Stick to the plan, no matter what

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: From the very start there were two rather different approaches to the (account planning) job, and the range has widened since then. At one extreme, there are the “grand strategists”, who are intellectual, aim to see the big picture, are a little bit above the fray, and almost economists. At the other are the “advert tweakers”, who peer myopically at advertisements, conduct group discussions, justify creative work to sceptical clients, and are almost qualitative researchers. Most agencies lie somewhere in the middle, veering around as agencies do. Of the founders of account planning, BMP started from a research department and so tended to be right of centre; JWT started from a marketing department, and so tended to be left of centre.

All the many changes in marketing over the past 20 years have pushed account planners one way or the other on this scale. On the whole the external forces of clients’ needs have moved them towards the strategic end and the internal changes in the advertising business to the tweaking end.

First, of the external changes, the squeeze of the marketing department from the glories of the 1960s—the disillusion with the inflated promises of “Management Science” (success untouched by human imagination), the ratchet effect of retailer pressures, the 1970s crisis in branding, the decimation of budgets and staff. The marketing department turned out to need outside strategic and brand-building help after all.

Secondly, the new converts to marketing. In 1970, 53% of press and television advertising expenditure went on the traditional repeat-purchase goods; by 1987 it was down to 39%. The new big spenders—corporations, financial services, government departments, cars, durables and leisure goods companies—tended to have come rather late to marketing and often didn’t really think of themselves as brands. Promotions attracted them because of the effect on volume sales. This was a great opportunity for account planners to demonstrate to these converts the values of strategic branding in building margins.

Thirdly, technological leapfrog. When the new product that you’ve slaved for two years to develop is copied and undercut in the marketplace in two months and outdated from Taiwan in six, how do you recover your development costs? When the sheer speed of change overwhelms, how does the now under-staffed marketing department cope? The only answer is added values through strategic branding; and, again, there’s a need for outside strategic help and advice.