Account Planning - Planning Process

Planning Process

It is safe to say that the way planning works varies from agency to agency, and even within an agency, from planner to planner. A typical account planning cycle starts with a study of the brief from the client and secondary research, meaning any research that is currently available. Then the planner must delve into the consumer and retrieve primary research that is applicable to the client brief. The planner must brief the creative on the upcoming campaign. Understanding the brand attitudes and its individual elements is important to the diagnostic research. At this point all the information must be funneled into a creative brief and presented to the creative team. It is important that the account planner rationalize the advertising and its message to the client. Once chosen or approved by the client the planner can take steps to pre-test the ads to ensure that the research, branding, message recall and ideas of the consumer are appropriately applied and at satisfactory levels. The account planner’s job never ends. Once the advertising is public the planner must constantly evaluate the campaign for effectiveness, so that changes can be made if necessary.

In today's advertising field, "almost every advertising agency (and their clients) benefits from a disciplined system for devising communications/advertising/commercial strategy and enhancing its ability to produce outstanding creative solutions that will be effective in the marketplace." It is the account planner's task to act as the "consumer's conscience" and guide this process through the use of their knowledge of the consumer.

Stanley Pollitt believed that the following three attributes are essential in producing effective account planning :

1) It means total agency management commitment to getting the advertising content right at all costs. This means creating effective advertising instead of focusing on maximizing profits or keeping the clients happy. Pollitt believed that you could only make "professional judgments about advertising content with some early indication of consumer response." He did not mean that this rule would "represent a choice between effectiveness and profits, stable client relationships, or outstanding creative work." It would represent the choice how to prioritize the three.

2) The agency commits the resources to allow planners to be more than temporary role players. Account planners must be given the leeway to work with the data and research that they see fit, and must not be pressured into working more, than say, an account director. If planners are stretched over too many accounts, their knowledge of the account and the consumer will suffer. The account planner and account director must form a relationship common to that of an art director and copywriter. The two roles "have a common aim," but bring forth different skills.

3) It means changing some of the basic ground rules. Once consumer response becomes the most important element in making final advertising judgments, it makes many of the more conventional means of judgment sound hollow. "Conventional means" representing the affection a Creative has over an idea or the prejudice of a client that challenges research evidence.

Fortini-Campbell state that, because the role of account planning varies from agency to agency, it must be "constantly worked at to be done correctly."