The Feast

"The Feast" on October 16th in NYC will gather 150 of the world's leading creative mavericks, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, and innovators together to inspire action to change the world.

A series of inspiring, mind-expanding, and innovative talks that will showcase a look at social innovation from all angles. From design to business to science, our speakers will share a deep look at changing the DNA of their respective industries by harnessing the power of creativity to propel social change. Some confirmed speakers include Dale Jones of PlayPumps International and Tom Szaky of TerraCycle.

Whether you're a social entrepreneur or socially conscious at heart, "The Feast" will provide you with an excellent platform for inspiration, connection, and action.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://www.thefeastconference.com

2008 AAAA Account Planning Conference Prep Rally and Post Show

AAAA Account Planning Conference

Paul Isakson and Kelly Thompson have created a Facebook group so we can all see who will be attending and better connect/make plans beforehand. We can also use this as a place to discuss expectations, recap thoughts/takeaways afterward, etc.

Additionally, they've proposed a cocktail gathering on Tuesday night at Shore Club's Skybar for people to meet, connect and unwind on the last night of the conference. The details and RSVP can be found here.

Pass along the links/info to others who might be interested.

**STANDBY FOR UPDATES SOON re: PLANNING FOR GOOD (PfG) 24 Hour Challenge @ AAAA Planning Conference.

Planning For Good 24 Hour Challenge at AAAA Planning Conference

Planning For Good (PfG) will head up a 24-Hour Challenge at this year's AAAA Account Planning Conference. Junior Planners (under 5 years experience) will be invited to work on a team, with a Planning Director mentor, to solve a problem for a worthy cause. 2 non-profits will brief participants, Kiva and Witness. To participate, sign up for "Real Time Crafting" workshop when you send in your AAAA app and fees. Also note which cause you wish to work on (Kiva or Witness).

-You will need to arrive early on Saturday nite before the conference so that you can be briefed on Sunday at 9am
-You will work for 8 hours only to create a solution and a low tech, flip chart presentation. Note: You won't miss any of the conference!
-Kiva and Witness, as well as Planning For Good leadership team, will listen to private presentations by the teams on Sunday evening. A winning solution will be chosen for each cause.
-The work with be showcased and presented at an event sponsored by Good Magazine on the Tuesday evening of the conference.

What is Planning For Good?

1600+ of the brightest minds in advertising want to collaborate with good causes and make a difference.

Planning For Good’s mission is to bring strategic marketing help to not-for-profit organizations by leveraging a global network of communications planners and strategists from the worlds of advertising and branding (over 1,670 members to-date).

Planning For Good leverages the power of social networks (Bloggr, Facebook) to connect and collaborate monthly on a specific communication problem for a non-profit. A collection of this thinking is harvested then presented back to the non-profit. To date, we've responded to project briefs for Unicef, Live Earth, and Idea Village in New Orleans.

Fast Strategy (PfG and IPA)

The IPA (the UK's AAAA's) are conducting a conference on Fast Strategy this Monday 28 April.

Mark Earls, one of the brains behind Planning for Good is taking part in a live contest against some of the sharpest minds in the London Planning scene and needs to build an army to tackle a brief from the Central Office of Information (the UK Government's communications 'client').

Mark has assembled a crack group of planners - Jon Leach (of HHCL fame), Chris Forrest (ex DFGW and now of the research company The Nursery) and Ian Tait (of Poke to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars. BUT THEY WANT YOUR HELP.

Mark wants to demonstrate the power of P4G by involving any of us with internet access (and favorable time zones) to contribute to the the thinking. Here's the deal.

Monday, April 28, 10amBST brief posted on wiki site; responses by 12pm (noon) at the latest. Mark and the team will present at 2pm BST.

Please try and contribute - it will be fun and a great demonstration of the power of P4G at work.
If you're interested please email faststrategy@planningforgood.org and/or keep an eye on Planning for Good.



Details about the IPA event below..

How can you come up with the right strategy fast? A selection of Adland’s finest will be giving practical advice on how to achieve this at the IPA and Times Media Strategy Conference on Monday 28th April.
Speakers will include:

- Tim Lindsay, President, TBWA Group: 'How taking the disruption approach can help you get to the right answer fast.'

- Tim Hames, Assistant Editor & Chief Leader Writer, The Times: 'What planners can learn from those that write the news and the pressures of doing it fast and accurately.'

- Gurdeep Puri, Head of Effectiveness, and Janey Bullivant, Board Planning Director, Leo Burnett: 'How, counter to popular belief, data can help you to get to the answers fast'.

- Jon Wilkins, Founder, Naked: 'Fast strategy in a media environment'.

- Stuart Smith, Head of Planning, Wieden & Kennedy London: 'Strategic and creative dovetailing - Fast'.

- Rob Forshaw, Founding Partner, Grand Union: 'How to develop thinking quickly from a digital perspective'.

