Fake it ’til you make it… as a planner
In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Clemenger Sydney’s Al Crawford tells us how to do his job.
What does a planner do?
Alongside ‘are you a good and generous lover?’, this is the question that most strikes fear into my heart. I pity the fool that lobs this one at me – generally cab drivers and sympathetic souls that see me looking lonely at barbecues.
The layman’s version: if you’re selling a can of beans and want to advertise, we work out who you should be talking to and what you should be saying to them. And, if you’re lucky, we might even throw in ‘where’ as well. We are also happy to take this devastating expertise and apply it to other categories, such as fridges and toilet paper.
Oh, you’re still here, are you? Well allow me to hit you with the deluxe version.
Originally, we were ‘the voice of the consumer’ doing research groups, mining data and writing briefs that produced more excellent and more relevant ads. But the job’s a lot more varied than that – you have to be a creative fluffer, client whisperer, culture vulture and media maven all rolled into one. We’re like the mixed martial artists of the advertising world except without any of the muscle mass or naked aggression.
What skills do you need to be good at the job?
It’s not really that technical: basic motor functions, an average level of literacy and numeracy, plus fluency in the native tongue, get you quite a long way. Beyond that, it’s as much about character traits as skills. So, in no particular order:
Be nosey. There’s a hair’s breadth between good planners and stalkers. Most good planners, if they weren’t gainfully employed, would probably be the spying next door neighbour twitching their net curtains or the oddball that fossicks in your bin for personal details.
Live as normal a life as possible. Generally, we have grossly inflated salaries and live in gilded cages, but if you lose touch with your average Joe and start acting like Marie Antoinette, then you’re toast.
Be good at communicating. If you are a weird beard-scratching social misfit, it might get you some curiosity value, particularly if you are a woman, but you won’t make the grade.
Be brilliant at simplifying stuff.
Possess a finely tuned, but not debilitating, sense of paranoia that what you’ve come up with is not quite good enough.
Oh, and an uncanny ability to dress either like a dishevelled school teacher or an ill-at-ease teenager.
Is there any lingo we need to know to do the job?
I am only wary of two things in this life: Greeks bearing gifts and planners bandying around lingo. Jargon is generally the refuge of the bullshitter. And, in an industry full of bullshit artists, we have more than our fair share in planning, so I plump for common-or-garden variety English every day of the week. I’ve always thought The Bluffer’s Guide to Marketing’s description of planners as ‘a smart arse who turns your brief into baby talk for the creative department’ is about the most apt.
Who are the people you work closest with?
Probably other planners. Not because we’re an Amish community that only mixes with our own, but because we spend a lot of time in an open plan office, airing our latest thinking with our colleagues before somebody from another department beats the hell out of it. Other than that, it’d be creatives, who regard us as occasionally useful, but mostly annoying. Beyond that, we spend a lot of time with account men, media partners and clients. I think some people have this stereotype of planners as hanging around crunching numbers in a mildewing office somewhere out the back of the agency, but we don’t do that. In fact, we’re hardly ever in our mildewing office at all.
How do you become a planner?
Based on personal experience, start out with a dream; a dream of giving something beautiful back to the world, like writing a book, penning an epic poem or conceiving a groundbreaking piece of conceptual art. Then when that dream dies, revenge yourself on the world by spending a lifetime thinking up new and ever more devious ways of selling people things.
Al Crawford is the executive planning director at Clemenger BBDO, Sydney.
This story first appeared in Encore. Download it now on iPad, iPhone and Android tablet devices.
I’ve read LOTS of these in the past and this is by far the most accurate and honest. Ive been dreading the day my daughter asks ‘What do you do for a job Daddy’….. Now I need worry no more. I’ll just ping her this link and be done with it. Thanks Al!
User ID not verified.
Nice one Al. I ROFL’d.
User ID not verified.
This is good.
User ID not verified.
Refreshingly honest. My favourite part: “It’s not really that technical: basic motor functions, an average level of literacy and numeracy, plus fluency in the native tongue, get you quite a long way.”
I would put it to you those skills are in short supply everywhere.
User ID not verified.
Account men, eh? Interestingly specific.
User ID not verified.
Clearly being an amusing, self-deprecating and generous soul helps too !?
User ID not verified.
Funny and smart. A good read to break up the day.
User ID not verified.
Makes me feel like my hope of being a planner isn’t that crazy after all. Thanks Al 😉
User ID not verified.
“sense of paranoia that what you’ve come up with is not quite good enough”
couldn’t agree more. funny too, because i think this trait is exclusive to planners.
User ID not verified.
And clearly a little bit of copywriter talent doesn’t hurt. Agree with Adam – best written one of these that I can remember.
User ID not verified.
Brilliant!
User ID not verified.
Witty yet a little dated. I think planners need to be much more accountable than this article suggests (although it’s wonderfully written). I think it captures the attributes a planner needs – but not the skills.
User ID not verified.
Love that “Hi” suggested that we should be more accountable…. anonymously.
I’ll assume it was irony that you were going for.
User ID not verified.
Strategic honesty. Awesome
User ID not verified.
“What does a planner do?”
Simple. To do almost exactly what an account exec used to do before agencies ditched the years of training them up and tried to save money by hiring twenty something girls to do bag carrying instead — girls who couldn’t write a strategic creative brief to save themselves. Then those bag carriers realised they could double their salaries if they simply called themselves ‘planners’. Most of them still can’t write a insightful brief to save themselves, and have zero streetsmarts, but by God they can Google a lot of analogous photos of objects and people that supposedly resemble the consumer appeal/outcome of the product/service and somehow supposedly enable the creatives to develop more targeted and more brilliant marketing. Well that’s the BS. Of course, we all know the percentage of THAT hasn’t increased a blip in half a century.
User ID not verified.
@Cosmo did a planner steal your lunch money?
User ID not verified.
This hit close to home… Well written and very true
User ID not verified.