A Master Class in Brand Planning E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 773

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

In 1988, on Stephen King's retirement JWT published 'The King Papers' a small collection of Stephen King's published writings spanning 1967-1985. They remain timelessly potentially valuable but are an almost unexploited gold mine. This book is comprised of a selection of 20-25 of Stephen King's most important articles, each one introduced by a known and respected practitioner who, in turn, describes the relevance of the particular original idea to the communications environment of today. The worth of this material is that, although the context in which the original papers were written is different, the principles themselves are appropriate to marketing communications in today's more complex media environment. The book will serve as a valuable reference book for today's practitioners, as well as a unique source of sophisticated, contemporary thinking.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Introduction

SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

About the Book: How it Happened

Acknowledgements

About the Contributors

Part I - Planning: Role and Structure

Chapter 1 - Who Do You Think You Are?

1.1 - The Anatomy of Account Planning

1.2 - The Origins of Account Planning

1.3 - How I Started Account Planning in Agencies

Chapter 2 - How Brands and the Skills of Branding have Flowered

2.1 - What is a Brand?

Chapter 3 - The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance

3.1 - Advertising: Art and Science

Chapter 4 - The Market’s Evolved, Why Hasn’t Planning?

4.1 - Strategic Development of Brands

Chapter 5 - Learning and Improvement, Not Proof and Magic Solutions

5.1 - Improving Advertising Decisions

Chapter 6 - The Media Planner’s Revenge

6.1 - Inter-media Decisions: Implications for Agency Structure

Part II - Planning: Craft Skills

Chapter 7 - A Revolutionary Challenge to Conventional Wisdom

7.1 - What Can Pre-testing Do?

Chapter 8 - Four of the Wisest Principles You Will Ever Read

8.1 - Practical Progress from a Theory of Advertisements

Chapter 9 - JWT’s Debt to Stephen King

9.1 - In Pursuit of an Intense Response

9.2 - Advertising Idea

9.3 - JWT Engagement Planning in China: The Art of Idea Management

Chapter 10 - Short-Term Effects may be Easier to Measure but Long-Term Effects ...

10.1 - Setting Advertising Budgets for Lasting Effects

Part III - Market Research

Chapter 11 - A Theory that Built a Company

11.1 - Can Research Evaluate the Creative Content of Advertising?

Chapter 12 - The Great Bridge Builder: Searching for Order out of Chaos

12.1 - Advertising Research for New Brands

Chapter 13 - You Can’t Make Sense of Facts until you’ve Had an Idea

13.1 - Applying Research to Decision Making

Chapter 14 - Measuring Public Opinion in an Individualistic World

14.1 - Conflicts in Democracy: The Need for More Opinion Research

Chapter 15 - The Perfect Role Model for Researchers Today

15.1 - Tomorrow’s Research

Part IV - Marketing – General

Chapter 16 - Old Brands Never Die. They Just get Sold for a Huge Profit

16.1 - What Makes New Brands Succeed?

Chapter 17 - The Retail Revolution gets Underway

17.1 - What’s New about the New Advertisers?

Chapter 18 - A Robust Defence of What Brand Advertising is For

18.1 - New Brands: Barriers to Entry?

Chapter 19 - The Train to Strawberry Hill

19.1 - Has Marketing Failed, or was it Never Really Tried?

Chapter 20 - A Challenge to Change Behaviour

20.1 - Brand Building in the 1990s

Resumé of Stephen King’s Life

Index

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

King, Stephen, 1931

A master class in brand planning / The timeless works of Stephen King; [edited by] Judie Lannon, Merry Baskin.

p. cm.

A selection of King’s papers published during the past 30 years, with commentaries by current marketing practitioners.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-51791-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Branding (Marketing)—Management. 2. New products. 3. Brand name products. 4. Advertising—Management. 5. Marketing research. I. Lannon, Judie. II. Baskin, Merry. III. Title.

HF5415.1255.K56 2007

658.8′27—dc22

2007035534

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in 10/12pt Times by Aptara, New Delhi, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production.

For Sally, Sam, Matt and Sophy.

Introduction

By Jeremy Bullmore

It’s impossible to accept that one’s grandparents were ever young. Rationally, we know they must have been, but all personal experience suggests otherwise. I’d certainly never attempt to persuade my own grandchildren that I was once a frisky teenager: they’d look at me very strangely.

In this book, a number of respected and current marketing practitioners have written excellent commentaries on selections of Stephen King’s most perceptive articles. He’s consistently described as prescient, intellectually rigorous and possessed of great clarity of thought and expression: a theoretician whose theories were all intensely practical, a giant in the world of marketing and advertising. All absolutely true. As the co-inventor of account planning as a distinct discipline, his benign influence has touched tens of thousands of people he’d never met. He was widely held in awe, no more so than in India, where they think more intelligently about advertising than just about anywhere else in the world. An invitation to hear him speak to the Delhi Advertising Club in 1992 reads in part, “ . . . advertising has many gurus, many professors, many geniuses and many mavericks. But only one King.”

When you read his collected articles in this book, you’ll agree that every tribute has been well earned. He’s all the things they claim for him. The only thing that’s missing – and inevitably so – is more than a glimpse of the man himself. Just as we find it impossible to believe that our grandparents were ever teenagers, so the weight of Stephen’s reputation and the richness of his legacy incline us to picture some austere, aesthetic figure, permanently late middle-aged and not a lot of laughs to be around. (How else do you imagine a Visiting Professor of Marketing Communications at the Cranfield School of Management to be?)

In the pages that follow, you’ll find all the evidence you need of his professional achievements. And on page 341, there’s a curriculum vitae that charts the skeleton of his life and works. But for now, I’d like to try to fill in with a bit of frivolous but all-important detail.

Improbably, we knew each other for more than 60 years. He turned up at school about a year after I did. We were in different Houses but went to the same French classes. (When, 50 years later, we were both summoned to have dinner with David Ogilvy in Paris it was clear that we’d either learned very little or forgotten a lot.) I remember him as small and wiry: it seems he didn’t start growing till he was 15. He was good at games, was an ace squash player and dabbled (as I did) in theatricals.

