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From Fan to Fanatics By Bastian Schmitz

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  The 30 Minute University of Planning Working Paper Series No. 5 From Fan to Fanatics By Bastian Schmitz Brands need allies among their target groups  This typology is intended to help you identifying these allies and to win them over. It creates thereby a new understanding of how to act in social media.   Social media brand communication is a gigantic and complex system. There is more content than anything else on our planet. Brands are screaming their messages in every direction. On the other side, people are getting more and more extreme. Extreme does not mean that they went completely mental. Extreme describes the degree of interaction people have with brands (from extremely passive to extremely active). Extreme also reflects people’s attitude towards brands and their content (from extremely interested to extremely critical or indifferent).  In order to develop this typology, I`ve divided the people I`ve mentioned into seven different types: followers, fans, faces, fanatics, hater
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How you avoid becoming most planners by Steve Walls

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The 30 Minute University of Planning Working Paper Series No. 4 How you avoid becoming most planners  By Steve Walls     Most planners … I’ll get straight to the point here.  Most planning, and most planners, are a complete waste of time.  Sure their hours are billable, but their contribution - well it tends to be negligible.  Ask a creative about it, if you dare. They’ll tell you that most of the briefs that cross their desks are bland, boring, limp, lacking and late - and that most of the briefings that they’re forced into are mandatory exercises in powerpoint platitude. So, how do you avoid being “most planners”?  Well I reckon that you’ve gotta look at two, connected, things - Time and Truth. Let’s start with Time. Ruthlessly exterminate the dull and obvious, so the creatives don’t have to.  A great planner saves time for their creatives upfront by getting to an interesting, fresh thought - fast.  That planner then steals time for their brief, from every other brief in the building
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Advertising's kick serve by Tatiana Shpur

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The 30 Minute University of Planning Working Paper Series No. 3 Advertising’s kick serve By Tatiana Shpur  Flat strokes were big in tennis in the 1970s and in 1980s, into the early 1990s, then a new, terrible style came in – kick serve. It probably had to do with the new rackets and new grips. It changed everything. With those new grips, it was easy to put a lot of spin on the ball. Too easy. The spin gets on there even when you don’t want it to. There’s a lower margin of error with all that topspin, therefore, a lot of players switched to it immediately. Robert Lansdorp, American tennis coach, who’s known by his contribution to the careers of such world’s tennis stars as Lindsay Davenport and Mariya Sharapova, called it an Academy Ball. “It’s all about averages.” – he said.  “Cause anytime you go to an academy, I don’t care whose academy it is, when you hit the ball hard and low or make an error they’ll tell you to hit high over the net with a lot of topspin”. The kids who thrive on t
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Do companies in 2021 talk about CSR and sustainability just to get more sales by Manan Ambani

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The 30 Minute University of Planning Working Paper Series No. 2 Do companies in 2021 talk about CSR and sustainability just to get more sales By Manan Ambani I think the answer is yes. But I also think that it's not just about sales, but about a change in mindset. The reasons why companies talk about sustainability is because  They want to be seen as good corporate citizens.  They want to use their brands as an instrument for social change and make sure that people know what they are doing. The new generation of consumers who care more and more about these issues, and these companies have realised that this group of consumers will become bigger in the future so if you do not adapt yourself now then you will lose out on them later on when it comes to buying your products or services. It's really important for companies to understand how important it is to integrate sustainable development into their business strategy if they want long term survival in the marketplace today and t
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The Greatest Advert for Advertising Ever by John Lowery

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The 30 Minute University of Planning Working Paper Series No. 1 The Greatest Advert for Advertising ever By John Lowery In 1984 I was lucky. I was given a job as a trainee account planner at Abbott Mead Vickers. It was a gruelling process gaining entry to the advertising industry. A couple of hundred graduates had applied to each of the big agencies. I’d had to write a letter and CV by hand. I’d had to hitchhike to London three times for interviews. I’d had to buy, out of my dole cheques, copies of Campaign, so as to swot up on the ads and opinions of the day. I’d had to buy a suit, made almost entirely of polyester. I had to hide the holes in my soles. Gruelling barely describes it. But had I applied a year later, it would have been a lot more gruelling. Instead of a couple of hundred applicants, I’d have been competing for a job against a couple of thousand. And consequently, I’d almost certainly have failed to secure that job at AMV and instead found myself working for a company ser
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Why we need to be more inspired by the stories we love by Andy Wilson

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The 30 Minute University of Planning Working Paper Series Why we need to be more inspired by the stories we love. By Andy Wilson “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” William Shakespeare One of the unintended consequences of 2020 is that we have watched more films and TV series than ever before. Thank you Netflix. We all like to project ourselves into whatever we are watching, but how much do we bring these stories back into our own lives? I watch my kids prancing around with their plastic weapons and terrible kung fu moves and can see how inspired they are by their heroes. But as adults, we seem much less affected. Story is one the most powerful technologies in all of human development. But also one of the most overlooked. Story shapes the way we make sense the world and explain events. Story is how we teach, persuade, entertain, inspire, and amuse each other. Story provides a fundamental and universal framework on which we ascribe meaning and intentiona
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