account planning

Definition:
One of the two planning functions in a sophisticated FULL-SERVICE ADVERTISING AGENCY, the other being MEDIA PLANNING. 'ACCOUNT' is used here in the specialised advertising sense of the word. Account planners are mostly concerned with research - formative and developmental as well as straightforward market research - and with the theoretical underpinnings of advertising strategy. They are, so to speak. the intellectual wing of the business. The goal of account planning is to understand consumers, audiences, markets and society, and to use that knowledge as a basis for the development of effective advertising campaigns. The role of account planners is thus quite often to influence CREATIVE strategy (media planners doing the same for media strategy). This can in practice cause internal conflict, since key people in the CREATIVE DEPARTMENT are likely to maintain that creativity is an intuitive and personal process, not amenable to design by committee or interpretation by researchers. The job and its title have recently spread beyond the confines of advertising agencies into other marketing communications service providers, particularly DIRECT MARKETING agencies. The tendency has been to shorten the description to 'planning' in recent years.
The account planning discipline seems to be stuck in a prolonged adolescence, not yet really widespread in smaller or less sophisticated advertising agencies. It was 'invented' in Britain, and remains something of a British specialisation. There is debate in the business as to whether the credit should be given to Stephen King of the J. WALTER THOMPSON agency of Stanley Pollitt of Boase Massimi Pollitt, since absorbed into BMP DDB Needham. A Californian agency which pioneered the discipline in America in the nineteen-eighties, Chiat Day, had an Account Planning Department staffed entirely by British expatriates. The Account Planning Group is a professional common-interest group for account planners and ADMAP is the house journal of the discipline.

Cross-References:
[Admap] [Thompson, J Walter] [direct marketing] [creative] [creative department] [full-service advertising agency] [media planning] [Thompson, J Walter] [account]

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