These short, sharp and fast presentations will be presented throughout the morning, whilst leading communications consultant Mark Earls; Phil Georgiadis, Chairman of Walker Media; Johnny Hornby, Founding Partner of CHI & Partners, and their respective teams, will be putting into practice what they do best and responding to a highly realistic but fictitious COI brief, set and delivered by Peter Buchanan, Deputy Chief Executive, COI.

You, the audience, will then get the opportunity to vote for who you think is the fastest strategist in town, when these three teams return to the stage in the afternoon to pitch live in front of the audience.

Says Guy Murphy, Chairman IPA Strategy Group and Worldwide Planning Director, JWT, “The most important skill that strategists need to learn in this era is speed. The quality of a strategic answer is now partly determined by the time taken to create it. Slow-baked strategy, no matter how good, can never be great.”

The conference will take place between 9am-5pm on Monday 28th April at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE.

Planning For Good: Live Earth

Planning For Good (PfG) - strategists donating brain power to good causes. 1100+ members strong. Across the globe. In only a few short months, we've successfully briefed Idea Village in New Orleans, and Unicef. Now Live Earth.






Live Earth Brief- Due December 17th

Get the brief @ Facebk and @ blog.

PfG Minneapolis - standby for meeting dates and location info. Sign up for updates, or "friend" me on Facebook and I'll add u to the PfG MPLS United army.

Planners in other cities around the globe may connect with their local cells here.

Planning For Good Deadline

Our month marker fast approaches for the Planning For Good initiative for New Orleans' Idea Village.

See the Planning For Good page on Facebook for more detail on the brief and how to submit your ideas.

Planning For Good: New Orleans, and the Idea Village

The first assignment has been posted in the experiment that is Planning For Good. The brief is for the city of New Orleans; specifically for an organization called the Idea Village.

The challenge? While most of the coverage of New Orleans has focused on the problems and negatives, another story has quietly emerged: the city has become a magnet of sorts for adventurous young people with energy, a sense of purpose, and a realization that this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to help re-invent a city. As Forbes Magazine has said:

"Now, instead of the brain drain, the city is nurturing a brain gain. New Orleans has become the testing ground for a new career and lifestyle ideal among today's 20-somethings."

The Idea Village is positioned at the heart of that. It's a not-for-profit that helps to fund and support innovative entrepreneurial ventures (about 250 so far) to not just rebuild New Orleans, but to turn it into a world-class model city.

The brief is to help the Idea Village build their brand, so they in turn can help build New Orleans. How should the Idea Village define and articulate who they are and what they do? How can they attract and motivate these smart young people moving to New Orleans?

See the Planning For Good page on Facebook for more detail on the brief and how to submit your ideas. Additional information and thoughts from the client will also be posted there as we get it. If you're Facebook averse, leave a comment here, at Influx , or at Brand New and someone will send you stuff.

Please take a look at the brief and give it some thought. If every one of the talented and generous people (that means you) in the marketing blogosphere spends a few hours on this, some amazing stuff will happen.

We have one month to collaborate and collect ideas to send back to the Idea Village. Contributions from anyone are very welcome (you certainly don't need to be a planner). And while we hope to get some big, fully developed ideas, any little thoughts or even questions are also encouraged - they might spark an idea in someone else.

Conscientious Consumption: The 11th Hour and Air Travel

Last weekend, Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour was released in select cities (Minneapolis: August 31). The film's promotional web site is interesting. (Well, aside from the lame Planet Green game sponsored by Starbucks; reminds me of "fun" children's PSA activities—how many forms of pollution can you find in this picture?—or of Captain Planet.)


A brief quiz lets you assess your carbon output. While that service isn't new, this is a clean and easy way to assess your lifestyle. I don't drive, so my biggest output is air travel. I admire people like John Grant who have cut their impact by reducing travel, but would find it hard to follow suit for both personal and professional reasons. Mine are typical issues: far-flung family and friends, out of town clients, and the not insignificant (and not unselfish) love of travel and exploration (if only I'd been to Climate Camp, perhaps I'd feel otherwise). Purchasing carbon offsets would be a good first step, but that ultimately doesn't solve the problem, it simply incorporates true cost of the service.

So if we can't cut out travel, what to do instead? We have low emission vehicles, why not low-emission planes? And low-emission airports (think of all the trash created while we eat our way to departure time, moving walkways, 24/7 lighting, etc.)? Yet as McDonough and Braungart note in Cradle to Cradle, "being 'less bad' is no good." Is there a completely clean solution? Unlike mass consumer technology, the design of commercial planes—and most major forms of transport—has remained relatively stagnant over the past 50 years, concentrating on improving the existing model versus revolutionizing the idea itself. The physical air travel infrastructure is relatively minimal compared to other modes of transport (beyond airports, there aren't thousands of miles of track or road that must be maintained; fueling stations are centralized); can that be leveraged in a redesign?

Easy questions to pose when you're not an engineer, but as someone whose life has been greatly shaped by air travel, I sincerely hope the eco-vs.-airplane game isn't zero-sum. And if so, perhaps by the time we've reached that conclusion the physicists will have figured out how to make Apparition a reality.