’m doing with my life... should I
be blogging more? writing more? tweeting more?
instagram’ing more? networking more? will I ever work
again? will I have to leave NYC? will I be homeless soon?
will I really have to live in the truck? maybe I could be work
in a meat processing plant. I can’t work in a meat
processing plant!! Maybe I should get just my shit together
and get back on that advertising path. or I will end up
toothless and living in my parent’s back yard in Florida... in
a truck.”
{very attractive, heidi}
 when I was in South
Dakota having this
moment, Steve Jobs died.
and I, like everyone else,
spent some time going
through his life
“The minute I dropped out (of college) I could stop taking the
required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in
on the ones that looked interesting...

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and

intuition turned out to be priceless later on...”
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that
the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to
trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma,
whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has
made all the difference in my life.”
Steve Jobs
this was a huge moment for me
 I had been living the linear, advertising life
and was anxious because I wasn’t still on it

but reading about dots made me question the linear

 a dot life is different
it’s varied. it’s defined by the individual, not the institution.
the life & mind seem to meander more, have more space
I became obsessed with this idea of “living the dots” +
and its relationship to creativity. what I learned...

creativity values
space, exploration
space
“Daydreaming and boredom seem to be a source for
incubation and creative discovery in the brain and are part
of the creative incubation process.”
Jonathan Schooler
professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara
if I owned the world version
Bill Gates schedules regular
Think Weeks - times where he
goes off in seclusion, shuts down
and allows his mind to take in
varied creative inputs and wander
 “Without great solitude,
no serious work is possible”
Picasso
reality version
Josh Linker / Blogger for Fast Company

5% Creativity Challenge
schedule 5% of your time for thinking (2 hrs/week)
companies that have done this reported zero drop in
productivity, a “flood of new ideas into the organization”
and happier employees
exploration
“Being able to step back and view things as an outsider, or
from a slightly different angle, seems to promote creativity.
This is why travel frequently seems to free the imagination,
and why the young (who haven’t learned all sorts of rules)
are often more innovative than their elders.”
Jonah Lehrer, author: How Creativity Works
Johannes Gutenberg transformed his knowledge of wine
presses into an idea for a printing machine capable of mass-
producing words.

The Wright brothers used their knowledge of bicycle

manufacturing to invent the airplane. (Their first flying craft
was, in many respects, just a bicycle with wings.)

George de Mestral came up with Velcro after noticing burrs

clinging to the fur of his dog.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the search algorithm

behind Google by applying the ranking method used for
academic articles to the sprawl of the World Wide Web; a
hyperlink was like a citation.
from “How Creativity Works”
Dalai Lama talks about our
thinking as paths. Go down
the same paths too much, and
they turn into ruts. Ruts
aren’t good. Awareness helps
people divert out of ruts and
mentally explore new spaces.
reality version
find your dots, the things you’re just curious about
explore and invest in them, even if it doesn’t make sense
take some time to think about your own ruts - do they
need to be broken?
 net net
I don’t believe you can plan for breakthrough creative work
if you don’t ruthlessly value creativity in yourself
 my net net
right now, I’m more valuable to agencies
if I keep myself out of the agencies
it gives me space
it gives me divergent inputs
I’m more creative, more focused
I’m more energized when I’m in
I’m better at my job
(that makes me happy)
 after Droga, back on the road for a few months this summer

better, richer, fuller

exploring the American Dream in 2012
this is scary
it’s scary to walk out of an ad agency at 6:00 (I do believe
we call this the “half-day”)
it’s scary to stare at the ceiling or go for a walk
it’s scary to not take the next big, logical job
it’s scary to trust the work will come as a freelancer
it’s scary to take off for a few months
it’s scary to not be one of us
I’m not advocating for everyone to quit their jobs, become a
freelancer, buy a truck and travel around

I am advocating for more personal thoughtfulness:

what do you believe in?
why do you do this job?
are you creating the best conditions to make that happen?
your answer may involve being in an agency; that’s okay
if I were one of the
bigger badasses in
the industry, I would
more eloquently put
it like this:

we need to blow it up
and start again

1) identify what you love

doing. be ruthless

2) identify the
conditions under which
you love doing it

Then design an agency, Cindy Gallop

IfWeRanTheWorld
a job, a life around it make love not porn
Dumbledore
shit planners say
 “my brief is so
fucking smart.”
“um, that was in the
brief, you idiot.”
“that isn’t on brief.”
“I haven’t seen
the work.”
(day before meeting)
these grumbles more often than not
come from a culture of hand-offs...

