Consumers,

Context and a
future for
Communications
Planning

By James Caig,
London, 2010
INTRODUCTION
Flux defines our era of communications.
Technological innovation accelerates with
each year, and is often driven by consumer
demand.
It’s not only critical for marketing
professionals to keep up. We have to address
the many questions posed by such intensive
change.
Are agencies designed to help clients meet
the demands of the next five years, or the
next ten? How should they be remunerated?
How many agencies, exactly, does a brand
need? And what should their roles be?
The media agency, in particular, is under
threat. It suffers from a commoditised
marketplace and a relative lack of influence
with clients - compared with more ‘creative’
agencies.
Despite this, I want to argue that the future of
marketing could still belong to
Communications Planning.
The paradigm shift in media consumption has
created new and complicated
communications challenges. At heart, though,
people’s internal and external motivations for
their behaviour remain pretty constant.
Communications Planning, the home of
genuine consumer insight, should be valued
more than ever.
What has undoubtedly changed is the need to
match this insight with a more nimble and
more flexible approach to marketing
campaigns.
If it is to seize this major opportunity, the
discipline of Communications Planning needs
to change. It will only secure the influence it
deserves with clients if it risks innovation in its
own right.
If Communications Planning agencies can
change the way they engage with clients, they
can be the ones leading brands into the
communications future.
Chapter One

PARADOX CITY
Are media and content converging or
diverging?
As consumers of media we demand more
content across more platforms, but expect
devices that support them to aggregate
everything for us.
As industry ‘experts’, we observe trends and
shifts, but evaluating their trajectory has
become incredibly difficult.
Knowing how to respond to them is almost
impossible.
As the interests of content providers,
consumers and advertisers occasionally
coalesce, so they are equally likely to pull in
opposing directions.
It is these contradictions that in particular
characterise the change we see around us. If
we want to understand how Communications
Planning might change, it’s critical to get
closer to these changes, and what they mean
for consumers.
i) A (chat)room of one’s own?
Media can atomise communities, or create them.
The teenager in the bedroom is as likely to be
interacting with someone in another timezone via
(for example) Skype, World of Warcraft or
Facebook, as he is with his family downstairs
watching TV. The capacity to create communities of
interest around ever more niche areas has never
been more accessible, or more scalable – the long
tail dynamic of an inexhaustible supply and demand
projected beyond the world of commerce.
And yet, we risk a social world polarised by limits to
access of the virtual one. For those already
excluded, further automation and de-
personalisation of social transactions could
exacerbate the problem.
In short, is the web social, or anti-social?
Of course, in some cases the choice has been
superseded anyway. The X Factor, far from being
killed off by media fragmentation and real-time
social networking, has in fact been reinvigorated by
it. I know someone who won’t watch it unless their
favourite TV critic is tweeting at the same time, as
it’s like having a friend next to you on the sofa.
ii) The shock of the old
Technology is changing people’s behaviour, but the
motivation behind that behaviour may not be so
new.
Online communities allow a new kind of sharing
economy that hasn’t been possible, or desired, since
the days before capitalism.
This idea isn’t even new itself. One of Marshall
Mcluhan’s Four Laws of Media, the rule of Retrieval,
stated the unlocking of a previously latent
opportunity as a condition of media innovation.
Less clear is the extent to which users, given
limitless freedom and access to new ideas and
information, will actively seek out those new ideas.
On one hand, it’s never been easier to wander off
the beaten track for that hard-to-find book, film or
CD. On the other, Google’s algorithm-induced trend
of customisation points to the way to a very likely
world where we have ‘designed out’ novelty, and we
all have information served to us based on what
we’ve previously seen.
We also shouldn’t conflate technological advance
with a human desire to change. DVD rental didn’t
die with the advent of Video on Demand. In fact,
LoveFilm worked out the real problem with being a
Blockbuster customer wasn’t the DVD format, but
the inconvenience of having to rent and return them
in person.
We need to look for the behaviour, not the
technology.
iii) Behaviour precedes attitude, not the
other way around
Product usage is the most effective form of brand-
building.
Ask anyone who ‘loves’ a brand why they do, and
it’ll be down to their experience with the product or
service.
But most marketing objectives are premised on
quite the opposite: build brands to change minds
and drive action.
Even as ideas from Behavioural Economics provided
the empirical argument for focusing on behaviour
not attitude, the advertising industry is already
retreating to the tried and trusted to articulate
brand positioning. Hovis, with its two minute TV ad,
won the IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix in 2010, for
goodness’ sake.
The best marketing channels, those that fit the
entry-level definition of ‘identifying and meeting
customer needs’, such as Retail, Telemarketing or
Customer Service, effect behaviour as a lever to
shift attitudes. They are also frequently the
channels that also receive the least funding or
attention.
The main problem, of course, is the industry’s
obsession with tracking people’s attitudes. Despite
the reverence for Millward Brown data, these
measures remain merely indicators of interim
perceptions of advertising. They are, frankly, bugger
all to do with how people feel about a product or
service, and a million miles from telling you
anything about how and why people use it at all.
But, in cases of good marketing, we see an
intriguing blurring of the lines between product,
service and advertising. Campaigns on the whole
are becoming more participative, which provides an
extra layer of interaction between brand and
consumer – should the consumer want such a thing,
of course.
The real solution is, of course, to market something
tangible and differentiating about your product,
that people actually want. Sadly, many brands still
resort to generic or clichéd claims. In 2010,
convention required brands to promise ‘value’,
which became the currency across a number of
categories, and therefore increasingly meaningless.
Value, de-valued.
So, the new world is a paradoxical one.
But what do Communications Planning
agencies do about it?
The answer is, I think, buried somewhere
amidst all these contradictions. After all, the
opposing forces we’ve identified are, at heart,
a range of new behaviours from a huge
amount of people.
More accurately, the answer is buried
somewhere in all the assumptions we
continue to hold as marketing professionals
dazzled by new technologies and new ideas.
Quite simply, not everyone is as besotted with
this stuff as we are. And even if they are,
they’re not as self-conscious about it as we
suppose them to be.
Even if we consider those for whom this new
stuff comes naturally, that doesn’t mean that
they’re all alike.
The answer is, as it always was, to do with
people, and the context in which they decide
to do what they do.
Chapter Two

