In 2008, the 40th anniversary of planning was celebrated at both JWT London and DDB London (formerly BMP) … the two agencies that founded it, in the same year, in the same city.
40 years on, planning has spread around the world, but there is still confusion about whether its “Strategy Planning” or “Account Planning”. In Asia, certainly, many agencies call it Strategy Planning.
So although this isn’t really a “planning blog” as such, I’d like to set the record straight, as well as share some sources of information for finding out more about agency planning.
To cut to the quick … it’s actually Account Planning.
By reference to its origins, a good place to read about the early days is the volume “A Master Class in Brand Planning. The Timeless Works of Stephen King” published by Wiley 2007 and available at Amazon here.
JWT’s Stephen King wrote about the disipline’s origins in “The Anatomy of Account Planning“, while Stanley Pollitt (Planning’s co-founder with Stephen King, but at BMP) wrote of it in “How I Started Account Planning in Agencies“. Both of these articles are contained in the above book.
If you want to read simple definitions of what Planning is, and does, then a good place to start is to take a look at the Account Planning Group’s website here:
This includes lots of goodies, links to APG bodies in a number of other countries and two definitive papers called “What is Account Planning?” published in 1986 and 2007.
WPP’s Planning Head, Jon Steel, has written the definitive book on the subject – “Truth, Lies and Advertising. The Art of Account Planning”.
Does the name matter? In the case of roses at least, Shakespeare tell us it matters not.
In the case of planning? Perhaps not if we are doing the right things.
Fundamentally that means being the strategist (yes that word!) on the account. That’s not a consultant, someone wheeled in and out of the backroom for spin-doctoring sessions, but someone with a deep knowledge of the brand, consumer and communications on the account. A vital part of the team. Simply, that is why we are called Account Planners.
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