The great agency double act

Step into any agency office in Asia these days, whether it be creative or media, and you will see planning and strategy being placed at the heart of their business. From a discipline that was originally created by JWT in the UK more than 40 years ago, planning has made way its way across the world of advertising and has grown in importance as the lines of media and creative blurred, particularly as media channels have fragmented and new media channels have emerged. Consumers are no longer simple to reach, and as the advertising rules have changed so has the level of sophistication and thinking that is required to engage with them.

In Asia the value of planning and strategy as a business tool has been slower to take off than in some other markets, but it is now gathering pace. Witness the clamber of creative agencies building up large strategy departments and planning councils, and hiring media planners. See the throe of media shops hiring creative planners, as well as building their creative services divisions. Watch creative agencies enter media agency award categories at festivals. The need to understand today's consumer has grown and clients are now not only demanding a better product from their agencies, they are demanding better insight, thinking and analysis.

Planning and strategic thinking is on the rise in this region and according to the industry, marketers can take a lot of the credit.

"Brands are, more than ever, embarking on their own trajectory in Asia, rather than simply importing global strategies; so confident, original, Asian-driven planning is becoming more apparent, requiring the appropriate talent and resource. Our clients are not just asking for communication strategies but for business strategies, this is our holy grail, taking us into the boardrooms and allowing us to make a measurable difference to our clients needs that go beyond communications," Jean-Paul Burge, BBDO/Proximity Singapore CEO, says.

It's a view shared by Charles Wigley, BBH's chairman of Asia and a planner by background.

"In part this is a product of a maturing industry with agencies looking for areas of competitive advantage, but I think the major factor is that the region as a whole is becoming more important to business globally," he says. "The result is that Asian consumers are becoming more important and there is far greater emphasis on genuinely understanding them and developing communication approaches that really resonate with them."

Jeffrey Seah, Starcom MediaVest's CEO of Southeast Asia, says there is a pressing need for both creative and media agencies to "start to understand consumers better, not just clients and brands".

To Hari Ramanathan, Y&R Asia's regional planning director, planning is on the rise for two reasons: "Both agencies and clients are actually understanding what value planning actually has. [And] a large majority ask for it because it's the fad of the moment."

The growth of planning and strategy in the Asian ad industry throws up a lot questions, some practical and some more cynical. With marketers wanting more integration and collaboration from their agencies, and many shops struggling to survive in a cutthroat marketplace, could planning become a common ground for the creative and media worlds to align? Could a rebundling of media and creative offerings, housed in the same office like in the old days, be back of the cards? And while the demand for strategic thinking has grown and agencies are eagerly investing in this area, is there enough adequate planning talent in Asia to go round?

Opinion is mixed on whether rebundling is feasible or simply a pipedream. It's clear that with clients wanting agencies to change and work closer together, both creative and media shop's offerings will continue to diversify and more conflict between the two may become the norm.

Cheuk Chiang, CEO of PHD in Asia Pacific, is not a huge fan of rebundling "in the short term", but agrees that creative and media agencies "need to work closer together".

"They've forgotten how good it was," he says. "Clients are wanting stronger creative ideas - planning and creative go hand in hand."

Chiang, who has worked most of his career on the creative agency side, helms PHD which is part of a growing number of media agencies which are heavy into the strategic communications and ‘creative' side of the media business, like Naked.

Steven McGinnes, LloydNorthover Yeang's regional head of strategic consulting, says rebundling makes sense and feels the rise in importance of planning and strategy is linked to the likes of PHD and Naked.

"It's an extension of that. Insight and media together gets a much better result. More strategic-led media agencies are as interested in tracking effectiveness as selection," he says.

Then are also the media outfits such as Mindshare which are delving heavily into areas like content creation and branded content.

Sony Wong, leader of Mindshare Singapore, believes rebundling between the two is "possible". Wong says in the current business model for media agencies margins are "razor thin", so media shops must be diversify and use their strength in areas like data, research and insights.

BBDO's Burge believes some factors might drive creative and media back together.

"Post campaigns in measurement and interpretation there is a strong argument, stronger in some categories than others, for some sort or bundling. All in all I see this driven by the clients needs we are finding that the best solutions are coming from a constructive partnership and collaboration of media and creative strategic expertise: this cannot be mandated via bundling, it simply comes from the best ideas coming from the best people at the right time," he says.

