No Prior Planning – No Problem

So, how do you become a planner? Well, I’ll start off by saying, like most interesting jobs, there’s no set route in. With that in mind, I’m going to describe how I did it, and what I learned along the way.

I was a lucky fella really; my father was the MD of an agency in Cheltenham, so I knew about advertising as a career.  Lots of people don’t. However, I didn’t know about planning. I was always interested in why people did things, and thought account management would give me the opportunity to do that, and run the show.

Fast forward eight years. I’ve just finished a meeting for a graduate account executive position, and I thought it went pretty well. Several days pass, I get a note from the account director who interviewed me.

She liked me a lot, but she thought I was a planner. A planner?! Christ, I thought I knew advertising, but I didn’t know what those people did. She recommended Leslie Butterfield’s ‘Excellence in Advertising’, and I bought it and read it from cover to cover.

Something clicked; THIS was what I wanted to do - helping change how people thought by writing creative briefs, doing research and tracking what effect the advertising had on the audience it was intended for (and what happened to those it didn’t).

Still, I wondered to myself – didn’t graduate account execs have these opportunities?  The first hint that they might not came on the agency graduate recruitment schemes, when few questions about strategy came up, and I was systematically rejected from most of them, as I didn’t have any experience. Simply put, I hadn’t proven I could be useful to them.

Fast forward another 6 months, and I had work experience positions in several agencies as an account exec. And hated every one. I wasn’t cut out for account management. I thought I was organised. I was dead wrong.

(I was later to discover this lack of organisation was looked upon as part of a planner’s mindset – an excuse I still use if ever I forget things get lost on the way somewhere).

Anyway. I realised I was going to have to differentiate myself if I was going to stand out, and that meant more than just work experience Planners were all bright people, and I was an English graduate, so I decided to write about my experiences. I called it ‘Confessions of a Wannabe Ad Man’, and it’s still going here: http://wannabeadman.blogspot.com

Participating in the blogosphere, particularly in 2006, when few ad folk were online, helped me a lot. In particular, it helped me meet up with Russell Davies, Richard Huntington and several other senior people who I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. I was able to put my views out there and develop a way of thinking which seemed to resonate with people that I’d met.

I also, in mid 2006, got onto the Saatchi & Saatchi Summer Scholarship, being a ‘virtual account manager’. I thought to myself that I needed to get in, and very few planners are hired as straight junior planners; they have to prove themselves to be useful to the agency first.

I didn’t particularly enjoy my time at Saatchis, principally because it underlined what a bad suit I was. But it did make me redouble my efforts to become a planner. I did the graduate milkround one final time, and got to the second round of most them, but couldn’t quite do enough. Which seems to me to happen to a lot of grads, and you can’t get disheartened by it – it’s just the nature of things; some people don’t tend to do so well in those kinds of situation.

Help was at hand though, as I was hired by Richard Huntington at United London in March 2007, largely due to my thinking on my blog. I was able to demonstrate how I thought about brands, and he liked that.

However, my joy was short lived; the agency dissolved in May. My position went back to being planning wannabe. It was at this time I decided to keep a book of strategies to really underline my thinking; if planners liked my blog, and I didn’t do well in person, I might as well ensure that the two came together.

Happily, it worked, and I got a few freelance gigs before landing at Lowe London in October 2007. Since then, I’ve worked on a variety of brands; from J&J to General Motors (which is my primary account).

So what would I say I learnt about getting into planning? Well, I didn’t necessarily KNOW I was a planner. You get taught planning. Some people don’t like it, despite thinking they might – if you don’t like looking at data, you should probably stay away.

That said, I feel I had a curious mind, and a persistent attitude, and both are key to being a good planner, in my opinion. To get in, you need to be able to demonstrate them. I’m not talking about being ‘really passionate’ about advertising and communication (though that is a prerequisite), more illustrating how you think to planners.

Also, here’s a little something they don’t tell you about getting into planning. A lot of planners are crap at interviewing people. Naturally optimistic, they want most people to get on, do well, and find people fascinating. So this means they end up liking people and unable to make decision - being a touch absent minded means that if you can signpost your thinking with them, they’ll love the challenge/inspiration you gave them.

I’m not saying when you interview you should go to agency x and slag off their strategy; no, go and to talk to them and have a point of view. Far better to have one and be remembered than say nothing and be thought of as a nice person. It’s like essay writing; do you have an interesting point of view? Can you back it up?

I would say to those wishing to become a planner, you have to answer this question – am I interested in why people do things in a commercial context? If the answer’s yes, then good; do two things: Firstly, use any and all channels available to put yourself and your thinking front of mind. Whether it’s a digital point of view, or the thinking behind a campaign, you have the ability to be able to talk to a mass audience. Secondly, I’d suggest reading Jon Steel’s ‘Truth, Lies and Advertising’ and Leslie Butterfield’s ‘Excellence in Advertising’ would be a good start.

I think if grads want to get straight into planning, they have a good chance – they can now impress senior planners and clever thinkers from the day dot. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to do that - as the role has changed, so have the opportunities. 

I’ll finish this all by saying i’m really, still, an inexperienced planner (just over 2 years into it), and i’m still learning how to do ‘proper’ planning myself. For more of my thoughts on the topic, have a read of this post on AdGrads:  Junior-planning-101.