Then we both, separately, did our National Service. As he left the Army, he wrote what may have been his only advertisement. It was for his 1936 Fiat – “Condition of body, shocking” – and was headlined “A RATTLING GOOD BARGAIN”. It was marked down from “Any bids over £65?” To “£5 or near offer”. I knew most of his cars after that and they were all neglected.

Then we both went to Oxford. Stephen, unlike me, lasted the full term – in his case, four years – and got a degree in Greats (philosophy and ancient history). We saw each other regularly but were never part of each other’s inner circle. He played squash and tennis for the university and continued to dabble (as I did) in theatricals. He was in an Edinburgh Festival production of Ralph Roister Doister and there are records of an OUDS touring production of Twelfth Night. Stephen played Feste but couldn’t sing the songs. Viola was played by Maggie Smith.

I joined J. Walter Thompson London in 1954. Stephen, for reasons I never fathomed, joined Mond Nickel (a business as far removed from the consumer as it’s possible to imagine) and worked in their publicity department where he came into contact with their advertising agency. They offered him a job. Prompted by this, he decided to look around – and knowing that I was having an extremely agreeable time at JWT, he got in touch. I don’t remember doing so but, according to Stephen, I fixed for him to have an interview – and in 1957, he joined. We worked together there for the next 30 years.

Stephen and JWT suited each other perfectly (it even provided him with a wife, Sally: a JWT copywriter). The agency traditionally honoured intellect (the old “University of Advertising” tag had been earned in New York before the Second World War) and had been the first agency to make serious use of consumer research through its wholly owned subsidiary The British Market Research Bureau. It was, however, in need of a new infusion. It was also fun: an irresistible combination. There was as much for Stephen to build on as there was for him to be irreverent about. He was good at irreverence.

An account director once called us all together and solemnly gave us a new Unilever brief. We were to invent new product opportunities for them. Blue-sky thinking was urged upon us: we should in no way be constrained by existing manufacturing capabilities or practical considerations of any other kind.

A ponderous person would have drafted a two-page memorandum pointing out the pointlessness of such a project. Stephen responded with an instant list of new product breakthroughs. The two I remember with the greatest affection were Spray-on Socks and Bed-Making Fluid. Nothing much was said about this project from then on – but it was to be a familiar King tactic. He could use wit and parody with telling effect.

When preparing a client presentation on the dangers of greed in brand positioning, he and I invented a brave new niche product for the dog food market. It was formulated exclusively for bitches and was called Good Girl. After three rounds of fictional but accurately simulated research, the fictional client realized that the brand had little appeal to 50% of the dog market and lost his nerve. The launch ad was amended accordingly – and the strapline now read: “Good Girl’s Good for Boy Dogs, Too!” The real client absorbed the moral with grace and gratitude.

Nothing incensed him more than marketing people who thought that marketing’s job was nothing more than somehow to get rid of stuff. He called it Thrust Marketing and invented a marketing director called Colin Thrust to personify it. For one industry presentation, Colin developed his all-purpose 10-Point Marketing Plan, which went as follows:

1. Up weight 10p-off flash packs to 80 % of throughput.

2. Increase over-riders to selected major multiples and cash-and-carries.

3. Re-motivate sales force with incremental incentive-linked sales targets.

4. Initiate tailor-made in-store merchandising with dealer-loaders, individualized gondolas and shelf-wobblers.

5. Upgrade pack design, to dramatically improve visibility and shelf-appeal.

6. Widen distribution to include discount stores and garden centres.

7. Increase stock levels to create product push.

8. Implement a country-wide back-to-back coupon drop to create consumer pull.

9. Draw up a 5-year PR plan.

10. Launch a massive consumer promotion to up-rate brand awareness and share of mind.

At no point, of course, was it evident what the actual product was or what purpose it had. At no point was it even considered that product quality might usefully be examined. Half his audience went away properly mortified but a great deal wiser. The other half just took notes.

As in his 10-Point Plan, his only use of jargon was to mock it. Once, just a couple of years ago, I asked him, for a piece I was writing, to select any speech from Shakespeare and give it the treatment. He chose the Polonius speech from Hamlet, “Neither a borrower or a lender be . . . ”

In overseas assignments it is essential to keep an appropriate and sustainably balanced credit/debit ratio. Unsecured loans may be irrecoverable and can endanger potentially profitable relationships, while sporadic borrowing inflows can conceal the underlying reality of cash flow projections.

Stephen’s writings share many qualities but the rarest is this: when you’ve read them, and absorbed them, you know exactly what you have to do. His familiar criticism of vacuous corporate advertising – “why are they telling me all this?” – could never be applied to his own papers: they are all intensely practical. And so was he. He may never have bothered to clean his cars, but he could re-fit the entire inside of a house on his own – and so indeed he did: woodwork, cabling, plumbing, the lot. He called his internal JWT manual The Account Planner’s Toolkit – and that’s exactly what it is.

Had his dress sense been as immaculate as his thinking, he’d have been intolerable.

SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Stephen’s wife, Sally, has been behind this book from the beginning. She welcomed our offer to make it happen and has given the two editors, Judie Lannon and Merry Baskin, endless help in tracing papers and filling in with facts and background.

In prospect, the task seemed simple enough. In reality, the amount of work involved has been immense. Judie and Merry have undertaken it all with a dedicated commitment – fuelled by their huge enthusiasm for the project.

All of the distinguished contributors, whose words preface the King articles, have given their services for nothing: they haven’t been paid for what they’ve so thoughtfully written and they’ll benefit not at all from any royalties that may accrue. We are deeply grateful to them.

All costs incurred in preparing the book for publication have been generously absorbed by our three sponsors: APG (the Account Planning Group), JWT and WPP.

All author’s royalties from this book will go to Sally King. Stephen’s work forms a priceless legacy and it’s entirely right that Sally should inherit it.

