How not to Plan

good book

I spend a lot of time reading marketing and psychology books. As I read them I photograph interesting snippets that I then tweet or keep for myself, so I can refer back to them. If the book is good I might take half a dozen photos while reading. In the case of How Not to Plan I'd taken that many snaps in the first ten pages. It's exceptional. The book is based on Binet and Carter's Mythbuster column for AdMap and it covers a glorious breadth of marketing topics: from objective setting to strategy, from research to media. Each short chapter follows a similar approach – a quote, an anecdote from their career, a thorough analysis of the research on the topic and then a case study. Each element is excellent. The quotes are fresh and alone justify the price: "A goal without a plan is just a wish” Antoine de Saint-Exupery "Content without reach is like building cathedrals in the desert” Hamish Priest "I don't know how to talk to everybody, only to somebody” Howard Gossage The anecdotes are surprisingly irreverent, regularly dismissing consensus opinion as "bullshit” or "bollocks”. The case studies are helpful, drawing on the IPA Databank and data from the long-list of brands they have worked on. And finally, the bulk of the book, the analysis of the research on each topic, is succinct yet authoritative. A must buy.

How Not To Plan is a wonderfully illuminating and insightful book that any and everyone working in Planning (and beyond) can find inspiration, reassurance, consolation and wisdom from. The book takes the articles from Les Binet and Sarah Carter and themes them across an amazing range of meaty subjects we all wrestle with day to day, from wider issues of setting objectives, budgets and media, target audiences and evaluation and the combinatorial power of the other ‘P's', to more detailed (and often as important) elements of communications such as the power of humour, music and fur. The format of the book works well to avoid portraying Planning as a seemingly easy way to success by airing examples of how not to do something and how real life complications, time pressures, lack of knowledge and neophilia often compromise proper Planning. The authors then quickly turn this into proper best practice with a series of very useful essential check-lists and handy case studies. Given the approach of the book, the simple practical and sometimes exasperated tone is thoroughly entertaining and makes you want to ask them for advice on your own work. As they say near the end of the book ‘It seems the world of advertising and marketing is unusually full of frustrating bollocks' – something we've all privately thought but possibly haven't said before. It's one of those books that makes you want to read it once a year to stay on the straight and narrow. Now to plough through the ‘Useful Reading' section.

Today, we have a better and more soundly based understanding of how to make effective advertising than ever before. And this book, a reworking of a long running series in Admap, distils that understanding into 66 short chapters. Les Binet and Sarah Carter not only know all the theory and the evidence (the references are all there are the back), but they've proven the principles for themselves through sixty years' experience at one of the world's greatest ad agencies. They write clearly and entertainingly, there's little if anything I would disagree with, and it's hard to think of anything they've left out. I wish everyone would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest this book. Not just about ‘planning', it's far too important just to be read by planners or strategists. But will marketing directors, creative directors, digital gurus, CEOs and investment analysts take the time to study it, and reflect on the important truths it contains for each of them and the way they do their jobs? Will ISBA or the Marketing Society make it required reading, and will Binet and Carter top the bill at next year's Cannes Festival? Well, we can live in hope.

Zombie ideas, old-wives' tales, creaking myths, the promises of snake oil salespersons, hand-me-down anecdote, self-styled (and self-serving) best practise, survivorship bias, received wisdom, invitations to stupidity disguised as appeals to common sense, data-free wisdom, orthodoxy, rules of thumb, declarations that this that or the other is now "dead”, wishful thinking, good ol' fashioned humbug… Bad advice. It's everywhere in Ad- and Marketing Land. Perhaps this accounts for why every generation of marketer seems to be so unrelentingly intent upon repeating the misjudgements, errors and SNAFU's of the past. When most books about marketing or advertising merely add to the landfill of calorie-free advice and are long copy exercises in self- or business-promotion, Les Binet and Sarah Carter aren't here to sell you on some cure-all, win-all universal theory of life, planning, the universe and everything. They just want you to fuck up a little less often. From objective setting to the use of research to the setting of budgets to effectiveness, Binet and Carter dismantle one myth at a time , providing along the way practical checklists and case studies illustrating good planning thinking in action. It was time a good, practical book written by experienced practitioners was written about the planning craft. My only wish is that there will be a Volume 2 (and 3 and 4...) After all, there many more zombies out there waiting to be killed.