Also known as...
Head of Planning, Strategy Director, Head of Strategy, occasionally Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)
The role in brief...
Heads up the entire Planning Department and is responsible for its output in terms of consumer insight, brand thinking, quality of creative briefs, campaign effectiveness. collaboration with other agencies, professional development. Has to successfully balance between clients and creative and be respected by both.
Working with...
- Internal: all other heads of departments especially Creative, Account Management, New Business and (if integrated agency) Media. They will sit on the board but may or may not be in the C suite. If there is an internal Research team they will report in the Planning Director. If it is a major agency they will possibly have an Econometrician on their team to help with writing advertising effectiveness papers. They will have line management responsibility for their department being accountable for hiring, assessing their performance and providing them with professional development opportunities. Some smaller agencies will have only one planner but that person has to be able to do everything below except recruit, manage and develop other planners, so will be experienced in the industry.
- External: Client Marketing Directors; senior people at other agencies e.g. Media, Public Relations; Heads of Research and Branding organisations; Trade bodies – on major industry wide reports.
Responsible for...
- Inspirational leadership of the planning department
- Working with the most senior clients to fully understand their brands, new product launches, business objectives, target markets and communications strategy.
- Devising new services that they can sell to existing or prospective clients, such as members of their department being trained to run focus groups or facilitate brainstorms.
- Working on the biggest pitches
- Commissioning macro external research (quantitative and qualitative) conducted on behalf of the agency
- Thought leadership articles, reports, white papers, presentations, podcasts – working with New Business/Marketing to make sure these are newsworthy macro studies disseminated to clients/prospective clients
- Leading innovative ways of finding new information and insights, for example via neuroscience or behavioural economics or social media listening or using AI to crunch numbers or attending seminars and conferences where new methods are discussed
- Making sure that that their team have a wide DE&I understanding of the nation’s consumers, and can avoid being siloed by our own privileged demographics
- Making sure their department are experts in effectiveness, mentoring effectiveness papers internally and externally. Plus helping secure and keep IPA Effectiveness Accreditation.
- Winning strategy awards, for example from The Account Planning Group
- Collaboration with other roster agencies especially Media. The best Planning Directors will not hoard their thinking but will work well with other agencies on the communication strategy to ensure most motivating consumer insight, correct targeting, best path to purchase etc. They will work with media agencies on effectiveness papers. They can integrate their thinking well both across roster agencies but also across their own agency’s group and region.
- Leading and championing the creative development process, including writing briefs that spark the creatives, briefing in the most creative ways, enthusing creative teams and providing calm feedback in response to client and consumer research findings
- They are up to date with the latest research methodologies and can explain these in layman’s terms
- Maintaining a detailed awareness of relevant market trends affecting the agencies’ brands, and developments in the wider advertising and communications industry
- Overseeing the work, performance and professional development of their department. Able to secure budget to keep their peoples’ knowledge, skills and behaviours to the highest level.
- Familiarity with, and fascinated by, the many AI tools planners can use to visualise, do ideation, research…
Those who succeed are...
- Always asking questions and looking for new insights, endlessly observant and curious, not settling for the first golden nugget…
- Resilient to knock backs e.g. from research
- Appreciative of the client’s knowledge of their brand and can listen and argue respectfully. Understand marketing theory and practice. Know how much Marketing Directors have on their plate.
- Always interested in understanding brands and how people relate to them e.g. What is the price elasticity of a brand of oven chips? How much does sustainability matter in purchase?..what is the role of humour in pet advertising?..does that brand positioning ladder to our proposition well?
- Masters of lateral, analytical and strategic thinking to help solve the biggest business problems
- Understand ways of proving how the communications were effective and can present these to others clearly
- Always looking to write an effectiveness paper for their brands and encourage others
- Good at balancing - seen as an ally of the Creative Department (‘third member of the creative team’), but also managing to be respected by the Client. Good at collaboration not confrontation.
- Able to understand the creative idea, how it could be executed and to explain to clients how this meets the brief
- Proven to be capable of guiding and nurturing creative work that meets clients’ briefs
- Highly numerate and able to understand, mine, interpret and use complex and varied sources of data and statistics to come up with insights
- Strong and persuasive communicators, able to simplify research and strategic thinking and present findings to clients in an engaging way
- Fascinated by human behaviour, social trends, culture and how ideas influence people
- Calmly able to give and receive feedback that supports the development of the agency’s creative work and improves the effectiveness of advertising ideas
- Knowledgeable about their client’s business and market, and where and how advertising contributes to its success
- Contribute regularly to new business pitches
- Focused on the personal and professional development of their team.
- Involved in recruitment and selection decisions
Where they come from, and where they go...
Planning Directors are usually promoted from Senior Planner roles in creative agencies. Sometimes they may transition from a strategic role in a different type of agency e.g. Media Planning Head, Digital Strategist or Data Analyst Heads of Department. Many elements make this promotion possible and keep them in that role: the effectiveness of their campaigns, their relationships with the Creative Director and Head of Account Management, the trust senior clients place in their opinion, their ability to win pitches and manage a big team.
They may go onto bigger agencies or Group roles such Global Strategy Director, or Chief Strategy Officer. Or they may become heads of consulting or research firms, or ‘gurus’ whose theories become best sellers (for example in the realm of behavioural economics in advertising or why we have a crisis in creative effectiveness or gender representation in advertising).