"I played mental chess and conceptualized nine moves against my opponent."   

Rob attributes part of his success in planning to his gift of playing chess. 

About Planning

What is a Planner?

• A planner is a person who actively works to understand the consumer and explain him or her to the other members of the agency team. (Fortini Campbell, The Account Planning Revolution, p. 159,)

What is a Planners function?

• The planner is well versed in data and information of all types.
• The product of the planners work is insight into the consumer.
• The planner's responsibility to the rest of the agency team is to inspire their work with those insights. (p. 166)

More on planning...

• It is a means of achieving superior creative work that is based on sound marketing and relevant strategic thinking.

• It is a means of ascertaining the effectiveness of the particular advertising  in the marketplace, and applying the lessons learned.

           1.   To work, advertising must first be noticed.

            2.   Advertising must deeply understand [empathize] with and speak the same                             

                 language as the consumer.

            3.   The leading edge of advertising must be on the leading edge of social change. (p. 167-68)

    "It is the job of account planners to learn as much as they can
about the client's customers and feed it back to both client and agency.
Read everything your planners give you before putting pen to paper.
Remember, most of the ads you do will be targeted to people outside your
small social circle, people with whom you have no more in common than U.S.
citizenship."

"Good...planners can fine-tune a strategy by moving it up and down a
continuum between broad, meaningless statements and little pursed-lipped
creative dictums masquerading as strategies."

--from "Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This" by Luke Sullivan

What do Creatives want from Planners?

"Account planning is great. My planners tell me about the people I am
writing to. They tell me what customers think. What they think of the brand
I am writing on, what they think of the whole category. Planners are not
researchers in the old sense of the word. In the old sense of the word,
researchers came up with dry facts. Numbers. Planning is not about facts. It
is about getting to the truth. Getting to what consumers think and feel
about a brand and about a category. We use them here all the time. They are
great. The planners' insights also help us sell work to clients. When we go
into a client and show them work, we are able to say more than just 'Hey, we
think this is cool.' We are able to say, 'Your customers told us this is cool.'"

--Luke Sullivan
Chief Creative Officer, WestWayne, Atlanta
(Former Copywriter, Fallon McElligott, Minneapolis)

• To find out the latest academic information about planning, check out a Professional Report from former University of Texas Advertising graduate student Grant Johnson. 

             (Must have Adobe Acrobat to view)

Childhood / Growing Up / Early Advertising / Coming to America  

Minneapolis / Fallon McElligott / References