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.
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!
Nice one Al. I ROFL’d.
This is good.
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.
Account men, eh? Interestingly specific.
Clearly being an amusing, self-deprecating and generous soul helps too !?
Funny and smart. A good read to break up the day.
Makes me feel like my hope of being a planner isn’t that crazy after all. Thanks Al 😉
“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.
And clearly a little bit of copywriter talent doesn’t hurt. Agree with Adam – best written one of these that I can remember.
Brilliant!
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.
Love that “Hi” suggested that we should be more accountable…. anonymously.
I’ll assume it was irony that you were going for.
Strategic honesty. Awesome
“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.
@Cosmo did a planner steal your lunch money?
This hit close to home… Well written and very true