Came across this interesting approach to strategic planning. It’s a pretty good way of putting some structure around activities that we planners do on a daily basis. The inspiration for this thought process comes from method acting. Pretty cool…

Principals of Method Planning:

1) Be your target group. Dress like them, act like them, go where they go, listen what they listen to, eat what they eat, watch what they watch, read what they read…you get my point.

2) Determine your brand’s utility angle. How does/could your brand improve one’s life? How does it help or benefit the consumer?

3) Identify the consumer’s experience with the category and your brand. The WHOLE experience: Pre-shopping, trigger, during the shopping process, purchase, post-purchase. Then illustrate the length of time the consumer typically spends in each of the different phases of the experience, their evolving mindset, touchpoints & sources of influence.

4) Spend at least a day with your target. Shadowing is a great exploratory method for this.

5) Join the same online networks, forums, hangouts as your target group. Share in their passion. But, be genuine with your participation. Don’t sell them on anything. Trust me on this. I worked on Polaris (a power sports company) and frequented many online forums on snowmobiling, motorcycling and atving to learn directly from the source and our target didn’t mind in me joining in the fun as long as I was there to learn and share in the fun and not to sell and ruin their sanctuary.

6) Uncover the target’s passions, opinions and thoughts on the state of the world.

7) Listen. Join in their watercooler conversation, but do more listening than talking.

8) Become an Internet Zeitgeist. Dig around and find insights in the Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Del.ico.us, Stumbleupon sites of the world. The first thing I do whenever I start working on a new brand is such as The American Legacy Foundation is poke around YouTube. I go on to seek out consumer videos on the target group, category or brand that I just started working on. You could be astonished by what you can find on YouTube. I recently learned so much about smoking, why and how people started smoking, how they are planning to quit, why they’ve decided to quit, and what drives them to keep relapsing.

9) Prototype the product/service/idea/communication. Ask for the consumer’s feedback in a natural setting. Not under the hot, sterile lights of a focus group facility.

10) Ask “What if” and let it guide the conversation.