In my last article, I gave a basic overview of the advertising world in general and the advertising agency in particular. It was especially targeted at freshers who are looking to get started in the industry.
The response I received to that article was truly overwhelming which has motivated me to write more about the advertising world. In this article, I want to share the lessons I learned as a Planning and Strategy intern at Publicis Communications – one of the widely recognized ad agencies.
The intention again is just to document my experiences. I feel these are some of best practices that can help freshers in getting a head start for the role of Account Planning.
In my last article, I talked about the different teams that work in an advertising agency. I would suggest you read it first so that you can be on the same page and understand this article better.
Who is an Account Planner and What does he do?
Amongst the various departments in an Ad Agency, the Planning Department is responsible for building the communication strategy. Essentially, the people in this department are called Account Planners.
In each subsequent sub-sections, I am going to talk about them in detail and then explain the key skills that required to succeed in this role.
Decoding the Client Brief
Ideally, a planner’s job starts when he receives the client brief document. This is the piece of paper that explains the business communication challenges that the client’s brand is facing.
The planner then gets to work and decodes the various components of the client brief.
This involves researching the brand background, brand objectives, business communication problem, scope of the solution, budget and resource constraints, timelines, and finally measurement metrics. These are some of the main components involved in every client brief but they might vary depending on the client and his brand.
Discrepancies in the client brief are resolved and now the planner has understood the context and the scope of the business communication challenge that needs to be solved.
Some examples of the problem statement are
- ” To launch a new car with XYZ features in the market and generate sales for the same”
- ” To change the brand perception amongst the consumers from X to Y”.
All client briefs lie in a range starting from “extensively detailed” to incredibly “short and vague”.
This is an issue that the planner generally has to deal with a lot. It’s important however to gain complete clarity from the client before starting any further work.
Level 1 Brainstorming
Intuitively, a planner will then start thinking about some concepts that can have the potential to become possible solutions. These concepts are nothing but ideas that are derived from personal knowledge about the domain or past experience which can be applied to the particular problem at hand.
An interesting side note here. I think that
“New ideas are nothing but new combinations of old ideas applied in a previously unknown context”.
And planner or not, you must have experienced this at some point in your life.
How to get better at Brainstorming L1 ideas?
Intuitive thinking is not a skill that you can directly address.
You can, however, aid the process by increasing your personal knowledge and experience, which eventually increases with time.
This makes reading an essential fundamental part of your life.
Don’t limit yourself to only a few particular themes and formats of content. Read anything and everything because the knowledge repository that you have will help you in generating creative ideas more effectively. This actually is the most exciting part of account planning.
To give some direction here, if you are planning to join advertising or any other industry for that matter, it’s important to be aware of what is going on in the industry.
Visit websites like afaqs , campaignindia, acivationideas, exchangeformedia and adage for daily updates on the advertising, media, and brands.
Other than that, consume diverse content in movies, tv shows, books, magazines, blogs, opinion pieces, youtube videos, and any other medium you can think of.
This will help you gain domain expertise as well as a cultural sense, a combination of which is highly desired in a planner.
Validating ideas through Primary and Secondary Research
Okay, so now the planner has a tentative consideration set of potential ideas, which are technically called ‘solution spaces’ or ‘strategic routes’.
The next task is to validate these ideas.
Validation involves extensive primary and secondary research regarding the problem context, the study of all the stakeholders involved, cultural context and trends, brand objectives, and goals.
Now, some people say that the solution ideas come later after the primary and secondary research is done and not the way I have mentioned.
I beg to differ since I believe that thinking is an intuitive process and something like a spontaneous reaction that cannot be constrained.
Having said that, I do strongly believe that research helps in uncovering potential areas of solution that you might have missed earlier. It also helps in giving proper context to things and hence it becomes one of the most important parts of a planner’s job.
After research comes analysis and consumer insight mining. This simply means that you have to make a proper strategic sense of the observations that you have made. And then apply it to the problem at hand in a way that has the potential to create maximum impact.
How to cultivate better Research Skills?
Conducting research is a skill that needs to be learned properly and preferably more by practical experience rather than just theory.
For freshers, there is a high chance that conducting research will constitute 80% of what you do in your first few months at the agency.
Learn how to conduct primary research through different methods like In-depth interviews, Focus Group Discussions, Ethnography, Personal and Mass Surveys, and other such techniques.
Learn how to conduct secondary research which is basically better Googling, finding the right news articles and thought pieces, and also industry reports by research agencies and consultants.
As important as conducting proper research is gaining quality insights from that research. You need to be able to connect the dots, identify opportunities, and ensure value addition to both your client as well as the end consumer.
The Pitch Presentation
After deciding on the strategic routes and validating those routes with proper research, the planner’s next task is to present his ideas effectively to the internal team as well as the external clients.
There are two components to this.
One is writing the creative brief document. This is basically like a set of strategic guidelines given to the creatives team. It helps them in gaining a clarity on the business communication solution that is proposed and the scope in which they can experiment.
The other component is the final pitch deck, which is the technical term for the final presentation that will be made to the clients who gave you the problem statement.
This is the most crucial and defining part of an account planner’s role and he has to be highly skilled at it.
How to cultivate better Presentation Skills?
The skills that we are talking about here is effective writing and presentation skills.
Let me start with the writing.
The importance and difficulty of articulating a thought in the crisp and clear way that is needed is highly understated.
It is thought of as easy and manageable but it is the most challenging and time-consuming part of planning. And to make things worse, you are always short on time because, well those damn deadlines never go away.
What you can do to improve this is to start documenting the observations you make in your daily routine.
Don’t think of it as a formal assignment that you need to do every day. Just attempt to articulate what you saw, what you thought, and what you felt on a paper in the clearest way possible.
You will realize how hard it is to articulate one simple observation exactly in the way you want.
Presentations are literally the bread and butter of a planner. He is definitely expected to be extremely good at it and also be very fast at it.
You don’t need to learn tools like Photoshop or Illustrator, but a thorough knowledge of Powerpoint or Keynote is a must.
Understand the individual functions of PowerPoint or Keynote and also get comfortable with design elements like text boxes, shapes, colors, text, images, and white spaces.
Complimenting the design elements are the design principles which include things like consistency, alignments, patterns, and a combination of design elements.
I can understand if it feels overwhelming but it is an absolute must-have skill for a planner.
There are lots of resources available online that can get you started and teach you everything you need to know to create visually appealing presentations.
My advice would be to just get into it, explore, and slowly you will get the hang of it.
Coordination and Relationship Management
Last but not the least, are the coordination and relationship management skills.
Every person working in an organization needs to deal with other people and one way of getting your work done is to have a good rapport with your colleagues. And I don’t mean just in the planning department.
It is perhaps more important to have a solid relationship with the creatives and client service departments.
Conclusion
So, that’s it.
These are some of the basic skill sets that an account planning intern should have.
If you are thinking of joining an advertising industry in the recent future and that too as an account planner or even a planning intern, you should try and hone up the skills that are mentioned above.
It will definitely help you a lot and maybe even help in impressing your boss.
Disclaimer: None of the images used is mine. They are taken from Google and all due credits given to the original creator. They are simply used for the purpose of education.