According to Starcom's Seah rebundling is a "sideshow". He believes creative agencies have tried to become media shops and understand consumers better, but it remains "very difficult for creative shops to take media business".

"It's a natural move for media shops [to understand consumers better]," he says. "Media agencies have more access to research and media owners. There's nothing to rebundle, media agencies are taking more of a lead role."

Global media agency heavyweight Mainardo de Nardis, the CEO of OMD Worldwide, is another who sees ad agencies evolving in the future through a blurring of technology, creative and media. According to de Nardis the boundaries of advertising and marketing will change so that it will be "no-one's territory".

"Media agencies are better quipped to own part of this territory. We know the consumer better than anyone else," he says.

Some would say the agency of the future was created in 2007 with the birth of Enfatico, an unprecedented move by WPP to set up a global integrated full-service agency to service Dell. That ambitious ploy fell by the wayside last month when Enfatico was officially folded into Y&R after just 16 months. While bespoke units have been set up before and flourish in some countries for some clients, just as full-service agencies do in some markets, the collapse of Enfatico was definitely a setback in any wider market pull to bring the old foes of creative and media back to the altar.

Andy Wilson, head of planning at BBDO Singapore and of the agency's Asian planning council, believes the reason Enfatico was a mistake was it restricted the talent pool working on Dell, with "less access to more ideas". Wilson says collaboration, not rebundling, is key and the common area for creative and media agencies is the in areas of customer engagement, in channel and engagement planning.

"It's a natural evolution of business," he says. "There's nothing Machiavellian in it. It's like the chicken and the egg, which came first? The media idea or the creative? The best opportunity for brands is where the two crossover."

Y&R's Ramanathan doesn't envisage rebundling occurring anytime soon, apart from perhaps at a holding group level, as the split between creative and media was "more of a business decision".

"It was not about serving clients better," he says. "Media agencies have hit a wall, they've got into strategic planning. They were faster to cotton on to mainstream planning in Asia."

To him planning is not the bridge between greater integration between the two worlds, but in the area of digital it may be. That's a view shared by many others, including Euro RSCG's chief strategy officer for Asia Matt Donovan, as digital offers a new space whether planning is integral to both disciplines.

While some claim that sophistication and planning nouse in Asia is behind some more developed markets, Donovan believes that in this region agencies can build planning and strategy departments "of the future".

"In terms of scale and importance to the business, planning has a long way to come [in Asia]," he says. "[But] the old way of the planning department is not applicable in Asia. We can build a new style."

There's an opinion that planning in this part of the world is fundamentally different because of the dynamism and unique traits of the markets in contacts. Couple that with the fact that time and resources are strapped and you have the beginnings of a brave new world.

"In Asia the time required to get to a solution is much shorter than elsewhere," BBDO's Wilson says. "Resources in Asia are less. Speed of change in Asia is higher. Planning might evolve into its own trajectory in Asia. Being creatively strategic and entrpenerial is crucial."

Wilson can see planners on both sides being instrumental in the areas of product and new business development as well as brand creation for clients. Like his English counterpart, LNY's McGinnes also hails from planning's birthplace and he concurs that that in Asia the discipline is much more exciting and younger.

"There isn't an expected way of doing things," he says.

In the last few years as creative agencies have built their planning departments and divisions, there has been a increased need for credible planning talent. Just as media agencies have strengthened their strategic expertise by hiring planning staff from creative agencies, the pool of quality talent in this area has dwindled.

So it begs the question, how far can planning and strategy develop in Asia without a solid source of talent and industry support? And what is the best background/experience/skill set a planner should have? The UK has the Account Planning Group to help drive best practices in the planning sector, and similar bodies exist in countries like Argentina, Germany, Spain, Romania, Norway and Australia. In fact in Australia, where strategy-led agencies have flourished, we have also seen the hiring of a planner as CEO of a major agency, with the appointment of Todd Sampson as head of Leo Burnett Sydney at the start of 2008.

In Asia there is no central body, no organization or group championing the cause of planning and strategic thinking, or advising those aspiring to become planners. There is no set career path for planners, except good life experience and an open and inquisitive mind. For most this is both a good and a bad thing.

Y&R's Ramanathan was a copywriter who moved into the area. Euro's Donovan was in account service originally, while LNY's McGiness and BBDO's Wilson both worked for brand consultancies (McGiness has an anthropology degree).

