As advertising and marketing professionals, we know all about "interesting times." The business is changing so rapidly that the average agency owner ends the day with their head spinning from trying to keep tabs on the business, the clients, the vendors, new media. But there is one particular change agencies should take note of.
The Evolving Agency Model
When Account Planning first hit these shores, it was embraced by a few big agency practitioners, including Goodby Silverstein, and TBWA and Chiat/Day. The specialty enjoyed wider agency adoption through the 1990s, then hit a backlash phase where detractors put some heavy dents into account planning's credibility and value. The resurgence of the field brought with it a new understanding: account planning is not a separate entity, but an integrated part of the creative process.
Today, account planners work closely with creative strategists, branding experts, research, and account service to develop highly targeted, more effective creative. Market segmentation has driven this refocusing of the planning lens. User-generated content and social conversation lend additional importance to account planners' traditional expertise — to act as the eyes, ears, and voice of the customer, and to create communications that resonate in emotional and loyalty-generating ways.
Account Planners as Coordinators
Increasingly, account planners serve as the prime movers in this new integration. They are mentally a few steps back from the agency action, because of their customer focus. This helps them see more clearly how to bring together the many separate departments within an agency in just the right configuration to best reach particular audiences.
But Do Clients "Get It"?
The difficulty with selling account planning to smaller and midsize agency clients has always been that clients do not understand exactly what account planners do. Many agency people don't understand account planning. So here is a definition in a nutshell:
Account planning is the gathering and analysis of all relevant information about the client's product or service, particularly as perceived by end users — the customer and the distribution chain — to create and sustain effective marketing communications.
To ditch the marketing-speak, account planners are the people who figure out why something hasn't worked in the past, figure out what will work, and help put together campaigns that meet client objectives by fulfilling customer wants and needs.
What Happens When Clients "Get It"?
The 4A's hold an annual planning conference where awards are given for innovative planning campaigns. Here are examples that show what account planning actually delivers.
Dove "Real Beauty Sketches" — Ogilvy set out to shift how women perceived their own appearance. Research revealed a gap between how women described themselves and how others described them. Planners built the brief around that gap: women are their own harshest critics. The resulting film had a forensic artist draw women based on their own descriptions, then based on strangers' descriptions. The contrast was the campaign. It became one of the most-shared branded videos ever produced, with tens of millions of views in its first week.
Airbnb "Belong Anywhere" — TBWA\Chiat\Day worked with Airbnb planners who identified that the brand's real differentiator wasn't price or selection — it was the feeling of belonging somewhere unfamiliar. Research surfaced a tension between the transactional language of lodging and what guests were actually experiencing. Planners reframed the brief entirely. The resulting platform moved Airbnb from a room-rental app to a cultural idea, and the brand's awareness and bookings scaled dramatically in the years following the campaign launch.
Always "Like a Girl" — Leo Burnett's planning team asked a simple question: what does it mean to do something "like a girl"? The research was uncomfortable. The phrase, they found, had become an insult. The campaign reclaimed it. Girls and young women responded; so did everyone else. The campaign won a Grand Prix at Cannes and dramatically shifted brand favorability among the primary target.
This is the kind of thinking agencies need to provide to their clients to move into a consultant position. If you don't presently use or offer account planning to clients, you are missing the boat. Strategic thinking is what clients want and need. Help clients achieve their objectives, and you achieve your own. Start using account planning as soon as you possibly can.
