June 23. 2008 19:35

The most important thing for Planning to deliver in future is some Planning itself, rather then lots of theories. Getting hands dirty, feeling responsible, being accountable is what we need.

Gary

June 24. 2008 11:59

There's no doubt that the role of planning has changed and is changing - due to increased and diverse demands from our clients; from the different type of people that planning (as a discipline) attracts; and from the ever evolving media and communications landscape. Whatever the changes, the challenge fundamentally remains the same: to fully understand the brand's commercial imperative, to identify the core consumer need for that brand or service and to drive the communications that helps unlock the value of that brand. No matter how complex the media scene, how diverse the cultures, how fragmented the channels the role of planning is to generate value for clients - and we should'nt lose sight of this.

Marie

June 24. 2008 14:14

The most important thing to deliver in the future is the same thing we've been trying to deliver for the last 40 years (drum roll please...) Ideas. Precisely 'new ideas'.

Ideas are the currency of our industry and represent the only future of our industry.
Ideas are how we add value to our clients' business and their brands.
Coming up with ideas (not insights) are why we get out of bed in the morning.
Ideas are what clients hire is for.
Ideas are important.
Ideas are fun.
Ideas are at the heart of big brands.
There's little value in ads. There are massive value in ideas. Without the revenues that come from big ideas nobody gets paid.
Ideas are glory; they will make our clients' brands famous which, in turn, will make JWT Planning famous.
Ideas are the language of creativity. If we're ever going to be indispensable to Creatives we need to talk their language.
Ideas change the world (and who wouldn't want to be a part of that).
Ideas are easily killed; planners are the only people that can protect a good idea when it's too young to weak to survive on it's own.

Ideas are the only reason I got into the business.

Adrian

June 24. 2008 15:38

In the face of ever-increasing complexity, planning needs to work harder to create relevant simplicity.
Not just reductive summaries of the complexity but ideas that simplify the complexity and open up clearer ways forward for creative communications and for brands.

Rob

June 27. 2008 10:39

Planning needs to stop trying to be like the creative department and start trying to help the creative department.

Paula

June 30. 2008 10:46

Inspiration and passion. If we want people to spend time with our ideas and our brands they will have to be highly innovative and entertaining. Give me the WOW factor.

Christine

June 30. 2008 11:01

Thinking a bit deeper on this...

I think the way we dig into understanding consumers is going to change a lot, due to digital capability. Demographic segmentation is already a dinosaur, behavioural/ attitudinal is helpful... but in the digital age, how do we really find out how people are spending their time and what they are interested in? Will people be willing to share their iPod lists, their Internet favourites and their RSS feeds? Will we track their cookies and their SNS behaviour? What does this say about them?

Will the overwhelming data of their digital footprints make it harder or easier to market to them as we move to a 1-on-1 world of dialogue marketing?

I think we will have a lot to learn from the CRM-type dialogue marketing agencies that have learned a lot about how to take simple lessons out of the complexity, as Rob says...

Christine

July 3. 2008 09:09

I think Planning should change its name. It is so held back by its association with traditional brand planning that it needs to signal change. I suggest "Ideas Planning".

John

July 6. 2008 00:54

I think we should also discuss about how do planners help retain customers in the new age where choices are plentiful and information are transparent thanks to the internet. The relationship between consumers and brands are like marriage, once it passes its dating-proposal-honeymoon, things can get a little too real and brands are having tough time keeping the flame burning.
Our task is to work hand-in-hand with marketing from brands to create works that keep consumers stay in their marriage to brands

Phong

July 7. 2008 00:44

Planning, at its best, inspires the great ideas that people talk about, engage with and remember. They are the ideas that make brands famous and which become part of people's everyday.

We need to get back to doing those things. Not being the creative department, nor being some sort of new age media department, and nor a mere support to account management - Planners help ensure that ideas positively impact consumer's reality and do good things for the client's business results at the same time.

How we do those things depends on the agency, the client and the market - there is no single prescription for this, even within our network. I hope Planning can confidently embrace the diversity in the way we do things, now and into the future.

Andrew

July 7. 2008 01:52

Like John's suggestion about renaming ourselves as "Ideas Planners"... sounds much better than "Account Planners"

Christine

July 7. 2008 12:38

While I agree with Adrian that we must continue to be about ideas, it worries me that this is such a catchall statement. Poets are about ideas as are philosophers, artists, authors, film makers, chemists and mathematicians. True, there are elements of each of these that we aspire to but this hardly constitutes a definition of what we uniquely deliver. The Internet was an idea 20 years before anyone could use it. It took the likes of Netscape, Google and Wikipedia to make it useful, valuable and ultimately culture changing. I think ideas are an abundant commodity and very few of the “good” ones or even the “big” ones have any real value. I think planning needs to deliver a real understanding of what ideas can be useful and valuable to others (either functionally as in new product ideas and new communications ideas or emotionally valuable ones as in new entertainments and pleasures). In the future I think planning has to be able to deliver ideas that can attract their own audience, rather than depending on audiences that have gathered around (content) ideas that the we had no part in creating.

