Wanna be a Planner? Straight talking advice for graduates.
3 October, 2008 at 3:31 pm 8 comments
image courtsey of spell with flickr
I’ve be running into a lot of wannabe Planners recently and without wanting to sound too harsh, here are a few home truths you need to hear before you decide on Planning as a career path. Please take them in the spirit of kindly advice that they were meant!
1) Yes, the number of trained Planners currently exceeds the number of Planning jobs to be filled, BUT a) there is a recession on the way and Planners have always been a Luxury Item in agencies and b) the number of wannabe Planners vastly outnumbers the number of agencies currently prepared to take on graduates and train them up. So to be honest, your employment prospects are not great.
2) Reality check time. Junior Planners photocopy, get sent to the supermarket to buy ten different brands of tinned tomatoes and spend a lot of their time wading through 150 page Mintel reports and wrestling with TGI and TNS data on uncooperative excel spreadsheets. Life as a Junior Planner is probably even less fun than working as a Junior Account Handler – it’s not a fast track that bypasses photocopying and typing up contact reports.
3) Which brings me on to Skills. It would help vastly if you were numerate, a good communicator, a creative thinker and really interested in people and trends and stuff like that. A Media Studies degree does not necessarily demonstrate that to me.
4) So you need to start learning all over again. Read Truth, Lies, and Advertising
4) Learn how to be Interesting. Russell Davies has written tons about this. Start windsurfing or tap dancing or decide to visit every seaside pier still standing in Britain. Take a photo every day. Be interested in other people. Strike up conversations, eavesdrop in cafes, think about why people have arrived at certain opinions.
5) When you can demonstrate that you understand what Planners actually do, the skill set you will need and that you appreciate what you would need to learn in order to be effective in the role, THEN start approaching agencies asking about graduate Planning roles. I promise at least I will listen a lot more attentively.
update, 20/01/11 – I’ve just stumbled across a video I did to support the (new at the time) Diploma in Creative and Media for 14-19 year olds. There’s lots of tips for wannabe Planners on there (even if they seem to have called me an Account Manager for some reason), so it might be worth a look.
Entry filed under: Account Planning, advice, Planning. Tags: Account Planning, advice, career, graduates, Planning.
1. Mark Hadfield | 3 October, 2008 at 4:46 pm
All very very true. If all planners were the same.
We could sit here and discuss the merits and pitfalls of planners that know ‘the industry standards’ v planners who are a bit different.
I guess that’s the difference between what a friend and I call ‘taught planners’ and ‘learned planners’ – a taught planner has been taught to carry out a systematic approach to a problem. This (generally) leaves little capacity for original, fresh thinking. If it’s not in the TGI stats and it wasn’t reflected in the focus group, don’t do it.
However, if some companies have the balls to give some rope to different, unoriginal, (parallel?), backgrounds then who knows?
However, I absolutely take your point about planners not being necessary and in the current climate it’s all about proving ones worth.
I was chatting to some friends this week and saying I’m thinkign of taking all planning feeds off my RSS. The conversations seem to be about the same things. The books that are suggested are the same. I think there’s real scope to truly find inspiration in different areas, instead of looking to the same blogs and working once-removed from the original source.
I guess what I’m trying to say in a ‘rambling because it’s Friday afternoon kind of way’ is that pigeon-holing account team members is sort of easy. Pigeon-holing creatives is sort of easy. Pigeon-holing planners IS easy but I sort of wish it wasn’t. In order for the practice to remain relevant, interesting and exciting then I hope it doesn’t go that way. Risks are good. Diversity is good. If we can convince employers of this we can (with their help) get to work on the clients and attempt to come up with original, exciting, fresh work.
2. almostalwaysthinking | 3 October, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Great points Mark, thanks for the response. I got a bit freaked when a graduate confidently told me she’d be a great Planner because she was a very logical thinker…
3. Olle | 5 October, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I agree there are planners out there who need to read this post perhaps, but more importantly planning directors need to pick people who they see fit as planners at their agencies – not only picking from planners or aspiring planners. That, I think, is the way to go. In line with Russell’s interesting thoughts. Pick interesting people with interesting backgrounds and thoughts, not just planners per se What’s a creative?
What’s required from a planner changes and varies quicker than any schoool for planners (whatever that is in GBR) can evolve. Media planners, account planners, experience planners etc….
This is probably why our industry still, after 40 years, spend so much time trying to define what it is we really do… which is quite amusing.
4. Babett | 31 October, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Hi,
Im a so called junior planner looking for a job abroad. The people Im working with really like what im doing, appreciates my thoughts and inputs. Im still struggling with the introduction in a job inquiry because I think my work could improve itself.
Actually planning blog tips for beginners are the scariest thing ever:)
Just a little thing: Im wondering who can be brave enough to decide who is interesting and who is not. I strongly believe that everybody is interesting. Its like an axiom. If I didnt think so I wouldnt work a planner.
5. almostalwaysthinking | 31 October, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Good point Babett :-) Maybe I should have written ‘be interested in why people are interesting’.
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