And finally: beware, throughout this book, of the word “advertising”. Today it’s often used, very restrictively, to mean advertisements in mass media and nothing much else. Almost invariably, Stephen uses the word advertising to cover all forms of brand communication.

About the Book: How it Happened

The collected wisdom of Stephen King already exists – but not in one piece. If no-one steps forward to perform the task of publishing the Stephen King Collection it will be the ultimate proof that ours is a truly trivial trade.

Campaign, 24 February 2006

Stephen King had a very big idea, and that very big idea changed the way advertising agencies were structured, how they thought, and even what they produced. He changed our lives and the lives and careers of many others both in the UK and around the world where the idea of account planning has been adopted. Although Stanley Pollitt of BMP had a similar idea about the same time, Stephen did the most to codify and explain what this new discipline was and how it worked.

Like many original thinkers, he documented his ideas as they evolved in a number of articles and books published over a 30-year period-a total of about 40 or so. When he died in February 2006, there was, naturally, a flurry of talk about re-publishing his work to make it available to a wider and younger audience.

We felt we should do more to make the ideas described in his work relevant to today. After all, much has changed in the media, marketing and consumer environments over the last decade, never mind a 30-year period.

The solution was to choose a range of his articles that seemed to offer most guidance to readers today. For each, we chose an eminent practitioner to comment on what has changed in the intervening years and how the thoughts and principles apply now.

As testament to Stephen’s breadth of interest, the articles and contributions cover four separate but related areas:

1. The origins of account planning: its ideas and structure

2. The account planner’s craft skills

3. The use (and misuse) of research

4. The wider marketing world.

The hype, flimflam and promise of certainties that surround so much marketing and advertising writing are conspicuously absent in these articles. The writing is transparently honest, reflecting a great integrity; a mind searching for a way to bring order out of chaos.

The articles are not so much about what to think, but aim at teaching that most precious skill of all, how to think. The collection in this book of Stephen’s work, along with the thoughts and ideas of today’s practitioners, represents a treasure trove of insights, principles and guides to thinking that anyone in the world of marketing communications will find immensely valuable.

These principles were uniquely valuable in a simpler age and are even more valuable and necessary now.

Judie Lannon Merry Baskin

Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed to this book and we are heartily grateful for the time, effort, advice and encouragement we have been given. In addition to the contributors and Sally King, our thanks go to the many people who helped along the way: from WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell, Jeremy Bullmore, Marie Capes, Vanessa Bryant; from JWT, Bob Jeffrey, Claudine Heinimann, Louise Hinchliffe, David Faulkner, John Furr; from WARC, Mike Waterson, Matthew Coombs, James Aitchison; from APG, Steve Martin; from John Wiley & Sons, Claire Plimmer; and our freelance typists, Hilary Watson and Janet Barbour.

About the Contributors

JEREMY BULLMORE

WPP

Born 1929. First job, trainee copywriter with J. Walter Thompson in London, where he stayed until retirement in 1987. Successively writer/producer, creative group head and head of television; 1964 to 1975, head of the creative department; 1976 to 1987, chairman. Chairman of the Advertising Association, 1981 to 1987.

1988 to 2001, non-executive director of the Guardian Media Group; 1988 to 2004, Non-Executive Director of WPP. Currently member WPP Advisory Board. Past President of NABS, and current President of the Market Research Society. Columnist for Campaign, Management Today, Market Leader and The Guardian. Awarded CBE in 1985.

Publications: Another Bad Day at the Office? Penguin, 2001; Behind the Scenes in Advertising Mark III (More Bull More) WARC, 2003; Ask Jeremy, Haymarket, 2004; Apples, Insights and Mad Inventors, John Wiley & Sons, 2006.

MERRY BASKIN

Planning Consultant, Baskin Shark

Merry has spent most of her 30-year career as an account planner, but started out as an international market researcher. Her resumé includes stints at blue chip firms such as BMRB, Saatchi & Saatchi, Chiat/Day and J. Walter Thompson, and over the years she has worked in London, Paris, New York, Stockholm and Brussels.

In 2000, Merry launched her own planning consultancy, Baskin Shark (Where Brands Move Forward or Die!), which offers strategic communications planning as well as planning craft skills training.

Her client experience extends from classic fmcg (Kellogg, Kraft, Unilever) to travel (British Airways, Avis) to financial (Visa Europe, Goldman Sachs) to retail (Argos, Subway, IKEA, Boots). She admits to being an Advert Tweaker and aspires to Grand Strategist, but is probably happiest as a brand planner.

Industry credits include APG chair 1998/99, MRS conference committee and Best Paper winner (2001), IPA Effectiveness Awards winner and judge, and winner of several US Effies.

TIM BROADBENT

Regional Effectiveness Director and Regional Planning Director Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific

Tim is the Regional Effectiveness Director and Regional Planning Director of Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific, based in Beijing, China. He is the only person to have won two Grand Prix in the IPA Effectiveness Awards, was Convenor of Judges of the Effectiveness Awards, and served as Chairman of the IPA Value of Advertising Committee. He has been an account planner since the 1970s, starting at BMP. Most recently he was Planning Director and Managing Partner of Young & Rubicam, and then Chief Strategic Officer of the Bates Group EMEA region. He is a Fellow of the IPA and Visiting Professor of Marketing of The University of The Arts London.

HUGH BURKITT

Chief Executive, Marketing Society

Hugh Burkitt is Chief Executive of the Marketing Society – the leading network for senior marketers in the UK. He has been responsible for the launch of the Society’s Manifesto for Marketing, introduced the Marketing Leaders Programme for potential marketing directors and established the Panoramic Group – a new forum where all the UK’s marketing organizations have agreed to work together to promote marketing.

He began his career as a Unilever trainee at Birds Eye Foods and progressed via the Manchester Business School to Collett Dickenson Pearce in 1972. He spent the next 30 years in advertising, founding the agency Burkitt Weinreich Bryant in 1986, and leaving in 2002 as Chairman of Burkitt DDB.