William

July 7. 2008 17:09

I will say what I always do as a response to this question... sharing an article I had published a year ago. Nothing has happened to change my mind. I don't know if what I describe is India specific or is happening everywhere.Anyway here goes...

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The Future of Strategic Planning
Separate with a bang or die with a whimper


What has happened to the advertising industry as a whole and to servicing as a function will happen to planning too: its role will get steadily reduced as new fangled experts chip away more and more at its pie.

The rose bushes in planning’s vineyard: Heeding the danger signals

They say vine growers plant rose bushes every few yards or so, because potential pest infestations show up early in the rose bushes – and the vineyard can be saved.

The rose bushes in planning’s vineyards are already showing signs of danger.

Consultants have been mushrooming for quite some time now. Trend spotters are arriving by every train. Journalists and magazines are doing a great job of tracking and reporting trends in social psychology much faster than agencies ever can. There’s enough and more available on the net – marketing websites and blogs are throwing up ideas and models faster than you can say google. Understanding media behaviour, shopper behaviour and the like has traditionally not been an area of expertise of agency planners. It doesn’t help that market research agencies are not adapting fast either.

With brand messaging converging with news, content and entertainment, the relay race where planning partners the client from conception and then passes on the baton to creative for delivery is no more relevant. Worse, the agency planner is no more the sole and best source of consumer behaviour and insights, or positioning strategies. Leave alone having their own insight mining divisions, marketing companies are beginning to blog on the net directly with consumers – hunting not just for insights but product ideas and even business plans. The increasing pressure on creative to push forward on its own steam further decreases planning’s role.

Strategic planning could learn from the Indian woman.

Always used to being some one else’s daughter, wife and mother the Indian woman suddenly started asking the question: “What about me?” Not satisfied with just “role” she started searching for “soul’. And when she stepped out and started earning on her own and became her own person as it were, she not only gained more respect but also became an economic force to reckon with.

It’s time strategic planners in advertising agencies started asking the very same question: “What about me?” Planners should go beyond being servicing’s backroom boy, or the client’s sounding board, or creative’s partner or the agency’s pitch leader. Their portfolio should go beyond creative briefs and strategy and pitch presentations. They should have a body of work that belongs to them - a portfolio of their own, which has a reason to be, independently.

Why? For the simple reason that first as individual professionals it will raise their level of perceived expertise and self worth, and second, as an agency offering, it will help raise the quality and scope of contribution, thus commanding a higher price.


Re-skill, re-structure, recruit differently

Besides fresh methods to play the traditional roles, (the Indian woman does housekeep and cook more imaginatively today!) planners need to pick areas of interest and expand their skill sets to include trend analysis, strategic content creation, media behaviour analyses, business ideation/consulting, work-shopping and brainstorming, net scrounging, 360 degree research and channel planning.

New age planners should be able to hit the ground running with frameworks and models for new age categories like retail, medical, education, entertainment, commodities, travel, technology/internet, as well as be able to play a consulting role in areas like internal/employee branding, and even CEO branding.

The planner of the future must shift gears today – if he or she hasn’t already - to go from being thinker to creator, from insights to ideas, from creative brief as predominant output to content creation and tool building.

Advertising agencies should restructure and break the traditional format of having dedicated planners per client, to creating a hub of planners with varied new age skills for all clients to access.

The straight, tough, soul searching question to ask is: will clients continue to pay for someone just to oversee the research agency, hold the brand manager’s hand on positioning and write the creative brief?

The opportunity: from a department to an AOR

If the AOR for creative and media can be different, a separate AOR for (integrated) strategic planning is but a short step away. When you pay for something separately, the buyer demands more and the seller is forced to deliver greater value. For all the debate on whether or not it was a good idea to pull media out of the advertising agency, there is no denying that the client has got greater value.

The opportunity for strategic planning is to pull itself out, expand its definition, collect varied expertise, and actually be the gateway between the marketer and all other agencies – advertising, media, activation, PR, DM, digital and whatever else that springs up.

To string a few clichés together… as it stands, strategic planning is going nowhere, fast. In the long term, we are all dead. Only the paranoid survive.
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Mythili Chandrasekar

July 15. 2008 12:23

I think that the celebration of Planning at 40 is actually taking place at a rather fortuitous moment. It is a great time in order to discuss how planning should deal with and incorporate the explosion of media channels around us. Today, (as we know) almost anything is becoming a channel or method of communicating an idea. Planning has to evolve from being a discipline in which key brand insights and directions are discovered and nurtured to also being a key guide in negotiating the uneven terrain of the various channels to the consumer. Discovering the kernel of truth that will make sure a brand is held close to the consumer's heart is one thing but making sure that a specific idea reaches the consumer in as interesting, creative and efficient way possible is just as important. It is something that planners must both strive and take responsibility for.

Nic Manser

July 16. 2008 19:58

Thank-you JWT for a terrific evening. The setting and the company were first-rate.

I wish you'd chosen a different theme, though...

http://www.secondbrainmedia.com/

Ian Leslie

July 17. 2008 17:24

I thought the evening was everything our brand should be doing - it was thoughtful and done with class and care. I think we should be talking about what the relevant themes are for the next one and perhaps have a continuous planning-related events calendar.

alison burns