Monday, June 8, 2009

A six-hundred-page long plan and no one to read it.

It’s been interesting to watch all the buzz about Obama’s recovery plan and the fact that no one that I have seen be interviewed about it has said to have read every page of it. At first, it made me very uncomfortable, and then I started noticing that this might just be the fate of any plan.

Marketing planning is a crucial piece of a marketing campaign and worth every minute spent on it. But what happens once it’s finished? I almost want to say that no one reads it! Or no one reads the whole thing. However, does it really matter? Probably not. The important part of the marketing plan is its construction. The brainstorming sessions that take place, the time that is taken to think about what needs to be accomplished, how and when. Before these discussions happen, all the ideas about a product are extremely vague, even though we might believe that we know exactly what to do. It’s impressive how everything changes along the way. And this is the purpose of a plan. To allow ourselves and our team to think, take the time and get ready for action. Above all, it allows us to know what actions to take.

The plan then becomes a binder in a book shelf that you go back and open sometimes, look at the graphs and bullet points when you need some refference, and then close it again. What is important is that the key people involved in the project never forget the road map they created and are all on the same page. That they have the key points in slides, side notes, whatever works. That they get the buy-in from everyone they need. And that they know why they are doing what they are doing. One more important thing: keep it simple and short, which is different from obvious and empty!

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