Thing: Leuchtturm1917 a5 Weekly Planner
I’m not fussy about much when it comes to work gear – I’ll use a freebie biro, cheap headphones, no-name rucksacks off Amazon etc. But I do insist on using a Leuchtturm planner as my “work book”. It’s a bit sad but I’ve had them for five years now and I keep them on a shelf in my office. I just love the layout, the font, the weight of it etc. Having half the DPS focused on time & to-dos, then half for notes means I can nicely cram a week’s worth of thoughts onto each page.
Thought: The 6 Sells
Every brief boils down to selling more of something. Only by showing a campaign resulted in more sales can you convince non-marketers in an organisation that advertising is paying back. Lots of other jargon gets in the way of this simple truth, so we’ve defined “6 sells” to help us classify client asks. For each brief we receive the team has to agree which of the 6 sells best describes the campaign – and only one. The aim is to make communicating the point of the campaign, and therefore the ask of media, measurement, messaging etc as simple as possible. The 6 sells are:
Sell more (grow market share)
Sell it to more people (grow the category)
Sell it for more (reinforce/grow pricepoint)
Sell the same with less (improve ROAS)
Sell a new thing (product launch)
Sell it more often (increase purchase frequency)
Obviously the real strategic and media craft come in the “how” we achieve the main objective, but having clarity to start with gives us a much better chance of nailing it. I’m not claiming this thought is either original or particularly clever, but I’ve certainly found it forces decisions and makes getting everyone on the same page much quicker.