Shane O Leary
Strategy Director at ROTHCO | Accenture 118 articles Following
Interactive
At a conservative estimate, 99% of the space in the apartment I share with my fiancée is
taken up by my notebooks.
I live my life like Memento, except instead of filling my body with tattoos to help me
remember stuff, I fill notebooks instead.
Messaging
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 1/7
9/8/2019 Please steal these 42 useful random questions about planning advertising... | LinkedIn
Search
I've small moleskines for tidbits, quotes and random thoughts. Try Premium Free
for 1 Month
I've large classic hardbacks for writing out the key points from books.
I've notebooks dedicated solely to notes from the training courses I do.
I've A4 notebooks with random bits of scribbled business ideas spanning the last decade.
To an outsider, it looks like an absolute mess. To me, it's heaven. It's the first thing I'd save
in a fire (besides the fiancée of course!).
But there's another added benefit. I see every notebook I fill as a load of 'pre-emptive'
work. It's all ideas, quotes, thoughts for prospective future briefs, blog posts, presentations
and arguments that I might need to do in a hurry. These all help to shortcut my initial
information search because I usually have something to hand.
Some of the smartest people in history have kept 'commonplace books' and I can see why.
It's a permanent source of inspiration to flick back through, a host of random thoughts and
ideas that I can pull out of the back pocket when I need to.
I'm firmly of the opinion that every planner or strategist worth their salt should have some
sort of similar note-taking habit.
At the back of one of the smaller moleskines I filled, I've kept about 10 pages free. This is
my 'good planning questions' list.
We've all been in the midst of a planning brain freeze, staring at a blinking cursor and unable
to really get to the crux of a business/brand problem. It's a lonely feeling.
But it's not as lonely when I have the collective questioning power of all the best planner
I've ever worked with in my pocket.
Messaging
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 2/7
9/8/2019 Please steal these 42 useful random questions about planning advertising... | LinkedIn
Search
I love the 'behind the music, backstage access' that people like Mark Pollard and Julian Try Premium Free
for 1 Month
Cole give into their working process. To me that's way more helpful than teaching people
the theory. So I thought I'd share 20 of the questions that I've written down. I've broken these
into a few categories, but I have about 7-8 different categories in my full list, including
'measuring effectiveness', 'understanding the client's personality', 'media habits &
consumption', 'sense checking the strategy' etc etc.
(A quick note - some of these sort of bleed into multiple categories, you'll see what I
mean.)
--------------------------
Have you created a customer journey to show how people navigate the category and
where media impacts? How much time do people spend ‘in market’ or ‘out of market’
for this product/service?
Have you diagnosed the market and our brands position within it? Competitive analysis
of offers, target audiences, advantages and disadvantages in the market. Where can we
win?
What questions would we love to ask our audience if we met them in person in a coffee
shop? (This can often be very different to the questions you'd ask in a research interview
or survey.)
What are some smart ways you could speak to the audience instead of spending on
research? (Intercept them, sit in a coffee shop/restaurant and watch them, get into a
Facbeook group with them, analyse how they speak about a topic etc.)
Can you conduct some interesting research that nobody else is doing to give you an
edge?
How interested are they in the product, and how often do they buy it? (There's a big
difference between making an irregular grudge purchase easier and making a regular
pleasure purchase more frequent for example).
What are the barriers to consumption? Taste, brand, availability, social proof?
Who also influences them to buy? (Mums & kids/teenagers, teens and peers etc.)
What are the cultural issues that our audience care about, and has anything big changed
in their lives recently?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 3/7
9/8/2019 Please steal these 42 useful random questions about planning advertising... | LinkedIn
Search
What advantages do competitors have that we need to steer clear of? Try Premium Free
for 1 Month
What are the key category entry points/usage occasions that our brand is focused
around? (Think Domino's Saturday night in front of the TV or Galaxy chocolate relaxing
in the bath, how, where, when, with what do people consume it?)
What is the reality of decision making in this category? (Is it rational/emotional, long or
short decision span?)
Are there any other brands that are facing the same/similar issues that we could partner
with?
What category conventions should we avoid or subvert? (Beer, perfume, cars are all
good examples of categories with strong 'seas of sameness'.)
Where is the growth in this market coming from? (What products, categories etc are
growing rapidly. Is it online or offline, wholesale or DTC?)
Do the people we're talking to have an existing habit or behaviour that we can tie our
desired response to? Can we create a Pavlovian response? (Meat free Mondays, burrito
Fridays)
Who are your most compelling competitors (not most successful, but most interesting to
our audience)?
What does our brand's sales funnel look like? Where are people falling off?
Is there anything about this brand that's truly differentiated in a functional way? Do
people care about this?
Are there any durable advantages/moats that the brand has that we can exploit? (History,
community, quality stores, loyal workforce etc?)
What non durable advantages can we lean on? (Current distribution levels, better online
UX, we're small so we can afford to take more risk, we're Irish, we're not Irish.)
Is there anything in our brand's history that we can lean on to help with this?
Have you created a checklist of why this is on brief and why it will work?
Where does the idea rank on the Heineken creative impact ladder? Messaging
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 4/7
9/8/2019 Please steal these 42 useful random questions about planning advertising... | LinkedIn
Search
Can you offer up a toolkit to the brand manager to sell this upwards/internally? Try Premium Free
for 1 Month
Have you shown what brand actions could lead from this?
What independent expert witness or 'informant' might help to prove your case? (Rob
Campbell once hired prostitutes to make a point about car brands. No I'm not making
that up.)
What would a more dangerous version of this idea be? How could we really push the
boundaries? How could we get onto the 6 One News/Late Late Show/Joe Duffy? (Oooh
dangerous!)
Is your proposition something that creatives can easily dramatise? Is it something that
has enough legs for a creative platform idea?
What marketing effectiveness/strategy models could we use to help here? (Sharp, Binet
& Field, Wavemaker Momentum etc etc.)
What do you want to avoid? What would a bad outcome look like?
Are there any media publishers, journalists, influencers or vloggers that would be
relevant to this topic?
Are there any Instagram hashtags, niche forums, blogs or real world fan clubs that are
uniquely interested in this space?
--------------------------
If you have anything to add, please drop me a comment below, and feel free to share with
any planner types who might be interested.
Shane O'Leary
@shaneoleary1
Don't want to miss good shit like this? Join 2000+ other marketers by
subscribing to my email list...
Messaging
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 5/7
9/8/2019 Please steal these 42 useful random questions about planning advertising... | LinkedIn
Report this
Published by
Shane O Leary 118 articles Following
Strategy Director at ROTHCO | Accenture Interactive
Published • 1mo
Reactions
10 Comments
Add a comment…
I do the same thing; here's what I took from Seth Godin's blog:
Shane O Leary
Strategy Director at ROTHCO | Accenture Interactive
Following
A big brand playbook for Trendwatching - Why are so many Biased claims about the death of the A simple triangle holds the sec
outmuscling ‘insurgents’ – how can big brands dipping into history and 'big idea' do marketing no favours... great sponsorships and influen
Goliath beat David? dusting off old ads? partnerships...
Shane O Leary on LinkedIn
Shane O Leary on LinkedIn Shane O Leary on LinkedIn Shane O Leary on LinkedIn
Messaging
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 6/7
9/8/2019 Please steal these 42 useful random questions about planning advertising... | LinkedIn
Messaging
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-steal-42-useful-random-questions-planning-shane-o-leary/ 7/7