Planners Future: Broadening or Narrowing ?

[Pedro Pires]

Hello Planners!

How do you see our (successful) future as planners:

1) Broadening: planners rebranding - Planner's dead, long live the Strategist - not discipline freak but an holistic brand master (adverting + pr + digital +...). This brand & communications generalist becomes the ultimate mind that builds a strategy for especialists to implement (the advertising guy, the pr guy, the digital guy,...).

2)Narrowing : the advertising planner, the pr planner, the digital planner... Each one becoming an expert and a especialist of a discipline.

3) This doesn't make any sense.

1, 2 or 3 ?

[Carol Avari]

1 ) broadening

[Kyle Cameron Studstill]

Transforming: The Planner develops more than just a talent for understanding the consumer and human behavior, but takes on an understanding of how to develop experiences that execute upon those insights as well. The Planner-Creative. Experiences are media-neutral and work to solve problems, not create awareness (awareness is hardly ever the real problem).

Perhaps a bit too much on the idealist side?

[Pedro Pires]

In my point of view, experiences aren't the goal of a planner. The goal is the relationship built between the brand and the stakeholder (it can be the consumer, if it's the target). A relation to nurture and to make money from. Experiences contribute, indeed, to the strengthening of the relation.

[Adrian Hoole]

Definitely 1. The answer is not "TV, Digital, PR" etc. The answer is "best solution to the best definition of the problem". Bring on the specialists to execute the strategy by all means, but bad things happen when you have an obvious preference for one delivery channel over another. Get media neutral quick, the rest of the world is - always has been. (Although it might depend on how you earn your Christmas bonus if you are lucky enough to have one right now!).

[Pedro Pires]

I agree with you in almost everything you said. I got the issue more "tangible" discribing planners actual segmentation - digital planners are one big example, with an increasing market demand.
Media Neutral. Totally. When you provide the "best solution to the best definition of the problem".
But you can't have a neutral mind set... And our historic is somewhat advertising conditioned.
I'm definitely 1. With a relations-oriented mindset.

[Willem]

I'd say 1. I would probably say a holistic marketing (or even business solutions - adapted best to what people may want / be receptive to) master and chuck brand in there with the other specialties.

Though I also think it's a never ending story we're getting into from that perspective - like the analogy with Order and Chaos - both are polar opposites but things naturally tend to drift towards chaos while striving for order at the same time. I think the current agency / marketing planning trends are the same because of the way the agency business is often fragmented (At least in London it is a lot): the tendency is to specialise while striving for a more holistic view of things.

Cheers
W.

[Kenji Summers]

1) Broadening. As right brained individuals begin to move to the forefront of many organizations, I suspect planners will become more holistic.What will be interesting is whether planners begin to have more influence at the executive level. I suppose larger agencies will eventually need to do more to remain on the 'pulse' and on the leading edge of thought. This is why I see the strategist role becoming most important.

[Ezequiel Fritz]

I coincide with the option 1, and with the Kenji's point of view.

This is a question of understanding the people as people and their relation with the formats and the marks. I don't believe that the option 2 is viable. A super specialization doesn't leave the possibility of comprising to the people like everything.

The point of view of Kyle it's interesting. It's a part of the work of a planner, to find insights, that could be executables. I believe that it's a part of the work to observe the experiences throught the people live, but not create experiences.