The first Connection Planning Conference - Polygamous Wedding has just concluded last Friday in New Orleans. We had some great wedding gifts from the attendees including great insights, processes and secrets. With a sprinkle of bachelor/ette parties and the crazy New Orleans nightlife. Overall, it was a tremendously beneficial day. A day where the leading thinkers in the industry put a stake in the ground to carve out their own POV.

After listening to everyone speak, my brain shut down from information overload. We’re starting to change the communications industry from the inside but I learned that it’s not easy but that’s the great part about it. Connection planning is an evolution of brand communications that reflects the rise of multiple media channels and the fact that consumers are much more involved in when, why and how they interact with a brand,”

We designed this event as a forum for the most innovative communications companies to practically discuss the provocative and sophisticated ways we are now working. When you get at the substance of branded utility and moving upstream into product development, corporate responsibility policy and revenue sharing, you really are talking about reinvention that gets at practice, talent recruitment, compensation models, etc. In many ways, this is the direct complement to the discussions you hear at conferences like ANA’s Masters of Marketing.

Here are some of the snapshots of the key points made by the “best man/woman” at the Polygamous Wedding:

Robbie Vitrano, Trumpet - March Back From Death
In his opening remarks, Robbie Vitrano noted that the conference and its focus on interaction-based communications is the opportunity to “invite clients into the room” to achieve the fundamental mutual respect necessary to design more effective collaboration and mutually beneficial compensation models.

Demian Brink, Boone Oakley - What’s In a Name?
Demian made a bold statement to get rid of all the different titles and instead call it “connection planning” and creating connection planning teams between media planners (context), account planners (content) and media buyers (contact). Stronger teams lead to stronger ideas and creative media output which lead to better results.

Lisa Seward, Mod - This Isn’t a Marriage, It’s a Monarchy
Shared her POV on the future of connection planning - THE NEW CREATIVE. Ideas are the medium. We can not have channel recommendations absent the idea. Shift from creation of message to the creation of content. Connection Planning is a protocol to ensure different creative output. Or a person to ensure different creative output. Take your pick…

Jim Elms, Barkley - Introducing a way to condense hundreds of pages of data, charts and graphs that only a data wonk would ever love, into a single page of insights that inspires creative’s, media, janitors and CEO’s
Asked the question, “do you ever remember ads?” If you can answer the question to the meaning of life and find out what is important to people, you will be able to create a meaningful connection. Find the meaning and intersect within their lives.

Michael Jager, JDK - Emotional Devotional
Started his presentation with a video of people kissing. That’s an understatement. More like making out. But he asked the question, “do you remember your first kiss?” The feelings, emotions, sounds, touch, senses, etc. We need to start focusing on emotional and cultural connections by communicating on a level that people can feel. Speak human.

Gareth Kay, Modernista! - Let’s Get Married for the Right Reason
In an era of increased media fragmentation that media, planning and creative have to seamlessly work together in order to navigate all these possibilities and create an environment that best connects brands and people. Simply creating a new structure is not the biggest issue we face; the bigger issue is thinking about what the product of this union should be. Gareth shared six thoughts about how to create energy around a brand.

Adrian Ho, Zeus Jones - Transformation
Because we are living in a postmodern world where fragments of ideas bombard us constantly, we’ve become good at looking past the messages that are sent to us and instead focus on our real experiences and interactions with brands. So if interactions are the most powerful force impacting brands then we ought to think about what we do as designing interactions. But, it turns out that designing interactions is quite different than designing communications.

Ed Cotton, Butler Shine Stern & Partners - The Fourth Wave
Announced the birth of Planning For Good, an organization comprised of account planners and friends “using their brains to help solve problems for causes and non-profits.” Potential members can find additional information at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4736469785

Paul Woolmington, Naked Communications
We need to re-engineer versus re-inventing the communications model. More silos are popping up with the increasing media fragmentation. Now we have a connection planning department, account planning, media planning, etc. Naked calls everyone a “communications strategist” because they are generalists that offer creative solutions to business/communications problems. The employees of Naked are like Ocean’s 11. They get the best brilliant misfits to get the job done.

John King, Fallon - Dispelling Myths About Connection Planning
One of the trailblazers of the connection planning discipline, discussed the need to develop new, better metrics tailored specifically to individual campaigns, as opposed to measuring “the new world with old instruments.” Connection Planning is all about the idea. The department at Fallon is not about “cool tactics” but rather about creating a velcro wall for ideas to stick to.

Scott Lukas, Dosage Consulting - Re-classifying media options based upon the way consumers sort, edit and use different media
Shared his top secret process called “sponges” which observes ways media is used to create connections. That’s all we can say about it. We were sworn to secrecy..

Sidney Bosley + Rob Perkins, Goodby - Connection Planning in the trenches. One practical method to inspire strategically-sound creative media ideas.
Sidney and Rob, the Goodby guys, showed us one method to create sound creative media ideas called opportunity mapping. This process is based on combining media touchpoints and killer insights to inspire creatives.

Rob Walker, NYT Columnist - Murky/Marketing
Rob shared his thoughts on the industry by sharing an article written by the Harvard Business Review in 1939. The same thoughts, insights and discussions we were having were held in 1939. Best line of the day…”Creative kids used to start bands. They’re starting brands now.”