A planner writes…
We’re big fans of Richard Huntington’s adliterate blog. I almost always share his thoughtful, provocative posts with my colleagues and a debate rapidly ensues. But his recent piece on whether planning was beset by crisis led to a lively exchange among our planners.
After the dust had settled a little, Sofie, our head of strategic planning, collected her thoughts and wrote a response which I reprint here.
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My initial reaction was ‘what crisis’? After a week where Stine, Niels and I literally haven’t seen each other or been in the office together, the crisis has definitely not hit Advance planning if we measure it in terms of demand for our presence with clients and teams.
But then again… of course the article leads to some further reflections than this spontaneous and somewhat arrogant response! So a number of reflections:
“And its often planning that gets compromised first in the desire to descope the agency offering to match the figure procurement has plucked out of the air”.
It’s been an ongoing struggle since the birth of planning – is it a need-to-have or is it nice to have? Can we bill it directly to the client or is it an in- house service that we have to ‘hide’ in our internal billing systems?
My own experience is that the agencies that treat planning as a need-to-have and integrate it into all accounts, that get planners in front of clients and have planners that understand how to get their hands dirty, are usually the agencies with clients that see planning as a need-to-have as well. Planning is tied up with a lot of myth – basically it ain’t rocket science. Think of planning as ‘thinking ahead’ and thereby increasing the likelihood of success – what client wouldn’t want a share of that?
And luckily, despite experiencing the procurement battle, we don’t have clients who doubt the value of planning. None of our ‘suits’ are working on a retainer fee structure with our clients, but two of our planners are, reflecting an explicit understanding that planners add value to their business and that this value is needed on an ongoing basis, rather than just an ad hoc participation when procurement bless the projects with reasonable budgets. But we can definitely make the planning contribution more explicit to clients and get the more into the ‘planning black box’, thereby making doubly sure that we don’t end up in the wrong column of procurements Excel sheets.
“Clients are increasingly keen to absorb more of the planning function into their own headcount and marketing departments. And with those skills on board they feel less inclined to out-source them to their agencies.”
True. And in many ways, I think it’s a healthy development showing real guts from the client and a keen effort to take on the strategic responsibility for the company and its brands instead of outsourcing this to the agency. And it’s a privilege actually to work with clients who have hired in clever, strategic people since it demands us to be even smarter and focused on the communication task instead of spending much of our time trying to get the strategic basics right for the client, who probably could have done some of the homework a bit more thorougly before going to the agency.
One interesting observation is that when planners do go and work in-house, they often lose one of the prime competences of the planner – the bullshit detector instinct – simply because it’s difficult to keep those kind of instincts intact as an insider.
“With an entire group of people focused on communications effectiveness, account handlers have lost their strategic instincts and with creative departments offered much of the solution in the brief they have lost the salesmanship so beloved of Ogilvy and Abbott.”
Important point! It’s vital that planners continue to bridge the value chain from account to creatives instead of separating it.
“With a pool of diverse planning skills, including deep specialists and anchored by a core of generalists…”
To me, this is the most important point of the post. The days of generalists only are definitely over. But I don’t think it’s an issue isolated to planning. I think it goes for the entire industry. Generalists are necessary to achore the client and keep focus on the big picture – but when providing ‘content’ into projects and insights and solutions on specific challenges, one of the generalist’s prime skills will be to know how to find and orchestrate a number of specialists around them. Adding to that complexitiy is also the fact that the kind of specialists needed is changing all the time and from project to project, calling for a much more fluid, “open-source”, collaborative and dynamic structure than what probably characterizes most agencies today. And this is the real challenge going forward. And from the planner’s perspective; maybe it’s the end of strategic planning and the beginning of strategic orchestration.
Man..I remember trnmateets…It is rough. Adoption process is rough. I can only imagine the stress and weight on your shoulders right now! The most I can tell you is that you are doing the right thing. Bad timing sucks. But you are being the best Mom you can by helping Dad get better and being there for him. Your children will appreciate it when he walks them down the aisle and gives them life wisdom stories. I hope the stress lessons, the trnmateets go beautifully, and your adoption process goes without a hitch.Happy ICLW from a first timer!