Returning to the origins of our craft

2024 has been my first year back working in a media agency since 2018. Making Sense is now in its sixth edition, but it's my first. I thought I’d be shocked at the findings. Still, it's reassuring to see that while, as an industry, we focus on all that is new (digital fragmentation, new suppliers and AI), the patterns of adult media consumption in Great Britain remain unchanged for 15 years. As a media planner and strategist, there is a temptation to read this report and see nothing but opportunity. What people want and need hasn’t changed, but we have so many more routes to reach, engage, and target audiences with digital media, which now makes up 59% of commercial adult media consumption.

Industry has become more complicated

No matter which way you cut the data, while infinitely more exciting, more accurate and more innovative, our industry has become more complicated. Complicated is problematic because we work in communications, and the work we do has to be communicated to various stakeholders: senior board members to secure marketing budgets, buyers at major supermarkets to secure shelf space or governments to protect public funding. In Simon’s introduction to Making Sense he says: “ultimately we are all here... to facilitate the successful growth of businesses”. So, I asked myself how, in light of the complexity and fragmentation, we can best facilitate successful business growth as strategists and media planners.

We must prioritise and simplify. We must return to the origins of our craft and double down on traditional, ‘proper’ communications planning.

The art of long-term portfolio planning

By ‘proper’ communications planning, I mean the skill of ensuring the right message is seen by the right people at the right time, and the art of long-term portfolio planning – stipulating clear roles for paid, owned and earned media channels. One of the best examples of the impact that proper comms planning can have is the growth and transformation McDonald’s has experienced over the last 15 years. McDonald’s has created the now famous pillars - a four-point comms framework, which is used by everyone who works for or with McDonald's. If it doesn’t deliver against one of the pillars, it doesn’t make the plan – even if it’s a great way of reaching an audience.

Comms Planning is a non-negotiable staple for most large clients like McDonald’s, but it's under threat for lower spending national brands. Many of them cannot afford large creative, PR and media agency retainers. They must prioritise agency time on imminent campaigns, and annual, portfolio and long-term planning are deprioritised.

But regardless of budget size, this is my rallying cry to all media planners and strategists: never pitch or complete a response without proper comms planning. A simple comms framework can ensure our complex, fragmented and ever-changing media world can be communicated clearly to the stakeholders that matter. Done well, it will ensure that the consumer continues to see everything they need and want, but in the right place and at the right time. As media planners and strategists, a brilliant comms plan is our essential contribution to facilitating successful business growth.

Clare Elder is Director of Strategy at The Freethinking Group

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