Four ideas, one customer

The plan for the last third of the year has four peaks in it, and four ideas.

The school return has one. The national day has another. The shopping month in November has a third, and the year end has a fourth. Four briefs, four looks, four propositions, agreed in four separate meetings, usually with four different owners.

Nobody decided that. It is what happens when work is organised as projects. A project needs a name, a start, and something to show at the end of it, and a peak that repeats what the last peak said produces nothing anybody can present. Reusing an idea is the cheapest thing a marketing department can do and the hardest thing in it to be credited for.

So the incentive inside the building points at novelty, four times in four months. The customer is not inside the building. She receives a company that changes its mind every six weeks, and she is not watching closely enough to admire the range.

The version that works is dull to write down. One thing to say, said in September when the schools go back, said again on the day itself, said again in the sale, said again at the year end, dressed differently every time and identical underneath. By January it is the only sentence about you she could repeat without being prompted.

It rarely survives August, because saying the same thing a fourth time is not a project, and nothing in the way a plan is built knows how to reward it.