He is co-author with John Zealley of Marketing Excellence: Winning Companies Reveal the Secrets of their Success, John Wiley & Sons, 2006 (a review of the lessons to be learned from the winning companies in the Marketing Society’s Awards for Excellence).

STEPHEN CARTER

Chief of Strategy and Principal Advisor to the Prime Minister

In January 2008, Stephen Carter was appointed Chief of Strategy and Principal Advisor to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Previously, he was Group Chief Executive of Brunswick Group LLP, a UK based, privately PR advisory firm operating in 12 countries. Prior to this Stephen was the founding Chief Executive of Ofcom, and before that Chief Operating Officer of NTL UK & Ireland, and Managing Director and Chief Executive at J. Walter Thompson UK Limited.

He is an Honours graduate in law from Aberdeen University and also a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s AMP programme.

He is an ex-Chairman of the Marketing Group of Great Britain, and is currently a Non Executive Director of Travis Perkins plc, a Governor of the Ashridge Business School, a Vice President of UNICEF.

Stephen was awarded a CBE in the 2007 New Years Honours list for services to the Communications Industry.

NEIL CASSIE

The Cassie Partnership

Neil is the Founding Partner of The Cassie Partnership (tcp), which helps clients like Visa Europe and Diageo to close the gap between the vision of the company and the behaviour of its key people.

Neil was previously Director of Brand Planning, Worldwide at Leo Burnett. He wrote the company’s new global positioning and methodology “The Brand Belief System”. This incorporated a core brand competence in organizational design and management, which is the foundation of the work his company undertakes today.

Prior to his global role Neil was the Deputy Chairman of Burnett’s London agency.

While Head of Planning at GGT, Neil was a member of the APG committee and was responsible for training for three years.

Neil learned his trade at Halls in Edinburgh and then Ogilvy & Mather in London.

SIMON CLEMMOW

Clemmow Hornby Inge

Simon has worked in advertising for 25 years. He has always been based in London, and has always been an account planner, except for a short spell as CEO at TBWA. He is currently planning partner at his second successful start-up agency, Clemmow Hornby Inge.

Simon worked first at Benton & Bowles, and quickly moved on to Gold Greenlees Trott in 1983. He co-founded Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson in 1988. The agency won accounts like Nike and Sony PlayStation and produced outstanding creative work, before selling to Omnicom and merging with TBWA in 1997. Simon co-founded Clemmow Hornby Inge in 2001. In 2004 the agency was British Television Advertising’s Agency of the Year, and Marketing magazine’s Creative Agency of the Year.

RITA CLIFTON

Chairman, Interbrand

Rita graduated from Cambridge and began her career in advertising. She worked at Saatchi & Saatchi for 12 years, becoming Vice Chairman and Executive Planning Director in 1995.

In 1997 she joined Interbrand, the world’s leading brand consultancy, as Chief Executive in London; in January 2002 she became Chairman. She is in demand as a speaker and media commentator on all areas of brands, reputation, marketing and communications around the world. Her writing has included the book The Future of Brands and The Economist book Brands and Branding .

She is a Non-Executive Director of DSG International plc (formerly Dixons Store Group plc) and Emap plc. She also chairs Populus, the opinion pollster to The Times and is a Visiting Professor at Henley Management College. Other advisory boards have included the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission, the Judge Business School at Cambridge University, BP’s carbon offset programme and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.

MARTIN DEBOO

City Analyst, Investec Securities

Martin Deboo is a City Analyst at Investec Securities in London, where he follows the fortunes of major consumer goods firms including Cadbury, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser.

Martin is rather unique within the City in that he began his career not in finance or accounting, but as an account planner in advertising, with BMP and Publicis. Following an MBA at the London Business School he spent 12 years in strategic management consulting with OC&C, the last five as head of their Consumer Goods practice.

Martin speaks and writes extensively on the financial and economic aspects of marketing and retains an active involvement with London Business School, where he serves as a Governor.

TOM DOCTOROFF

JWT, Northeast Asia Area Director, Greater China CEO

Tom, born and bred in America’s Detroit and educated in Chicago, somehow took a detour to Hong Kong in 1994 and never quite made it back to the States. In the meantime, he has become one of Asia’s most respected advertising minds. Having started his advertising career at Leo Burnett (Chicago) in 1989, Tom jumped ship and joined JWT Chicago in 1992. In 1994, Tom moved to Hong Kong as Regional Business Director, managing several of JWT’s largest multinational clients across Asia Pacific. Further promotions followed, and in 2002, he was appointed Northeast Asia Area Director (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea) and Greater China CEO. In 2003, Tom was named Regional Agency Head of the Year by the region’s leading marketing and advertising publication, Media Magazine. He is also the author of Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer, published by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2006.

WILLIAM ECCLESHARE

Chairman and CEO, BBDO Europe

After reading History at Cambridge University, William joined J. Walter Thompson as a trainee in 1978. He became Managing Director of JWT London in 1990 and moved to Amsterdam as CEO PPGH/JWT in 1993. He joined JWT’s Worldwide Board in 1995 as Director of Global Strategy.

In 1996 William joined Ammirati Puris Lintas (Interpublic Group) as UK CEO and subsequently became regional director for Northern Europe and UK Chairman.

In 2000 he joined McKinsey & Company as a partner and leader of the European Branding Practice. He led major assignments in media, technology and mining sectors. He returned to the advertising industry and WPP in 2002, joining Young & Rubicam/ Wunderman as European Chairman and CEO.

In 2006 he joined BBDO as Chairman and CEO for Europe, Middle East and Africa with responsibility for all advertising, CRM, interactive and consulting businesses in the region.

William is a Non-Executive Director of Hays plc and a governor of University College School, London.

PAUL FELDWICK

Paul Feldwick was an account planner for over 30 years at the agency that morphed from Boase Massimi Pollitt into DDB. He helped to found DDB University, and was convenor of judges for the IPA Effectiveness Awards from 1988-90. He is a former Chair of the AQR and of the APG, a Fellow of the MRS and of the IPA. He has written and lectured extensively on how ads work, including a book What is Brand Equity, Anyway? (WARC, 2002). He now pursues his continuing interest into the nature of communication and creativity as a freelance consultant and teacher. He is also a poet and a singer, and keen to explore ways of bringing creative arts into the workplace. He has an MA from Oxford in English Literature and an MSc from the University of Bath in Responsibility and Business Practice.