"I shifted to planning because I believed it allows you to be creative on a grand scale," Ramanathan says. "In the past a planner was a great suit. Now they're great creatives."

Overall Ramanathan feels that hopefully planning as a discipline in Asia will mature so that innovation companies like ?WhatIf! become more common: "Asia will go that way. It's on the right track, but it has a long way to go."

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLANNING

LloydNorthover Yeang's Steven McGinnes reveals everything you wanted to know about strategic planning, but were afraid to ask.

How did it start? It's easy to think that planning has always been with us - as integral a part of the marketing universe as the 70 hour week and dodgy expense claims - but in fact planning is a young(ish) upstart - born in the heady days of the 1960s. Titles aside, whether strategist, planner or consultant - the discipline was born from two fathers, Stephen King of JWT and Stanley Pollitt of BMP in the UK between 1964 and 1968.

Stephen King was worried about the effectiveness of the work his agency was producing and developed a process, the T-Plan, that put research and insight at the heart of advertising. Stanley Pollitt, concerned about the degree of unsubstantiated opinion that the account team could put into creative briefs - decided that a research person should be involved at key stages of the process. From this combination of process and person - the planning department was born.

Why ‘Planners' The job title ‘Planner' comes from a JWT awayday in 1968 - where (probably after a few drinks) it was decided that the new team - being a combination of account people and media planners, should be called ‘account planners' - and it stuck. Over time people have added ‘brand', ‘strategic' and ‘consultant' - but it is really the same job.

But what do they actually do? The core of the planners task is to ensure that every project achieves three things. Relevance, by understanding what the customer thinks and wants; Distinctiveness, by knowing how to cut through the category clutter, and the most important, Effectiveness, how well the task is/was performed.

The ‘cocktail party job description', developed by the Account Planning Group in 2007 is "to ensure that an understanding of consumer attitudes and behaviour is brought to bear at every stage of communications development via continuous involvement in the process".

In principle it may sound simple but in reality the planners job is a complicated combination of a number of skill sets. Researcher, analyst, new business, street interviewer, trend watcher, NPD consultant, workshop facilitator - the list goes on.

The Future of Planning The Planners evolution is not complete. And as Darwin told us, a more competitive environment means only the fittest will survive. The old ‘Planner-erectus', a well qualified yes man, using research and insight to justify what the client already told them, offering only what best fits their agencies core competencies, will soon be extinct.

To survive, the new ‘Planner-sapien' (or planner 3.0 if you prefer) must truly challenge the conventional opinion, to provide the right solution - not the easy answer. To bring rigor and imagination to the table, every time.

Planning for the future

It may have only been nine months in the job for PHD Asia Pacific CEO Cheuk Chiang, but it has been a stellar rise for the Australian. Since replacing Paul Payne in the top job in September PHD has been on a solid new business drive, winning a plethora of accounts across the region - including Asana Wellness and Sasa in Hong Kong, Nokia Siemens Network and New Balance in Australia, Alliance Financial Group in Malaysia as well as Lianco Jeebee, The Republic of Singapore Air Force, Uniqlo and Marriage Central in Singapore. It also claimed the big one, Hewlett Packard, in February.

Chiang says his remit when joined PHD was to "go hard on new business". He admits the agency in this part of the world is "relatively unknown", and part of his job is to build the PHD brand around the region and establish a vision for PHD in Asia Pacific. While PHD has an enviable reputation as an innovator in the UK, Europe and the US, in Asia it often been tagged as OMD's little brother. Chiang can understand why: "We came out of MediaWise [in 2005] as a conflict agency. Things have changed."

Chiang joined PHD after several years as managing director of Australian creative hotshop Cummins & Partners, now known as Cumminsnitro. The former Melbourne local has worked on both the client, creative and now media side, and is no stranger to Asia - previously he worked in regional roles based in Hong Kong and Singapore for Leo Burnett.

Chiang describes PHD as "not your traditional media agency". Globally the outfit has been known for its creative uses of media, its focus on research and strategy.

"PHD is very much creatively led. It was set up [in the UK] as one of the first planning-led media businesses in the world,"

In Asia Pacific it is believed PHD is looking to grow its headcount, and further expansion may be on the cards. So can PHD succeed in the region whether other similar strategy-focused, non-traditional media shops such as Naked and bellamyhayden, have failed?

It's too early to tell, but its clear that PHD and Chiang are going to give it a shake.