Actionplannin' in the USA (as Debbie Harry never sang…)
So, I just ran my first New York based Actionplanning session (with the new ‘Actionplanning 2.0’ sheet), and it went pretty well (apart from the fact they don’t have A3 paper here, but something called ‘tabloid’, which foxed me a little when I tried to print the sheets…
Of course there’s no great surprise that it worked the same as it does in the UK; the communications planning we do nowadays for clients is based around having a ‘big idea’ that works with what you know about people (or ‘consumers’), rather than tactical ideas for which in-depth local knowledge is needed.
If you can get to the big idea, the people on the ground locally can interpret and implement that however it most naturally fits in that territory. Actionplanning is just a great way of creating those big ideas with whoever you’re with at the time, be they in America, UK, France or whatever.
{note to mum; my god, it might actually meant that I’ve learnt something that can be officially classified as a, wait for it, career…}