Brand strategy? Media planning? Market research? Four brave direct agency planners found the time to fill in our questionnaire as to what, exactly, planners bring to the party.
Richard Madden, planning director,
Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw
Q: What's the best way of describing what you do?
I render the frighteningly complex charmingly simple.
Q: If you were asked this question at a dinner party, how would this description differ?
Of all the people around this table, I'm probably the one with the most advanced Powerpoint skills.
Q: Where does your job begin and end on the client's brief?
Well before the start and well after the end of the job. Very often, the planner will initiate the brief by finding an opportunity for the brand or business. And once the campaign is over and the results are collated, the planner needs to be the living repository for the learnings that the campaign generated - both planned and accidental.
Q: What are the misconceptions about your role, eg that you are in fact a market researcher?
I wouldn't mind being misperceived as a researcher. The more common misperception is that you're some sort of magician. Very often young account people and clients assume that a planner can conjure an answer out of thin air. They see the impressive presentations and the studied air of sagacity. What they don't see is the long hours of ploughing through reports and the late nights with consumers in someone's front room in Doncaster.
Q: What's a typical day in the working life like?
Long and highly varied. You need to be a bit of a chameleon because of all the functions in this business, we interact with the broadest variety of people, from marketing directors to junior creatives and from data people to real people - by which I mean consumers. Many of us old-timers still like doing our own focus groups, which means lots of late nights and wilted sandwiches.
At midnight in Newport Pagnell Services you sometimes wonder if it's all worth it. But the next day you stumble across an insight or you see an idea that makes your spine tingle, and then you remember why you're doing it.
Q: Your favourite piece of planning?
I'm especially proud of our thinking for Lexus. We've changed the way they think about the car purchase process. We found that the ‘purchase funnel' model isn't so applicable in the premium car space. Research shows that people can move straight to ‘desire' without necessarily having to go the states of ‘awareness' and ‘interest' first (though I suppose anyone who has fallen in love can tell you that).
As a result we've found a new way of thinking about prospects and a whole new marketing language which is changing their prospecting strategy, from media selection to creative treatments. I'd love to tell you more, but I'd have to kill you.
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