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Articles: NEWS, OPINION & IDEAS FROM BASKIN SHARK
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Baskin: "Me asusta que muchos planners no sepan cómo usar una calculadora" |
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Account Planning - from Genesis to Revelation
This paper provides an introductory overview of account planning within the context of a Special Issue of papers that will look at various aspects of the account planning function.
Its purpose is to trace the origins of account planning, and identify its development and role from its genesis in the early 1960s in the UK to its current status in 2003.
The function of account planning grew out of dissatisfaction with advertising agencies’ ability to meet the challenges they were facing. Two key protagonists (Stephen King and Stanley Pollitt) of what was to become known as account planning set about structuring their respective agencies, J. Walter Thompson and Boasse Massimi and Pollitt, to facilitate a new account team role which combined elements of research and planning to inform creative development. Its aim was to provide the guidance and direction needed to focus on consumer insight to drive successful creative solutions.
Since those early beginnings, a changing advertising environment fuelled account planning’s exodus as it ‘went international’ and widened its scope into other marketing communications fields that extend beyond advertising. The paper suggests that there are five significant principal roles (meta-roles) that can be identified for today’s account planners: ‘researcher’, ‘voice of the market’, ‘strategist’, ‘creative catalyst’ and ‘process activist and facilitator’ into which a variety of sub-roles may be categorised. These roles are expansive. Some suggest they are too broad and require too many specialist skills for any single account planner to accommodate.
While the paper principally brings us to the current day, it is noted that account planning continues to evolve. It is expected that the trend of adoption by a range of marketing communications specialist agencies will persist but that a new account planning ‘revelation’ will be in the form of independent marketing communications strategy consultancies.
To download a copy of the entire paper in Word format, please click here: Account Planning - from Genesis to Revelation