PRODUCTION(
ACCOUNT(

STRATEGY(

CREATIVE(

MEDIA(
...rather than a team culture of synchronized flow

MEDIA(

STRATEGY(

CREATIVE(

ACCOUNT(

PRODUCTION(

CLIENTS(
 shocking observation from my experience

if we let creatives
into our process,
creatives are more
likely to let us
into theirs
(done thoughtfully, this usually helps the work)
in the long list of deliverables that the process of making
work requires, planning has the first big one - the brief
we set the tone
what kind of tone are you setting
for your projects and teams?
when setting the tone, remember space & create a rhythm

space for individual

creation, a culture of
building, respect for
ultimate responsibility
getting practical
if Dumbledore would have told Harry
everything that Harry ultimately
needed to know on Day One,
Harry’s head would have exploded

the constant conversation, however,

made for a deep relationship
 the iterative brief
rooted in the immense complexity of the communication landscape today -
but it also, nicely, creates a lovely rhythm on a team
 define the problem you’re
trying to solve. define
do the planner thing: dig
brand and marketing goals.
deep, read a lot, research
gather a slew of emotional
and behavioral insights.
make some hypotheses
write a brief. lay out the
emotional story. have some
(this brief shouldn’t
engagement planning
surprise anyone because of
thoughts. get some media
step three)
suggestions in there. make
a tumblr
wait. feed bits of thinking,
wait. inspiration, deliverables -
help. shoot for something helpful
wait. to give them every day.
wait. build, shape, make better.
idea cracked. yay. every day
make a wall of your
thinking/hypotheses/
interesting stuff. set out a
nice cake. invite team
members to come round
and chat
if it’s modern, the solution
will probably be complex.
nod to the complexity.
promise more cake and
discussion once they’ve
cracked an idea
build the strategic fortress.
sell it
net net
open your own process up
be respectful of the space that everyone needs
feed, think, talk, be present
 word of caution: don’t collaborate to death

“The most spectacularly creative people in

many fields are often introverted, according
to studies by the psychologists Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re
extroverted enough to exchange and
advance ideas, but see themselves as
independent and individualistic.”
The Rise of the New Groupthink, NY Times
Judy Garland
being a creative is really hard
pressure is intense
hours are really long
it’s tough
I believe we really need to be sensitive to this as planners
as @mrbsmith so beautifully articulated and @EMMACNYC got super excited
about so she and I talked about it a lot and thus I was influenced
positivity is one of the strongest planning tools
that you can build... especially when it comes to
working with creatives
 be positive, be into it
(if you don’t feel it, fake it until you do)
think about creative reviews as building
sessions not winning sessions
when you’re giving feedback, lead with the bits
that you thought were good/smart
keep venting sessions short and move them
away from devolving into bitching sessions
 speaking of venting...
if you’re a director, find someone off the team
to vent to; coach your planning team to vent to
you and not at the team
keep it about making great work
sound simplistic? naive? a bit touchy-feely?
 the Positivity/Negativity (P/N) ratio
in a 2004 study, high performance teams had a P/N
ratio of 5.6, medium performance teams a P/N of 1.9
and low performance teams a P/N of 0.36 (there was
more negativity than positivity)
net net
grow up
make it about the work, not about you
be someone that other people want in the room
wrapping it up...
divergency & space
fuel creativity
what kind of planner
do you want to be?
what do you value?
make it happen
you set the tone. own
that, respect that
be positive. it works
thank you