July 30, 2007

"Planners at a Crossroads"?



"Pity the poor account planner. Not long ago, planners were the undisputed rock stars of the agency business. But they're now mere mortals in "the middle of the maelstrom of everything going on -- what communication, what media, how to compete and how to become versed in multimedia".

Am I missing something here?

The «what to be said» (message/insight) and «how to say it» (media/connection channels ... be it TV, viral, ambient, guerrilla, poster, radio) has always been part of the planner's competences whithin the advertising agency.

Planners (past, present, future) know where consumers are and how to reach them.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chiat\Day now has a unit called Media Arts Lab, where planners study the consumer as being part of an audience and how to connect with it. Other networks are doing the same by embracing the web 2.0 paradigm and the ways people are dealing now with new media. So planners need to be more versatile, but that doesn't mean they're outdated or threatned. Just look at the amount of planners that have blogs and are on a daily-basis engaged with youtube, myspace, slideshare, joost, wikis, etc.

Anonymous said...

I agree. This completely misses the point. Surely the middle of the maelstrom is the best place to be?

Anonymous said...

And have you ever felt being 'the rockstar of the agency ' ?
Re planning 2.0 : this Media Arts Lab/audience planning is being rolled out inside TBWA and seen as the new dirsuption (oooooooooohhhhhhh).

Anonymous said...

What a load of bollocks!

Anonymous said...

Pity this poor jornalist for trying to write a relevant and factual news headline.