Planning Ideas Lab

A personal journey

PR agency

Business, brand & communications

planner

CommunicationsPlanning

Advertising media,

sponsorship & digital agencies

Brief History of Planning

Account PlanningAccount Planning

19

60

/70

s2

01

0s Integrated Planning/T-Shaped Planners

Integrated Planning/T-Shaped Planners

Communications Planning

Communications Planning

19

80

s Brand PlanningBrand Planning

Media PlanningMedia Planning

Direct PlanningDirect Planning

Brand PositioningBrand Positioning

19

90

/20

00

s

CRM/DataCRM/Data

Executional Planning

SP

PR

Spon

Digital(SEO)

Digital(SEO) Mkg Science/

Econometrics

Mkg Science/Econometrics

PR & Planning

• PR teams have always planned campaigns & activities, so what has changed?

• Why have many of the leading PR agencies started hiring planners?

• Is it worth the investment?

More Complex Media & Opinion Former Landscape

Activism & corporate behaviour

New patterns of consumer behaviour &

new expectations

New media technologies

Collapse of Traditional Certainties

End of Advertising Hegemony

Consumer Empowerment &

Dispersal of Control

Economic Realities

Evolving Client Needs

• Cost pressures demanding major structural changes:– Clients are seeking more for less from

fewer agency partners and cost savings of 20-25% (Marketing)

– “Every client has asked its agency what more it can do; how much less can it charge; what extra value can it add” (AAR)

– Recession will lead to “more responsible buying of marketing services” (Sir Martin Sorrell)

• Intelligent re-bundling of agency resources

Evolving Client Needs

• Frustration => Demand for a new approach:– “As brand custodians, the speed of change has genuinely

outpaced our ability to meet it”“A new era of remarkable opportunity”Simon Clift, CMO, Unilever

– "We need to reinvent the way we market to consumers. We need a new model. It does not exist. No one else has one yet. But we need to get going now.” A.G. Lafley, Chairman-CEO, P&G

– “Creative & media agencies are "struggling like mad to cope" with both the new digital world and the additional pressures brought on by the recession. I don’t believe that I am getting the right advice from my agencies” Will Harris, Nokia

Evolving Client Needs

• Creatively agnostic

PR

Experiential

Promotion

POS

Online

IDEA

AdsPR

Experiential

Promotion

POS

Online

Advertising

Old Model New Model

Clients Embracing New Approaches

Evolved role of in-house PR team => Influencer Marketing“As marketers we have an opportunity & responsibility to drive change within our companies because all touchpoints now impact our brand & our revenue.  Brands aren’t defined by campaigns anymore but by the consumer ecosystem we nurture to support them” Mike Mendenhall, CMO:

Broadening responsibility of marketers (+ PR, corp. comms & insight)“designed to ensure that everyone is aligned with the same aim of brand-building”

“growth of new media channels – in particular, social networking websites – had created a widening overlap in the activities of the marketing and PR departments, so it made sense to unify the teams”

Demand for New Agency Skills

Multi disciplinary strategy & execution

Real Time Planning Influencer Marketing

Mind the Strategic Gap

• Declining influence of ad agency planning

• Failure of media agencies to adequately fill void

• Marketing comms industry dominated by youth & specialisation

• Where are clients going for strategic advice?

Opportunity … to accelerate move up value chain

• To become your company’s or clients most valued strategic business, brand and marketing communications advisorMore influenceMore statusMore revenue/better profit marginsA future

• Which you can achieve (in part) by putting a planning mindset at the heart of your business

Opportunity … to address PR industry’s Core Weaknesses

• Executional fixation

• Strategic ill-discipline

• Commercial naiveté

• Intellectual laziness/lack of confidence

• Relative lack of thought leadership

• Under selling (& under pricing) strategic & creative contribution

• Evaluation myopia

The Competitive Threat

• Other agency sectors stealing language of PR

• Emergence of new hybrid agency models, integrating PR with other disciplines

• T-Shaped Planning/Planners

• Cliché alert:– “So many agencies are talking about the need to re-gear their

approach around the same principles: ideas led, media-neutral, integrated, multi-disciplinary” Campaign

Where Planning Mindset Will Add Value

Moving Up Value Chain• Intellectual rigour/clarity• Thought leadership

Opening Up New Capabilities• Strategic underpinning• Sales support

Specific Areas Where Value Can Be Added By Planning

7. Evaluation => reapplied learning

Problem Analysis

Strategic Thinking

CreativeDevelopment

Evaluation

1. Commercial understanding2. Organisational empathy

3. Consumer/customer insight4. Brand literacy5. Channel/influencer knowledge

6. Creative inspiration

1. Commercial Understanding

• Best agency partners understand the business better than their clients

• How do they make money or justify their existence?

• Nothing damages credibility faster than naïve advice

2. Organisational Empathy

• Getting campaigns implemented far more of a challenge than coming up with ideas

• Multi-media programmes highly demanding/resource intensive

• Connected consumer meets disconnected organisation

Social media dramatises the level of disconnection

• Reveals silos

• Underlines structural/ operational weaknesses– Decision making– Speed– Accountability

3. Consumer Insight

• Most abused word in PR

• PR people naturally insightful … but struggle to articulate

• Power to underpin strongest strategic/creative ideas

• Critical competitive advantage for clients

4. Brand Literacy

• Talking the language of brand– Represent 80%+ of value of most brand

owners

– Much pseudo science… but understanding of theories & terminology commands respect

– Multiple models/processes… but struggle in world of “shared ownership”

5. Channel/Influencer Knowledge

• Focus on bought & owned … as well as earned media

• Borrow language & empirical rigour of media planning

• Leverage understanding of more complex influencer models

6. Creative Inspiration

• Driving the ideation process… more professional/disciplined briefing

• Brutal simplicity v overdose of options

• Providing strategic rationale

7. Reapplying Learning

• Measurement pointless unless you learn something & can reapply lessons

• Output + Impact + Effect

• Everything is measurable… with creativity/lateral thinking

Characteristics of Best Planners

• Challenging but empathetic• Commercially astute• Immersed in lives of target audiences• Culturally informed• Able to look at problems from

different angle (reframing)• Combine Observation + Analysis +

Intuition• Fertilisers of ideas

Giant Caveat

• No one makes money out of planning & few make money by selling strategy

• Good planners are expensive & not all data is free

• Planners have historically struggled to survive within PR agencies

In Summary

• Embracing planning mindset has potential to accelerate PR’s move up the value chainUnderpins strengthsAddresses weaknessesSafeguards future

www.crowdsurfing.net#crowdsurfing