CHRIS FORREST

Partner, The Nursery

From 1982 to 1986 Chris was a qualitative researcher working for top dogs like Roy Langmaid and Roddy Glen.

From 1986 to 1991 he was at Ogilvy & Mather where he became their youngest board director.

Then from 1991 to 1997 he was Planning Director Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters where he won APG and IPA Effectiveness Awards and during this period was Vice Chair of the APG.

Chris is currently a partner in The Nursery, specializing in creative development research for advertising and brand communications.

MIKE HALL

Hall & Partners

Mike Hall is the founder of Hall & Partners, the specialist brand and communications research agency, which he set up in 1992 after developing the new theory about four models of how advertising works in different ways to affect brand relationships.

This theory, which changed the face of advertising and brand research, was developed after his experience at BMRB, BBDO and Leagas Delaney. Everyone used to say that “we know that advertising works in different ways but we don’t what they are”, so he simply resolved to work it out.

Three years after he set up Hall & Partners he opened in New York and his agency spread to LA and Chicago. After Hall & Partners joined the Omnicom Group in 2003, Mike developed further models of how the other communications disciplines work, culminating in a model of integrated communications that was launched in 2005.

JUDIE LANNON

Editor,Market Leader

Judie Lannon is a consultant in market research and marketing communications strategy. She was born in the United States and her advertising career began at Leo Burnett in Chicago. But the majority of her career was in the London Office of JWT where she was initially hired by Stephen King to set up JWT’s creative research unit, which was part of the original Account Planning Department. Latterly she was Director of Research and Planning for JWT Europe.

She established her own planning and research consultancy in l991. In addition to this consultancy work, Judie designs senior management courses in marketing communications, brand positioning and market research. Judie is also a recognized writer, editor and speaker in the field of marketing communications. She is Editor of the strategic marketing journal Market Leader (the Journal of the Marketing Society, Great Britain) and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Advertising.

CREENAGH LODGE

Co-Chairman, Corporate Edge

Creenagh Lodge is co-Chairman of Corporate Edge, specialists in all forms of design, branding and innovation. Having originally intended to be an archaeologist, she abandoned this for social anthropology, which naturally led to market research, which in turn led to new product development, with a spell of advertising in between. She has written, lectured and broadcast a good deal on new product development; and can testify to the acute pleasure of seeing a new product, which one has helped to develop, succeed in the market place.

KEVIN McLEAN

Wardle McLean

Kevin started in research in 1984 at Market Behaviour Ltd and within six months was on a plane to West Africa thinking, “this is the job for me”.

He moved to Strategic Research Group and trained under Roddy Glen and Barry Ross and stayed until he was made MD.

In 1996 he started Wardle McLean Strategic Research Consultancy with Judith Wardle.

Kevin has written many articles and conference papers on advertising, websites and research (MRS, Admap, AQR, QRCA), the latest being “Conversations, a new model for qualitative research” (QRCA, Atlanta, September 2006).

He is currently Chair of the annual MRS Conference. He was elected a Fellow of the Market Research Society in 2006.

TY MONTAGUE

Co-President, Chief Creative Officer, JWT New York

Ty has an impressive track record in building world-class brands for such New York agencies as Ogilvy & Mather, Weiden + Kennedy, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Chiat/Day. He has created national and global campaigns for such clients as Reebok, Mercedes Benz, Coca-Cola, Volvo, Everlast and MTV.

Ty joined JWT New York in 2005 where he is known for “changing the channel”: questioning the ways in which the advertising industry thinks, particularly beyond the traditional 30-second TV spot.

Throughout his career, Ty’s work has received many major creative accolades, including The One Show, Cannes, Communication Arts, AICP, MOMA and The Clios. Most recently, Advertising Age magazine named him one of the Top 10 Creative Directors in America.

GUY MURPHY

Worldwide Planning Director, JWT

Guy joined JWT in January 2007 as Worldwide Planning Director. His primary role is to lead a world-class planning function at the agency that jointly invented Account Planning. The role also involves developing the agency’s strategy to achieve outstanding creativity in the new communications era.

Prior to JWT, Guy worked for 14 years at BBH where he occupied a series of strategic roles; Regional Planning Director for Asia Pacific, Head of Planning for Europe, and lastly Deputy Chairman. In that final role he helped the agency to two consecutive Campaign Agency of the Year awards.

His career began as a trainee planner at BMP in London.

Guy is a published author on the subjects of effectiveness and communication strategy, and has received numerous industry awards for his work. He is currently the Chairman of the IPA Strategy Group.

MARCO RIMINI

MindShare

Having graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics in 1985, Marco spent several years as an account planner before becoming Head of Account Planning for Euro RSCG.

He joined CIA Media as Head of Planning and became deputy MD and member of the UK group board. He worked across a range of clients including Unilever, LloydsTSB and the launch of Daewoo.

His most recent position prior to MindShare was as Director of Strategy and Development at JWT London, where he was responsible for all the account planners and the knowledge centre. He worked across the range of JWT business including Kraft, Kellogg, Vodafone, Shell and Bandq as well as being the strategic lead on the WPP HSBC assignment.

He joined MindShare in July to develop the communications planning practice by reuniting the craft skills of account and media planning and applying them to the digital age.

ROSEMARIE RYAN

President, JWT New York

Rosemarie Ryan joined JWT as President of its New York headquarters in 2004. Prior to joining JWT, Rosemarie spent eight years as President of Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, also in New York. Rosemarie began her advertising career at BBDO London, and was among the first wave of British imports to the account planning discipline in the United States in the late 1980s, when she joined Chiat/Day.

With roots in account planning, Rosemarie’s strategic acumen and critical thinking have helped to launch, position and reposition countless brands, including Snapple, JetBlue and the Diamond Trading Company.

