THE FuTuRE oF PLANNING
25
ADMAP PLANNERS’
RouNDTABLE
Will: “There is a positive interpretation
of that – if the cost of distribution of messages
is trending to zero, you have more budget for
the thing that’s going to spread. In fact, making it
great so more people choose to spread it is the
defining factor of success, so great insights and
great creativity are more valuable than ever.”
If I had to choose a single ‘oyster shuck ing’
moment from these two hours, it might have
been something John owen said towards the
end. Planning is clearly of central importance at
his agency, Dare – a new type of agency work-
ing in a relatively new discipline – and includes
special ised fields, such as information architecture
and search, because these are seen as part of
consumer understanding. While planning, after 40
years, still seems to feel an anxiety to justify itself
in some older agencies, it struck me that at Will
Collin’s Naked, it has become part of the core
skill for which the agency is paid and, in Dare, it
is central to the agency’s own definition of itself:
could John imagine his agency without planners?
John: “We are very reliant on planners
to be the strategic linchpin because, generally
speaking, the account managers either don’t
have the time or the headspace to do that job.
Without planners, we’d not be the same agency.
We’d be a production company.”
So perhaps the key step that any agency
needs to make to assure the future of planning is
to define in its own mind exactly what it offers,
and how, and if, their own version of planning
is central to that offer. If an agency can do that
convincingly, the problems of resourcing and
paying for planning, and of duplication of roles,
become soluble.
Adam: “I wonder whether agencies need
to reverse the commoditisation process and
distinguish themselves to a much more theatrical
degree than they do at the moment. Then the
role of the planner falls out of that.”
I heard good reasons to believe that
planning may, in future, be more important than
ever: the need for greater clarity and direc-
tion in a more complex environment, the new
knowledge now available about human behaviour,
the need for effectiveness in marketing commu-
nications. But many agencies are still struggling
to emerge from a legacy of business models
and cultures that no longer work, with little
clear sense of what will replace them. That can,
of course, also be seen as a great opportunity.
one final thought is that planners’ skills could be
applied more to designing their agencies’ own
future, as well as that of their clients.
.............................................................................
more on the future
of planning at
Sarah Watson www.warc.com
ADM Feb 20-25 PlannersRoundtable.indd 6 1/22/2010 15:18:39
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