Jonas Lidman: "Start experimenting quickly and often"

Behind the workshop in digital planning are Jonas Lidman, process facilitator and planner at Kavorka Consulting, and Mike Arauz, Strategy Director at Undercurrent, a New York based digital strategy firm.

Hi Jonas! Can you tell us about how it happened that the two of you started doing this?

I have been lecturing at Berghs for the last two years in concept development and have found it very exciting working the Berghs students. It has always annoyed me that we put so little time in to strategy and planning in Scandinavia advertising; I have even run into creatives that almost see planning as an opposing role within their agency instead of a collaborative role. So I started talking to Mike at Undercurrent, who I have worked with before, and is cutting edge when it comes to digital strategy. We came up with a workshop that links the strategic and creative process together in a way that we think will be really inspiring!

What are the main challenges when it comes to putting digital planning into practice?

Digital is inherently complex. We want things to be easy and simple, but that's not how the digital world works. This means that it's critical to think in terms of networks, rather than thinking of each person in your audience as a disconnected individual.

What kind of exercises can the students look forward to (or dread!) this coming Saturday?

Ha ha, look forward to, definitely! We've got a some fun and thought-provoking exercises that help us to understand how communities define shared values and interests, and how to think about motivating a group.

To become a really good planner within digital advertising, what personal characteristics would you say are necessary?

A relentless curiosity is probably the single most important quality. This is such a new and quickly changing field, so it's very valuable to always be trying out and learning about new things. Being a good "systems thinker" is something that is always good to develop. The ability to see how what looks like independent parts in a process in the end come together and form the result.

What is the most common mistake made within planning digital campaigns?

The biggest mistake that we see is when agencies base their ideas on what they think would be cool, instead of putting their audience first and thinking about what the audience would really value or find truly engaging.

What do think will be Berghs’ students main insight after having attended the workshop in digital planning?

We hope that the biggest concept for the students to take away is having a functional model for thinking about how to engage large communities online.

Summarized, can you give them one piece of advice when starting doing this “out in the real world”?

Start experimenting quickly and often. Put your ideas into practice and see what happens. And always think about what's really interesting or valuable for your specific audience.