If you are looking for a good team workshop experience, consider a seminar on account planning. It is about as timely a subject as can be found in relation to today’s small to midsize agencies. Account planning has been around for close to thirty years. It was brought by Jay Chiat to the USA from England, where it had been very popular as a refined research tool. Much speculation exists as to why Chiat embraced account planning as fully as he did for TBWA/Chiat/Day; perhaps as a method of reaffirming to clients the validity of the agency’s “out there” creative of the early 1980s. Regardless, the account planning process firmly positioned the agency and other new-style agencies like Fallon McElligot, Wieden + Kennedy, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as worthy competitors to the older, larger agencies of legend.
That’s the history, but what’s the future of account planning, especially as it relates to smaller agencies?
At TBWA/Chiat/Day, the account planner is a real person who is assigned to a particular account, along with a creative director, an art director, a copywriter, a media planner, an account executive and several assistants. Whew! Most smaller agencies can’t even field that kind of a team for ALL of their accounts combined, let alone a complete individual team for each account.
That being the case, how does a smaller agency embrace account planning?
We think the answer lies in understanding the concept of account planning and then committing your agency to that concept. If you embrace the concept it may not be necessary to have a particular person as the account planner; instead, the total agency follows the principles of account planning. Of course, your situation may allow you to have one account planner for the whole agency rather than an account planner per client. Or you may be fortunate enough to afford several account planners. Or you may be able to assign someone in the agency who is already doing another job (i.e., media director, account supervisor) the additional responsibility of account planning. Each agency has its own financial considerations. We're simply saying that you can embrace the principles of account planning today without immediately hiring an account planner.
What is account planning?
To state it simply, account planning is defined as “your client’s customer’s viewpoint within the agency.” Fully defined, it is the gathering and analysis of all relevant information about the client’s product or service, particularly as perceived by end-use customers and those in the distribution channel, in order to create and sustain an effective marketing communications campaign. Account planning is aimed at finding just the right insight to motivate a customer to take the client's desired action. But that insight must consider customer wants and needs first.
Account planning works because it is customer-focused and market-driven. It emphasizes marketing, not just selling. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Indeed, as Peter Drucker says, “Selling and marketing are antithetical rather than synonymous or even complementary.”
