NORTHERN PLANNER

More email advice stuff. About these folks:

Hi Andrew, 

How are you? 

One of the things I'm really struggling with at my current
workplace is shaping my role. My role is a newly created role. I feel the
client is execution focused and there is an enormous opportunity for strategic
thinking to guide the brand. The thing is I haven't got a clue on how to do it,
what I should be doing on a daily basis. I used to be a part of all meetings so
I have a better sense of what's going on to identify opportunities where I can
insert myself. That continued for a bit until we got an account director on the
account. I felt a sense of relief as I thought this person might help pull me
in at the right times instead of sitting through mindless meetings. What I'm
starting to realize is I'm letting him dictate what my role and involvement
should be as I don't have the confidence to tell him or figure out where
and how I should be involved. In a nutshell, I just don't know what to do
besides trial and error. How would you handle this situation? 

Do you always attend client creative reviews? 

By the way, I really like what you said about think about thinking
about your audience as a protagonist in your story – it really helped when I
was organizing my thoughts! 

 

 

Hi

Yes, shaping your role is a double edged sword- it’s great to
have the flexibility, but others can shape it for you.

In general, you should be following this job description.

But when it comes to reality, the world isn't full of purists.

Acccount directors can be tricky in particular because:

1. They
   need to feel they are in control and need to get stuff done on time
2. They
   want to own the client relationship
3. In
   some cases they think they can do the strategy

Ive written about working with suits before- here. But here's some other thoughts.

I attend most client meetings and most creative reviews because
I’ve worked hard to win a level of respect from everyone.

More than that, people expect I’ll add something that won’t come
from anyone else. Creatives, suits and clients can get along fine without
planners, you have to make them WANT you in the room.

With any account director, make them feel your making their job
easier.

That doesn’t mean you make them feel you’re cleverer than them,
but that you respect what they do (I do I was failed suit) and want to earn
theirs.

So:

Don’t do cleverer strategy, do more generative strategy. Average
briefs, briefings and overall thinking tends to frame business objectives,
stays within the ‘category’ and doesn’t really help creatives that much with
having good ideas. A useful trick is not to ‘own the strategy’ but add to it,
contribute that extra 10% of thinking that turns it into a creative rocket
fuel, rather than instruction….by pushing into something that people will care
about, that make them respond, that will provoke creative response. Because,
ultimately, suits like less creative reviews and less time on a job, so the
better the start and the more creatives can allocate to solving a creative task
rather than a ‘business one’ the better. For example – one thing I worked on
recently turned ‘We need increase usage occasions and increase the emotional
relationship ’ (don’t get me going on the double task) into “Inspire women
across the nation to get more creative”.

Add more and more to the stuff you get invited to and you’ll see
you’ll get included into more and more and more. Build a relationship with
creatives – be a genuine bridge between them an suits. When suits see creatives
want you around, they’ll want you too – creative are harder for suits to manage
than clients.

 

So you then need to make sure you can PROVE that people will be
interested in this – data, insights, examples from real culture. Which brings
me to point about relationships with clients. You’re not there for clients to
like you more than the account director (take this from a painfully shy person
who can never ‘own the room’ with force of personality) you’re there for
clients to want to maintain an strengthen the relationship. By removing risk
for them – with evidence that the work is the right thing to do. By 
continually adding value with observations and nuggets into every meeting and
by getting better work more smoothly out of the agency. The suits will get it
right in terms of what they think the client will buy, you’ll get it right by
proving it’s what the target will respond to, and how that response will help
solve the BUSINESS problem.

 

In other words, by being a source of ideas and then helping get
those ideas through, you’ll make both creatives AND suits want you around more.

 

In turn, that means surrendering your ego, be generous with all
your thinking and ideas, let both creatives and suits take credit and they’ll
want you around, because you make them look good (I even bury my best stuff
within a creative brief, creatives’ natural response to a brief is to question
it, let them discover the best stuff themselves. You need to know you’d thought
of that, they don’t). But the moment you try and take credit for stuff, they’ll
shut you out.

 

So that’s the approach.

 

Here’s some pointers to help you know what’s going on, which
have always helped me:

1. Traffic
   is the heart of the agency. They know everything going on. Make friends with
   traffic. They are the centre of the eternal creative v account person war, help
   smooth that and they’ll love you too.
2. Account
   directors might rule, but it’s the account managers and execs that manage the
   day to day. Make friends with the junior suits. This will also pay back for
   tomorrow, since suits tend to rise very quickly and will become account
   directors and even CEO’s before you become board planner/planning director or
   whatever.
3. If
   you’re the only planner, add value to the entire agency. Do a monthly trends
   meetings, innovation updates, case studies of great work from other places or
   whatever. Where I last worked, we put little nuggets of insight at eye level in
   the staff toilets and updated them weekly (Our insight us urinsight) – become
   visible go to source for great insight and new thinking.

 

I hope I’ve answered the question and you find it helpful