it's easy to get caught-up in the race to be the first to tweet, post, link, share out the latest and greatest shit that we find online. i'm guilty of it myself. when i used to have my office inside the client's office, it helped me be "that guy" when they wanted a creative spark of inspiration for a brainstorm. it was a defense mechanism that i had built-up to justify my reason for being. however, more and more now, i believe that as planners we need to be more than just "curators of cool" or finding ways-in for our creative teams. ultimately, we need to find ways to help our clients make money. [pause]. this requires more thinking, but there's some good discussion about it here from Faris' chat at the Boulder Digital Works/NY thing today.
what i really wanted to share was this post over at Rob Campbell's blog about the need to get our heads out of our asses and live in the real world. i've always been a big fan of getting outside of the office as often as we can to really see, observe and take note of what real people are doing. go to a walmart, a target, the local grocery store, or walk around the mall. look at what people are putting into their shopping carts. what items are flying off the shelf at the trader joe's? talk to the sales associates and see what trends they've noticed about their customers. i'll bet you'll find more interesting, insightful and relevant stories here than anything your cool-hunting sites will uncover. and if you do feel the need to tweet-out your found gem, go for it. you'll probably even scoop PSFK.
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