ANDREW SETH

Andrew Seth worked as a worldwide manager for Lever/ Unilever for more than 30 years in the UK, Europe, Mexico, Japan and twice in USA. He retired early as Chairman of Lever Brothers UK in 1995. Since then he has been Chairman of the Added Value group, and a Non-Executive Director of Tempus plc, Richmond Events and Ingram. He is Chairman of Plum Baby, Susie Willis’s innovative new baby-foods company.

Andrew has been a Board member of the Consumers’ Association, of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company, and of Dulwich College. He was Pro-Chancellor of Kingston University for eight years. He now represents Dulwich College Enterprises as its Board member in China.

Andrew has specialized in grocery retailing as a subject since leaving Unilever, co-authoring The Grocers (1999 and 2001/Kogan Page) and Supermarket Wars (2005/Palgrave Macmillan) with long-time Oxford college friend Geoffrey Randall.

DAVID SMITH

Director, DVL Smith Group

David Smith is Director of DVL Smith Group, and a Professor at the University of Hertfordshire Business School.

He is a Fellow, and former Chairman, of the UK Market Research Society and holds the Society’s Silver Medal. He has won numerous awards from the Market Research Society, ESOMAR and other bodies.

David is also a Fellow of both the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing, and a member of the UK Institute of Management Consultants.

He is the author of Inside Information – Making Sense of Marketing Data and The Art & Science of Interpreting Market Research Evidence.

RORY SUTHERLAND

Ogilvy Group UK, Vice-Chairman

Rory Sutherland joined OgilvyOne as a graduate trainee in September 1988 and has worked there ever since. However, what at first glance may seem a dull career path has been . . . well, the very word “path” is an overclaim.

After a year as the world’s worst account man (in a last remedial effort he was booked on a time management course, but got the date wrong) Rory was moved to the Planning Department. From there he was fired in early 1990. After two weeks unemployed, Rory joined the agency’s creative department as a junior copywriter. He was promoted to Head of Copy in 1995 and Creative Director in 1997. By happy coincidence he was also an early Internet user and so became an early advocate of Ogilvy’s pioneering new media arm.

In 2005 he was made Vice-Chairman of the Ogilvy Group in the UK in recognition of his improved timekeeping.

MALCOLM WHITE

krow

Malcolm is one of the four founders of krow, an agency that believes it has a duty to create communications that trigger people to do something. Since its launch in September 2005, the agency has acquired clients such as FIAT, Thomson and the Elmlea assignment from Unilever.

Malcolm has been a planner since 1987 at agencies such as Yellowhammer, BMP DDB, Partners BDDH and Euro RSCG.

Career highlights include winning an IPA Effectiveness Award for Strepsils, helping the Labour Party back into power while at BMP, and leading Partners BDDH to a Grand Prix win in The Account Planning Group (APG) Creative Planning Awards in 2001.

He is the current Chairman of APG, and in 2006 invented and chaired The Battle Of Big Thinking-a new kind of conference celebrating the latest and best thinking in marketing, communications, planning and research.

Part I

Planning: Role and Structure

The articles in this section give a very vivid flavour of the London advertising world in the 1970s. It is the definitive account of where the new discipline of account planning came from and what it aimed to do at a time when all advertising agencies were modelled on the typical structure of American agencies. The multinational agencies were relatively large and coherent entities in the sense that all the disciplines lived under the same roof.

The value of this historical perspective to readers in the fragmented world of communications planning today is enormous. Why? Because the job to be done is exactly the same in our more complex world as it was in what seems a much more orderly past.

The bitty, fractious media and agency environment together with the distractions of technology and social change often obscure this fact. Yet the intellectual logic that binds the whole process together is the same now as it was then and the themes in this section have important lessons for today.

1

Who Do You Think You Are?

By Malcolm White, Planning Partner, krow

Of the articles presented in this wonderful book, 91% were written by Stephen King. The remaining 9% (or two articles) were written by the late John Treasure, formerly of JWT, and the late Stanley Pollitt, formerly of Boase Massimi Pollitt. Both these articles are collected here along with Stephen King’s account of the birth of account planning.

These three articles are quite different from the others in this collection. They are not directly concerned with marketing, brands or budget setting, nor with technical subjects like pre-testing. Nor are they theoretical or obviously polemical.

Instead, all the articles are concerned with events that happened almost 40 years ago. They are the story of something extraordinary that happened when three people who are sadly no longer with us, and a host of other individuals who are much less well known than these three authors, started thinking along similar lines. The extraordinary something was the development and introduction of account planning in agencies.

The story each article tells from slightly different perspectives is played out in a world that seems very different from our own: it is a world that is sketched out in the articles. Advertising agencies have marketing departments that plan new product development, that analyse the sales data for clients and present the results to them at their board meetings. Account men are called “representatives” (or at least they were at JWT), and we come across a roll-call of agencies that no longer exist or have probably been swallowed up by one mega-merger after another: Pritchard Wood and Partners, DPBS, OBM and Beagle, Bargle, D’Annunzio, Twigg and Privet (the last of these is a favourite Stephen King joke: a spoof on the raft of small agencies that began springing up in the 1980s characterized by the name of virtually every employee on the door).

In short, these articles are firmly rooted in the past. They are history. Why then should the modern young planner in these time-pressed times give these articles the 30 minutes required to read them? The simple answer is that they will tell the modern young planner in these time-pressed times who they are, and what they should be.

Reading each of these articles is like coming across a box of old family photographs hidden in a dusty attic. And I don’t just mean that these articles, like the old photographs, aren’t looked at very often. The background and settings in the articles are certainly different from today, like the background and settings of years gone by in old family photographs. Many of the people mentioned in these articles aren’t well known today; they are the equivalent of a shadowy figure in the back row of a formal family portrait.

But despite the obvious, superficial, differences between past and present there is a deep echo from the past in these articles that is slightly surprising but helps to explain why we are the way that we are, and even helps to explain the interests and preoccupations we have. A bit like spotting a family resemblance between yourself and a great, great aunt.

