This document discusses how embracing a planning mindset can help public relations agencies move up the value chain. It provides a brief history of planning in marketing and advertising agencies. It then discusses how the PR industry has started hiring planners to address evolving client needs for more integrated, cost-effective solutions. Embracing strategic planning can help PR agencies strengthen their strategic capabilities, thought leadership, and value to clients while addressing weaknesses in strategic discipline and commercial understanding. The document outlines specific areas where a planning approach can add value, including commercial understanding, organizational empathy, consumer insight, brand literacy, channel knowledge, creative inspiration, and evaluation.

1. Planning Ideas Lab

2. A personal journey
PR
agency
Business,
brand &
communica
tions
planner
Communica
tions
Planning
Advertisi
ng media,
sponsors
hip &
digital
agencies

3. Brief History of Planning
Account
Planning
Account
Planning
1960/70s2010s
Integrated Planning/T-Shaped PlannersIntegrated Planning/T-Shaped Planners
Communications
Planning
Communications
Planning
1980s
Brand PlanningBrand Planning Media PlanningMedia Planning Direct PlanningDirect Planning
Brand
Positioning
Brand
Positioning
1990/2000s
CRM/DataCRM/Data
Executional
Planning
SP
PR
Spon
Digital
(SEO)
Digital
(SEO)
Mkg Science/
Econometrics
Mkg Science/
Econometrics

4. PR & Planning
• PR teams have always planned
campaigns & activities, so what
has changed?
• Why have many of the leading
PR agencies started hiring
planners?
• Is it worth the investment?

5. More Complex Media & Opinion
Former Landscape
Activism & corporate
behaviour
New patterns of
consumer behaviour &
new expectations
New media
technologies

6. Collapse of Traditional Certainties
End of Advertising
Hegemony
Consumer
Empowerment &
Dispersal of Control
Economic Realities

7. Evolving Client Needs
• Cost pressures demanding major
structural changes:
– Clients are seeking more for less from
fewer agency partners and cost savings
of 20-25% (Marketing)
– “Every client has asked its agency what
more it can do; how much less can it
charge; what extra value can it add” (AAR)
– Recession will lead to “more responsible
buying of marketing services” (Sir Martin Sorrell)
• Intelligent re-bundling of agency
resources

8. Evolving Client Needs
• Frustration => Demand for a new approach:
– “As brand custodians, the speed of change has genuinely
outpaced our ability to meet it”
“A new era of remarkable opportunity”
Simon Clift, CMO, Unilever
– "We need to reinvent the way we market to consumers. We need
a new model. It does not exist. No one else has one yet. But we
need to get going now.” A.G. Lafley, Chairman-CEO, P&G
– “Creative & media agencies are "struggling like mad to cope" with
both the new digital world and the additional pressures brought on
by the recession. I don’t believe that I am getting the right advice
from my agencies” Will Harris, Nokia

9. Evolving Client Needs
• Creatively agnostic
PR
Experiential
Promotion
POS
Online
IDEA
Ads
PR
Experiential
Promotion
POS
Online
Advertising
Old Model New Model

10. Clients Embracing New Approaches
Evolved role of in-house PR team => Influencer Marketing
“As marketers we have an opportunity & responsibility to drive
change within our companies because all touchpoints now impact
our brand & our revenue. Brands aren’t defined by campaigns
anymore but by the consumer ecosystem we nurture to support
them” Mike Mendenhall, CMO:
Broadening responsibility of marketers (+ PR, corp. comms &
insight)
“designed to ensure that everyone is aligned with the same aim of
brand-building”
“growth of new media channels – in particular, social
networking websites – had created a widening overlap in the
activities of the marketing and PR departments, so it made
sense to unify the teams”

11. Demand for New Agency Skills
Multi disciplinary
strategy & execution
Real Time Planning Influencer
Marketing

12. Mind the Strategic Gap
• Declining influence of ad
agency planning
• Failure of media agencies to
adequately fill void
• Marketing comms industry
dominated by youth &
specialisation
• Where are clients going for
strategic advice?

13. Opportunity … to accelerate
move up value chain
• To become your company’s or clients most
valued strategic business, brand and marketing
communications advisor
More influence
More status
More revenue/better profit margins
A future
• Which you can achieve (in part) by putting a
planning mindset at the heart of your business

14. Opportunity … to address PR
industry’s Core Weaknesses
• Executional fixation
• Strategic ill-discipline
• Commercial naiveté
• Intellectual laziness/lack of confidence
• Relative lack of thought leadership
• Under selling (& under pricing) strategic &
creative contribution
• Evaluation myopia

15. The Competitive Threat
• Other agency sectors stealing language of PR
• Emergence of new hybrid agency models,
integrating PR with other disciplines
• T-Shaped Planning/Planners
• Cliché alert:
– “So many agencies are talking about the need to re-gear their
approach around the same principles: ideas led, media-neutral,
integrated, multi-disciplinary” Campaign

16. Where Planning Mindset Will
Add Value
Moving Up Value Chain
• Intellectual rigour/clarity
• Thought leadership
Opening Up New Capabilities
• Strategic underpinning
• Sales support

17. Specific Areas Where Value Can Be
Added By Planning
7. Evaluation => reapplied learning
Problem
Analysis
Strategic
Thinking
Creative
Development
Evaluation
1. Commercial understanding
2. Organisational empathy
3. Consumer/customer insight
4. Brand literacy
5. Channel/influencer knowledge
6. Creative inspiration

18. 1. Commercial Understanding
• Best agency partners
understand the business better
than their clients
• How do they make money or
justify their existence?
• Nothing damages credibility
faster than naïve advice

19. 2. Organisational Empathy
• Getting campaigns
implemented far more of a
challenge than coming up with
ideas
• Multi-media programmes highly
demanding/resource intensive
• Connected consumer meets
disconnected organisation

20. Social media dramatises the
level of disconnection
• Reveals silos
• Underlines structural/
operational weaknesses
– Decision making
– Speed
– Accountability

21. 3. Consumer Insight
• Most abused word in PR
• PR people naturally insightful …
but struggle to articulate
• Power to underpin strongest
strategic/creative ideas
• Critical competitive advantage
for clients

22. 4. Brand Literacy
• Talking the language of brand
– Represent 80%+ of value of most
brand owners
– Much pseudo science
… but understanding of theories &
terminology commands respect
– Multiple models/processes
… but struggle in world of “shared
ownership”

23. 5. Channel/Influencer Knowledge
• Focus on bought & owned …
as well as earned media
• Borrow language & empirical
rigour of media planning
• Leverage understanding of
more complex influencer
models

24. 6. Creative Inspiration
• Driving the ideation process
… more professional/disciplined
briefing
• Brutal simplicity v overdose of
options
• Providing strategic rationale

25. 7. Reapplying Learning
• Measurement pointless unless
you learn something & can
reapply lessons
• Output + Impact + Effect
• Everything is measurable
… with creativity/lateral thinking

26. Characteristics of Best Planners
• Challenging but empathetic
• Commercially astute
• Immersed in lives of target
audiences
• Culturally informed
• Able to look at problems from
different angle (reframing)
• Combine Observation + Analysis
+ Intuition
• Fertilisers of ideas

27. Giant Caveat
• No one makes money out of
planning & few make money by
selling strategy
• Good planners are expensive &
not all data is free
• Planners have historically
struggled to survive within PR
agencies

28. In Summary
• Embracing planning mindset has potential to
accelerate PR’s move up the value chain
Underpins strengths
Addresses weaknesses
Safeguards future

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