Where is planning heading?
One of the great things about subscribing to Creative Review is the access it gives you to the mind of Paul Belford.
I recently read back through all his columns and discovered a very interesting point that bears repeating: some of the greatest advertising of all time was created without the benefit of planners. He was referring specifically to the early VW ads such as Lemon and Snowplough, but he could have included anything brilliant created before 1965-8, when the discipline was formally invented in London by Stanley Pollit (the ‘P’ of BMP). Surprisingly, planners didn’t really reach America until the early 1980s, so any great US ads created before then came to life without the help of that department.
(Then again, there were also plenty of crappy ads created in that time. Was that down to poor strategic input? Possibly…)
The need to consider who might like to consume the thing you want to sell, how best to address them and the ways in which your competitors present themselves are basic elements that didn’t magically materialise in the late 1960s. But at that point a degree of formality was deemed necessary, so the industry decided to make planning a specialism, and handed responsibility for it to a separate collection of people in a new department.
The reason I bring this up now is that we appear to have come to an unexpected schism: the idea of doing away with planning its current form has been mooted by no less an industry figure than Mark Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&G. He has advocated for the discipline to be handled in-house, with its resources instead allocated to the creative department.
Further commentary has come from Andy Nairn, founding partner (on the planning side) of Lucky Generals. Understandably he has defended the his turf, asserting that planning strengthens the voice of the consumer, one that often gets drowned out by the agency perspective. That makes sense, but he also acknowledges that some planners can be ‘speed bumps’ and ‘resistors of change’ (to be fair, those two categories also exist in creative and account management).
It’s also worth mentioning this crisis of confidence is happening a mere decade after planners were insisting they be granted admittance to the edit suite. Apparently this would allow them to give their valuable input to parts of the creative process from which they had been hitherto forbidden.
So where is this all heading? A reduction in the number of planners? A redistribution of planners’ wages throughout the creative department (winky emoji)? A redistribution of planners’ responsibility amongst Comms Planners, Media Planners and Client Brand Guardians? A redistribution of the three months it takes planners to write a brief back into the creative process? A new way for strategic knowledge to permeate through creativity?
Who knows? I still think there’s great value to be gained from strategists who can analyse the heck out of a business and/or category, offering insight and rigour that uncovers hidden gold. But that only seems to be a small part of the current job, which might explain why the discipline in its current form is going through something of an identity crisis. In addition, the creative department, and advertising in general, have been going through their own ten-year malaise, so planning difficulties might be just one symptom of a more widespread disease.
The offerings of Facebook and Google circumvent every part of the industry, leaving us all fighting for our positions, possibly at the expense of each other’s.
A wise man once said that a creative who works without planning is like someone trying to reach a destination without the aid of a map. Good point, but it feels like the transition from Ordnance Survey to Sat Nav has not been without its hiccups.
As a client, planners are what keeps me from going straight to a graphic design agency, a digital product company or a film production company, all usually very capable of doing incredibly creative work on a tight client brief (which is usually what we don’t have the time to create).
There’s a big exodus of planners going client side or to management consultancies, which will probably result in further commodifciation of “creative work”, the death of ad agencies, and the rise of specialist production companies. So with planners gone, so will the ad agencies be. “Creatives” will need to specialize and pick niche channels for their craft.
Just look at Sir Martin, his first acquisition hasn’t got a position open for either planners nor advertising creatives.
Is that good, bad, neither or both?
There’s planning and there are planners. Good creatives are good at planning. What planning does, was done for those VW campaigns, but not by planners. Great ideas can come from anywhere (allegedly). So can great planning.
Like anything (IMHO) the good ones are priceless and the rest are a nuisance.
You wouldn’t class all footballers with Ronaldo and you wouldn’t class all planners with Nigel Bogle.
Great ad people (from whatever dept) are a pleasure to work with.
Whiny little silo-sitters (from whatever dept) are a waste of space.
We don’t need planners (or creatives, or suits, or clients) we need ad people.
Anyone who has ever worked on P&G knows they have no need of planners.
They give the agency a brief which has usually had it’s fair share of scrutiny. Planners just get in the way of the creative that goes with it.
I’m not saying their creative can’t be better but that’s a whole other conversation.
When I left Scotland many moons ago there were only a few planners. Charlie Spencer and David Amers were great and mostly thought strategy and got out of the way and let the creatives do their bit.
Hitting London they were everywhere and within a couple of years were making decisions ECDs should have been making. I couldn’t believe it.
Now? Account handlers are in the most part glorified secretaries. CDs are there to implement the planner/strategist/futurists vision and the creative has little say in what they think works.
Other than designing the final thing, which is quite often changed on the planners say so anyway, they have complete control of the process.
I know a lot of awards have been on the back of a good planners hard work and ideas but many award have been won where a planner has never touched the project because the client knows their proposition and asks for work to it.
I guess I’m saying, when we all do our jobs well we can do some good stuff but when we all try and do each others (clients included) we produce pish.
I agree with Frank Reitgassl, Director of Brand Strategy & Creative, Mondelē.z: Strategy has a future. But not necessarily in agencies. I agree with Frank Reitgassl, Director of Brand Strategy & Creative, Mondelē.z His view is “…the real debate is who is doing it. In-house client teams? Consultancies? Media owners? Agencies?”
Worth a read WARC future of strategy – a survey of 500 planners and commentary.
https://www.warc.com/content/article/The_Future_of_Strategy_2018/122825
Like I always said, the only good planner is one that’s floundering in their own excrement whilst trying to beat down the flames of ineffectual banality with a three pronged strategy.