New compensation models have resulted in questions about the role of account planning at agencies – a trend that could alter client-agency relations.
Susan Charles, VP member services for the Association of Canadian Advertisers, says with the traditional commission system, account planning was part of the account manager’s function – and part of the service. As it became a more sophisticated skill set, it started to create some conflict in determining the value of the service and what the client was paying for. Now with a fee system, clients get to choose the level of service package they want from an agency and can opt out of having a planner altogether.
However, Charles says planning is a way for agencies to reclaim some of the territory they lost to consultants when they pared back staff and services. She also sees significant advantages for a client if its agency has planning as a resident capability. But she says that account planners are not responsible for the management of the business – account directors are still needed to fulfill that role.
The role of account planning in an agency is meant to ensure that marketing communications is built on solid consumer insight, and that the voice of the consumer is represented in the strategic and the creative development processes.
Agencies that have embraced account or strategic planning find it not only an attraction for clients but also a process that ultimately leads to better work. Additionally, there is a belief that agencies that leave planning solely to the client side risk perpetuating the ‘agency as executor’ or ‘contractor’ view and abdicating the position of ‘valued partner.’
John Bradley, SVP, marketing for Cadbury Trebor Allan of Toronto, says there are not many agencies that take account planning seriously, and even fewer do it well. In many cases, planning has been misinterpreted on this side of the Atlantic as having someone on the team that understands the consumer, says Bradley, adding that many shops have account people fulfill the role, something he hadn’t heard of until he moved to Canada from the U.K. He stresses that a planner should be a dedicated, full-time person who has a strong research background and can interpret consumer research and trends.
‘You just can’t get [that] from someone who does it part time in between all their other jobs. To me it’s a bit like not having a market researcher in my company. While I expect all my brand managers to be research literate, that doesn’t mean we’re going to get the real nuggets that way. So I’m not sure why the counter-argument applies in agencies.’
There are good planners in Canada, just fewer, says Bradley. He believes agencies will find they have less conflict with creative departments when there’s a strong planning department. He cautions that if research and planning is left solely with the client, the affiliation stays on a client-supplier basis and the result is a lack of a fruitful relationship.
Serge Rancourt, president and COO of Publicis Canada, is a big proponent of planning and says it has brought valuable information and insight to the agency that has helped in new business efforts, as well as with its work for existing clients.
He says Publicis began making a major investment in account planning staff and tools about three years ago in order to try to regain the advisory role that, in many cases, consultants were taking over from ad agencies. This meant adding a planning group headed by Eric Blais as SVP, director of strategic planning, as well as bringing in research tools from Europe and developing others in Canada.
‘We found we were not adding much value to the client’s business, because added-value is usually through market or consumer intelligence,’ says Rancourt. ‘The advertising business model over the years had moved from an added-value to an efficiency model where rates and fees are low and we have to run as a lean ad machine, a producer of ads. [In order] to go back to a model where we are the most valued partner of our clients because they value our intelligence, we have to invest.’
But, Rancourt explains, making an investment in account planning isn’t an easy task when an agency is part of a large network where the ratio of people versus revenue is strictly dictated.
‘If somebody says I’m going to invest $1 million for people and tools in Canada for adding value to the client business, they’d be shut down because no network will approve that. I had to say, ‘Yes it will be an investment but it will provide return.’ Thank goodness we’ve been able to make this a break-even point. It’s not a profit centre but at least it pays for itself.’
Publicis has been able to make it function by taking on project work, but for its regular roster of clients, it is just part of the service. Rancourt says clients can’t be charged separately for account planning services because it’s the price of entry – clients expect and take for granted that creative will be consumer relevant and based on consumer insight.
Finding account planners is a real challenge, says Rancourt, since good people coming out of universities can make more money with consultancies and agency cutbacks eliminated the ability to ‘grow’ planners within an agency.
Arthur Fleischmann, president of John Street of Toronto, says his agency opened with more planners than clients in the summer of 2001 and has continued to have a planning focus since then, with planners as part of every client team. It’s an integral part of the agency’s philosophy, culture and service and, he says, the primary reason that clients choose John Street.
‘What planners do very well – and even better than some researchers – is they interpret [research data]. They can look at it, fuse it together with other data and marry it with different sources to come up with the consumer insight. At some agencies, planning may mean more of a research function. Our planners are more interpretative, creative planners – who are also trained as [focus group] moderators.’
Fleischmann adds, ‘I dislike the school of planning where the planner sits separately and is only brought in occasionally as the keeper of all the research and consumer insights. I don’t think the client gets the full value if planning is a discreet and separate function. We integrate planning, account service, creative and media together within a client team.’
But not all agencies hail the account-planning department. One-year-old Grip of Toronto has big brands like Labatt and Parmalat as clients, but no dedicated account planners on staff. Bob Shanks, one of the business partners at the agency, explains that this is because planning is an inherent part of the way they operate as a small firm of senior people. They have strategic skills in-house and outsource any research requirements.
Shanks, a former director of strategic planning with a large agency, says the Grip model is similar to the classic account director model, which integrated the planning and account service functions. ‘We have partners-business and partners-creative so the partners-business are the ones that attack the strategic problem presented by the client. It’s not in the planning per se, it’s more about how we go about deconstructing the issue and coming up with solutions.’
He cautions that account planning has to be part of the communications process and not a separate entity or profit centre within agencies. Some agencies may do that in order to counter inroads that consultancies such as McKinsey have made into planning, says Shanks, but for clients who have always had this function as part of the overall agency package, it would be a bitter pill to swallow.