Have Planners Lost Touch with their Roots?

Planning has certainly changed and developed from the planning defined and practised by Stephen King, John Treasure and Stanley Pollitt. A certain amount of change is inevitable, but I think in the process many planners have drifted away from, and lost touch with, their roots, not always to the benefit of themselves, their agencies or their clients. I even suspect, from the conversations that I have, that today’s planners under the age of 30 have little awareness of where they (and their job title) come from.

Reading these papers is at very least a comforting reconnection with the past and a return to roots. But there is something rather unsettling about these articles. They make me think that some of us are denying our roots, like someone from a working-class background in the North East who has succeeded in London and is slightly ashamed of his or her humble background. I think this because there are three clear lessons to be drawn from these three articles. They may surprise at least a few of the younger planning community.

1. Planning Was Never Intended to be Just about Imaginative Leaps or Just about Lateral Thinking

When attention has been paid to the story of the birth of planning over the last 40 years, too much of that attention has been focused on the differences in approach between the two agencies that could claim to have invented it. Reading the story of the development of planning at JWT (as told by Stephen King and John Treasure) and at BMP (as told by Stanley Pollitt), I was not only struck by the broad similarities but by the emphasis that both agencies put on thorough and rigorous planning, grounded in facts and realities.

JWT’s approach was grounded in client marketing realities and its Planning Department sprang from their Marketing Department. BMP’s approach was anchored by the reality of the consumer:

All creative work – and we mean all creative work – at BMP is checked out qualitatively with a tightly defined target market. . . To give some idea of scale we conducted some 1,200 groups last year which arguably makes us the largest qualitative research company in the country. (Pollitt)

This all feels quite different from current practice. So much of what I see in the planning of today (including in our own APG Planning Awards) is more about interesting ideas than it is about the right idea (or even a right idea). These three articles remind us that great planning isn’t creativity; it is grounded creativity. Great planners are those who can flip between logical analysis and lateral flights of fancy, or as Jeremy Bullmore put it: “We need to be intuitive, instinctive, scared and lucky AND we need to be rigorous, disciplined, logical and deductive” (Bullmore, 1991).

I think we need more of these sorts of people and less of those who are just “interesting”. For the planning species to thrive and prosper, it has to reject the specious.

2. Planning today is too concerned with downstream creative interventions at the expense of big, strategic thinking which happens upstream

Stephen King refers to his famous typology of planners in The Anatomy of Account Planning:

I believe in fact that the most fundamental scale on which to judge account planners is one that runs from Grand Strategists to Advert Tweakers. And that nowadays there are rather too many agencies whose planners’ skills are much too near the the advert-tweaking end of the scale.

Paul Feldwick (2007) has observed that “it would be fair to see JWT as closer to the former and BMP (at least by the 1980s) to the latter, though the choice is clearly somewhat loaded!” What Stephen King meant by “grand” at the extreme is clear from a later paper where he describes grand strategists as people who are “intellectual, aim to see the big picture, are a little bit above the fray, almost economists” (King, 1988). From my personal perspective, being “grand” by that definition is every bit as bad as being a tweaker. Also, more importantly, as marketing departments and consultants grew in number and in confidence, they tended to play this role.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that both agencies and planners have increasingly retrenched to the ad-tweaking end of the scale, even if few would call it that, and Stephen’s criticisms are even truer today.

Because of all this, I think we need to reassert the role of the planner in developing big, strategic upstream thoughts. Thoughts like “Dirt is good” for Persil and Dove’s “Campaign For Real Beauty”, for example, are big upstream thoughts. They neither belong to the camp of the Grand Strategist, nor to the party of the Ad Tweakers.

They are much more like the idea of the “strategic concept” that John Treasure defines in his article:

Such strategic thinking and planning is especially valuable for the advertiser who is financially unable to match forces (or dollars) with a strongly established competitor. And it will be seen here that CREATIVE thinking may be even more valuable than in the area of messages, where most of the talk about “creativity” in advertising is focused.

To encourage us all to strive more often for these big upstream strategic concepts, we at The Account Planning Group will be unveiling a small, but important change to our biennial awards: from 2007 they will be called The APG Creative Strategy Awards (rather than Creative Planning Awards as they are today).

3. Planning was, and is, a force for changing advertising and communications, and the way agencies think and behave

Stephen King linked the futures of account planning and advertising in his article, and of course the stories that the three authors tell in their three articles is about the impact of planning on two agencies and on the world of advertising generally. Stanley Pollitt emphasizes that planning requires a particular agency environment in which to flourish, and he points out that the basic ground rules of advertising and how it is developed were also changed by planning.

In recent years there has been too much debate on the role and skills of account planners, and far too much emphasis on the planner as an inspired individual. This runs the risk of separating the planner from the process, the agencies and the clients.

To celebrate this broader role of planning we are creating a new award for our 2007 APG Strategy Awards. This award will be called The Stephen King Strategy Agency of the Year Award, and will award not an individual but the collective efforts of the planners in the agency that has done best in the awards.

But What a Brilliant Idea Account Planning was

Reading these articles brings home a point that I think has too often been obscured by the shadows of history, by our contemporary obsession with the future, and by always moving forward. The three articles illuminate, with the flash of a firework exploding in the pitch black sky, what a brilliant idea account planning was. It was as big an idea in the narrow context of 1960s advertising as Darwin’s idea of evolution was for the Victorian world.

To steal the words of the American philosopher David Dennett – meant for Darwin and his theory of evolution, I believe, and reading these three articles reminds me of this belief – account planning is “the single best idea anyone has ever had” (quoted in Dupre, 2003).

Let’s not forget that.

And Finally . . . the Challenge to Planners in 2007

Forty years on from the invention of account planning in agencies, most of us are quite familiar with planning. Reading these articles makes this familiar thing – planning – strange and wonderful again.

They challenge all planners to take a long, hard look at themselves and what they do, and ask some searching questions:

• How does what you do as a planner, measure up to the vision of Stephen King and Stanley Pollitt?

