Weber Shandwick made an important announcement last week. The appointment of Leo Rayman from the adv agency DDB as European Head of Planning. Leo sent me a book over Xmas – Pollitt on Planning.
Stanley Pollitt is considered by some to be the father of modern day advertising account planning. I believe his story holds important lessons for the PR industry.
Stanley introduced the role of “strategic planner” to the ad industry as “someone who would decide when research would be done and what information was relevant to the creative development process and would remain independent of the pressures of the client and the creative directors”. Fundamentally Stanley saw the role of the strategic planner as the data literate consumer champion who would ensure that the agencies output was always kept on track.
The PR industry has transformed itself in recent years, by putting measurement at the heart of its agenda. Today insight is increasingly being adopted as the new agenda as clients provide increasingly complex challenges that require much deeper insights into the influences behind today’s customer behaviours. As a result we are commissioning research reports, buying into new consumer panels and uncovering new streams of data in a way that never happened before. And this of course is the issue. Does a fantastic publicity person, also have the necessary skills to sift through all of this data and identify what is relevant or not? Can a creative guru, always separate dreams from reality? Can the slick account man, say no?
Historically the PR industry hasn’t divided its roles in the same way as the ad industry. But as clients see the growing importance of advocacy within their marketing mix and recognise that PR is best equipped to deliver against their needs, things are changing. Every agency man knows that clients buy on trust and for the PR industry that trust is coming from demonstrating, consistently it’s ability to navigate client brands through an increasingly complex and cluttered world. It’s an exciting time for the industry and an exciting time for my company. Welcome on-board Leo!
For a fascinating historical perspective on planning, PR and advertising – also check out the first episode of Adam Curtis’s Century of the Self.
http://tinyurl.com/yqfkd5
Demonstrates that while PR may have lost a grip on planning in recent years, surrendering this to ad agencies, what we now call planning was fundamental to the birth of PR and back in the 1920s PR ideas and insights drove the whole marketing agenda.
Perhaps we are going full circle.
Lasts for an hour – but well worth it.
Interesting post and great to watch Century of the Self. I was much asmused to see that the Bernayss thought appealing to peoples’ emotions was a more effective means of persuasion that solely convincing them through rational argument. The irony is that this argument is still being rehearsed every single day in the marketing industry almost 90 years later.
The skill of course remains in identifying which emotion to go after and how to tie your brand and message to it. My favourite book on the subject of the power of emotional response is by Eric DuPlessis of Millward Brown, called The Advertised mind http://tinyurl.com/2sqxut
Sometimes heavy going but synthesises all the various strands of thinking about brain physiology, chemistry, memory, response and of course, Marketing.
[...] surprised when I watched this video posted by a great friend of mine Richard Stacy, on an earlier post I wrote about the appointment of Leo Rayman to EMEA Planning Director at Weber Shandwick. For [...]