Brand planners must view the world over time. We know the media will change, but the core selling ideas shouldn’t. The recession has been in full force now for a year and a half and marketers have been enthralled by doing the same with less. We’ve taken to the Web in the hope that pay-per-click will move merch while saving TV and print dollars. We’ve gone to conferences (not many), attended webinars, and followed social media experts who have told us to stop managing our brands and let the consumers do it. If we really listen, they say, we’ll be able to fine-tune our products and how we sell them.

Media channel is pitted against media channel and it would seem that the new media is winning. Marketers now have more selling silos then ever – all fighting for a part of the budget – and their agencies sit at the table with their own strategy person. The digital account planner sits next to the ad agency account planner, who sits by the direct response planner. It’s McCrazy.

The biggest new product launch in a good while is the Droid. I think it’s a Verizon product, but it may be Motorola. No, definitely Verizon. The email idea is “Droid Does” but the teaser TV spot’s are not about that. The TV is brilliant, absolutely riveting (McGarry Bowen), but it lacks an idea other than “coming” and “futuristic.”

Branding has become disenfranchised from marketing. Though we can now test tactics with greater accuracy, we’re collectively getting sloppy with brand management.

As a planner I always refer to the power of an idea as defined by day-after-recall testing. When you see an ad or selling communication on a Tuesday what will you remember about it on Wednesday? The picture? The color? Or the selling idea?

When the ANA meets next year and looks back on 2009 and members are asked “What were some of the biggest branding ideas of the past year?” I surely hope they don’t answer Twitter. Peace!