• Ask yourself when was the last time you were rigorous, deductive and logical rather than just intuitive and lateral?

• When was the last time your interesting ideas were really grounded in facts, realities and data?

• When was the last time you came up with a big strategic concept for a brand? The correct answer to the last three, by the way, is: “Just last week, thank you very much”.

REFERENCES

Bullmore, J. (1991) Behind the Scenes in Advertising. NTC Publications.

Dupre, J. (2003) Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today. Oxford University Press.

Feldwick, P. (2007) “Account planning: Its history, and its significance for ad agencies”, in Ambler, T. and Tellis, G. (eds), The Sage Handbook of Advertising.

King, S. (1988) The Strategic Development of Brands – from an APG one-day event.

1.1

The Anatomy of Account Planning1

By Stephen King

Tracking account planning is rather like counting a mixed batch of tropical fish. You think you see patterns, but they’ve all changed by the time you’ve finished counting.

There’s little enough doubt about its growth. Today most of the top UK agencies have planning departments and most of the recent new UK agency Weves have them built into the letter heading (at least one of Beagle, Bargle, D’Annunzio, Twigg and Privet will be a planner).

Yet the current approach of agencies varies between the integral and the non-existent. It’s impossible to imagine Boase Massimi Pollitt without account planners. At the same time it’s been recently announced, in suitably crude language and to no one’s great surprise, that there’s no room at all for account planning at McCann’s.

I don’t think one should just throw up the hands at all this diversity. It seems to me that the future of account planning, and maybe indeed of advertising agencies themselves, depends on our teasing out correctly the historical strands – three in particular.

HOW ACCOUNT PLANNING STARTED

The first strand is how it all started. Advertising has always been planned and campaigns have always been post-rationalized. People like James Webb Young, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach were all superb planners. What is relatively new is the existence in an agency of a separate department whose prime responsibility is planning advertising strategy and evaluating campaigns against it. Such departments are older than we sometimes think. To quote from a 1938 JWT London brochure: “Bright ideas must survive sharpshooters in the marketing department and snipers on the Plan Board, before they stand a chance of being seen by the client.” Despite the rather negative role of sharpshooting, it seems that there was a department that aimed to apply marketing thinking to advertising ideas. (This was not a research department. BMRB had been set up as a separate research company five years before.)

When I joined JWT’s marketing department in 1957, there were about 25 people in it allocated to accounts – as described in some detail by John Treasure (1985). What we did for each of our clients included analysing marketing data and published statistics, writing marketing plans, recommending more research, and planning new product/brand development. Our marketing plans were a bit naive – strong on the broad view, but a touch vague on logistics and usually in the dark about profits; but somebody had to write them. Not surprisingly, they went into most detail on advertising strategy and expenditure. They were of course the basis for the agency’s creative work.

Then clients gradually started to build up proper marketing departments, who wrote their own plans. We tried to influence the strategic part of these plans by getting in first with our own blue book recommendations (with some relief abandoning any pretence of knowing much about distribution, journey cycles and case rates). Increasingly we concentrated more directly on our own expertise, the advertising strategy. We also set up four very small specialist groups – an advertising research unit and a media research unit in 1964, a new product development unit and an operations research unit in 1965.

In a sense therefore, when JWT disbanded the marketing department and set up its account planning department on 1 November 1968, it was more a reorganization and renaming than a radical change. Perhaps the biggest change came from recognizing that many of the senior media planners were analysing exactly the same data in exactly the same way as the people in the marketing department, as a basis for making the main inter-media recommendations (Jones, 1968; King, 1969).

The first written proposals to the management for the new department came on 8 April, the final blueprint on 23 August. It was all worked out in a series of meetings and awaydays of the new group heads. At one of these (on 15 July) we finally settled the name: we’d tried target planner (too narrow and obscure), campaign planner (too competitive with what creative people did) and brand planner (too much restricted in people’s minds to packaged groceries). Tony Stead suggested account planner and it stuck. Meanwhile a very similar gradualist development was happening at what turned into BMP. There was one important difference: the basis there was research rather than marketing. By 1964 at Pritchard Wood there was a media research unit, a marketing research unit (mainly doing desk research), a qualitative research unit and a research department (mainly commissioning quantitative research). Some 25 people in all, but not allocated to accounts, and too fragmented to have a very powerful voice in the agency. When Stanley Pollitt took over the research and media functions, he made the crucial change of putting “a trained researcher alongside the account man on every account”. He quickly found that a great many trained researchers were more concerned with technique than with the green-fingered interpretation and use of research; and so moved on to finding and developing specialist advertising planners, with Peter Jones as the first.

When BMP was formed in June 1968 account planning was built in from the start, and Stanley Pollitt became the first head of it in an agency (though the name was in fact later borrowed from JWT). The basis was the Cadbury Schweppes account group, whose members carried on their existing working practices.

While the start of it all at BMP was thus equally gradualist, there were some differences from JWT’s approach. The ratio of planners to account managers was much higher – it has varied from one-to-one to one-to-two, whereas JWT has always had about one-to-four. Partly because of this and partly maybe because of their origins in research, BMP’s planners have been far more directly involved in qualitative research. As David Cowan put it in 1981: “A central part of the planner’s job is to conduct the qualitative pre-testing research.” JWT’s view was always that the gains this brought in involvement and direct contact with consumers would be more than offset by the loss in objectivity and that it was better to use specialist qualitative researchers.

Whatever the differences between the two pioneer agencies, the similarities were very much greater. Both recognized that the key innovation was the development of professional planning skills and of their integration into the process of producing advertising. It was a fundamental change in the internal balance of power and influence. As I wrote in 1969:

What we have set up is a system whereby a project group of three skills (account management, creative and account planning) is the norm for the planning of advertising campaigns.

Or as BMP put it in their offer document of 1983:

The main new element introduced into its structure by BMP was called the account planner. The planner brings not simply research, but also the use of data, into every stage of advertising development as a third partner for the account handler and creative team.