Dave Trott, Creative Director of Chick Smith Trott, went head-to-head with David Golding, Founding Partner of Adam & Eve, to thrash out whether planners or creatives make better planners, at the latest IPA and Times Media strategy debate on Monday 4th August (2008).
Neil Goodlad, Managing Partner at CHI & Partners who chaired the feisty debate has written the following account of the proceedings:
“Anyone who didn't make it along to the IPA Strategy Group's debate on whether creatives make better planners than planners, don't know what they missed - a proper ding-dong debate, with legendary creative Dave Trott, and entrepreneurial planner David Golding, pulling no punches.
Dave's targets were wide-ranging. Planners who spend so much time peering into the brand's DNA that they've lost sight of what the product or service actually does and how it might genuinely be different to its competitors. Planners who revel in the cleverness of their own thinking, whilst overlooking the simple or indeed, blindingly obvious insight. Planners who spend too little time in the company of their creative colleagues and hand them a fait accompli, leaving creatives with no scope to offer strategic input.
David's response held that ‘the brand' was a perfectly legitimate place to look for insight, it just shouldn't be the only place. Planners who make things complicated shouldn't be given house room, but that good ones don't, so Dave must be hanging out with the wrong ones. And that while creatives should be given plenty of room to manoeuvre, the reality is that most teams ignore most of the brief as it is, and should be paying more attention to the strategy not less.
Dave threw in a master-class in writing effective advertising and I, as chair, fought for a word in edgeways to take questions from our sell-out audience. I'm not sure anyone bought the motion that creatives make better planners, but it didn't seem to get in the way of a true head-to-head. Thanks again to Times Media for their continued sponsorship of these events, this one was real value-for-money.”
To hear more on Dave and David’s thoughts, please see p9 of the latest edition of Campaign Magazine (15th August 2008) “Planning: brand tweaking or brand speaking?” and join in the debate at
brandrepublic.com/campaign/planners