The future of Planning might not be Advertising
2 February, 2009 at 9:12 am 2 comments
I’m starting to wonder if Account Planning’s role is really about advertising (or even communications) anymore.
Gareth Kay’s brilliant post (and presentation) on why Planning Needs Some Planning raised some very interesting thoughts on why brands need to have a social mission, not a commercial proposition and what I found most inspiring was:
Working within the framework of a regional, integrated agency the opportunities for long term involvement in a client’s high profile, above the line communications are a bit limited anyway. But increasingly I’m getting involved in exciting NPD at an early stage, working on positionings and target audience identification alongside the Research team, often long before the comms campaign gets considered.
Maybe the modern Planner’s role as Researcher, Cultural Guide and Insight Generator makes us well suited to add value at this early stage – ensuring that when a communications campaign is put into place, all the groundwork is there to ensure that it will resonate with the target audience.
Entry filed under: Account Planning. Tags: Account Planning, future of Account Planning, Planning, role of Planners.
1. Charles | 2 February, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Your best post to date.
2. Kim Karalekas | 14 March, 2009 at 11:38 am
Yes! I love this. Slide #36 is wonderful and I agree, it’s completely not about social media. Temporarily social media might solve problems; however if we are looking for a long term fix, we need to revamp the basic internal infrastructure of a business/brand/society/government…you name it.
Slide #66 – yes, love this too! It’s all about strategic problem solving.
Slide #8 – I have Stephen King’s book sitting in front of me as I type!
Slide #30 – Yup, qualitative is just as important as quantitative…just becasue it’s not as easy to measure in numbers, doesn’t mean it’s not crucial to the business model!
Thanks for the great post!