“The account planner is that member of the agency’s team who is the expert, through background, training, experience, and attitudes, at working with information and getting it used – not just marketing research but all the information available to help solve a client’s advertising problems.” – Stanley Pollitt

To put it simply, planners need to study the market, the product category and the consumer and translate it as insights / briefs to the creative and the media teams to arrive at solutions that will achieve the marketing and advertising objectives.

Typically, it is the account planners’ job to write the creative and the media brief documents (which will be discussed in a latter section). The brief must contain the marketing and advertising objective, the proposed media used, the key consumer insight, key pointers from any research undertaken and finally the take-away that the communication should leave the consumer with.

Account planners must have the necessary skills and attitude to organize information about the consumer and the brand. The data can be derived from primary or secondary research, discussions with the client etc. This helps in the brand arriving at a proper positioning statement. The planner must also be involved in the creative development. This helps in meeting two objectives. First, to be convinced about the message, the take-away from the creative piece arrived at. This includes analyzing the creative from a consumer’s point of view. And second, to be in a position to convince the client about the creative produced by the agency.

Most account planning departments are also responsible for tracking the advertising campaigns taken up for a brand. The tracking of a campaign’s performance is by employing follow-up research with consumers and coordinate tweaking of the creative message (if necessary).

What is the planning process? Well, have tried to make this as a small diagram to ensure that this is understood easily.

In the Indian Advertising industry, you tend to always find the planner having ‘servicing’ executives reporting into them. The concepts of marketing, branding, research and case studies learnt during the B-school days get to be used here. However, a good part of the theory and life in real may be very different. Hence, on-the-feet thinking, quick response time etc, are key requirements of a professional playing this role. Though this job may sound ‘research intensive’, one would tend to encounter a lot of thinking and finding solutions the creative way.

This same process is also applicable for decision making on the media selection. Today, with the innovations in media including Outdoor and digital media and the convergence of different media vehicles, it is important that the above process is followed for media planning as well. All media agencies have ‘planning’ divisions which help in identifying the correct vehicles and the frequency to achieve the advertising and marketing objectives.

In subsequent posts, I will try to add examples from my experiences on each of these functions.

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All agencies have the following departments:

• Client servicing / Account servicing
• Account Planning
• Creative copy
• Creative art
• Print Production
• Films Production
• Media Planning
• Media Buying
• Finance
• HR
• Admin

Some have specialized teams for:

• Events & activation
• Online and digital marketing
• PR (Though this has now become a separate industry in itself)
• Media Planning & Buying (Though part of the ‘Agency’ in traditional days, this has become a huge industry in itself)

Update: A good friend Ravi chose to correct me (see comment)! The past few years have seen Media houses spun out as separate entities and within media, Outdoor advertising (Out-of-home advertising) has become a specialised business.

Client Servicing: Simply, any individual in this department is the bridge between the agency and the client. So in front of the agency, the servicing person is the client and in front of the client, (s)he is the agency. Typically, this is the department in which most freshers from B-Schools join. These guys also are the ‘brand custodians’ for all the brands they handle. The servicing executive has to understand a bit of everything including media, art, print production, films, finances etc. So this series is focused on servicing executives to be the jack of all functions in advertising. And with fresh perspectives and lots of uncommon thinking with respect to branding, the servicing executive is bound to be a great communication professional. Good understanding of these basics, will help servicing executives manage every other department within the agency to provide the best results to the client. After all, happy client’s lead to great relationships and successful career! So watch this space…

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