MARKETING, RE-
INVENTED
Context.
It really was ever thus.
In one rather dispiriting sense, the questions
asked of marketing by these developments
are nothing new. Understanding what people
want, and why they want it, has been
ostensibly part of marketing’s DNA since it
was invented.
In another sense, the democratic digital
revolution of the last few years changes
everything for the marketing industry. The
confluence of data, convenience and
connectivity we see now might just represent
the moment the industry has to finally fulfil its
promise to buyers and consumers. Marketing
can ‘identify a need’ pretty well these days.
But it never really cracked ‘meet that need’.
At least, not in a way that couldn’t be shown
to be really in the interests of the shareholder,
as opposed to the customer.
The reason ‘value’ feels like a platitude is
because brands’ only real commitment to
value for users is that which guarantees
customers will reciprocate that value. Return
on investment, they call it.
Which would be fine, were it not that brand
loyalty works in pretty much the same way –
merely applied in the opposite direction.
Paradox City tells us it’s never been more
important to understand the context of a
consumer’s decisions and motivations for
their behaviour, but the good news is it’s
never been easier for organisations to identify
and use contextual insight. The data,
behaviour and interaction might just make it
possible to reinvent marketing in a way that
truly benefits consumers, and drives loyalty
for brands and organisations in the process.
This isn’t about technology, being connected,
or the promise of value.
It‘s about what the technology, connectivity,
value message actually amount to.
It’s about UTILITY, in terms of convenience,
product efficacy, or expertise.
The internet means it’s never been easier, and
more important, to stop selling what we want,
and to start helping people with what they
want.
WHY MIGHT COMMUNICATIONS
PLANNING OWN THE FUTURE?
Another section, another paradox, I’m afraid.
Communications Planning agencies have
always been best placed to understand
context.
And yet they are probably the most
threatened discipline in the current climate.
Communications Planning is the natural home
of consumer insight. Advertising agencies are
brilliant at articulating what a brand
represents, consciously framing in consumers’
minds how it behaves; digital agencies have
become owners of brands’ virtual shop
windows, 0ptimising the design and
functionality of the most prevalent form of
interface brands have with their customers.
But Communications Planning has always
provided the ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘who’ and ‘how’
to the other agencies’ ‘what’.
And really, what these other Ws (and an H)
add up to, is ‘why’.
Agencies that create brand content are
manifesting a top-down, brand-centric point
of view on the world. It’s been incumbent on
media and communications planning
agencies, and will continue to be, to ask why
the consumer might care about this point of
view.

Brand
Content

Consumer
Context

Agencies whose expertise is in making things,

or producing content, will always be valued by
advertisers – for two key reasons.
i) Scarcity

Their specialism will always seem

sufficiently beyond the reach of clients
for them to assume they could do it.
(There are a few exceptions, of
course).

ii) Relevance

This expertise is also finely honed to

appeal to the way clients think right
now.

In short, advertising agencies add value and

give their customers what they want.
Communications Planning, meanwhile, enjoys
neither of these luxuries.
Brand owners (marketers, media managers,
etc) often feel they could, with a little more
product knowledge, do their media agency’s
job. Worse, as media agencies attempt to
diversify their services, the quicker clients are
catching up and taking those skillsets in house
– from SEO and paid search, to social media
and community management.
More fundamentally, Communications
Planning doesn’t offer easy solutions. The
discipline asks clients to think beyond their
four walls and deal with the world, and its
people, outside. It asks brand owners to
grapple with some of the contradictory trends
of Paradox City. It asks businesses to cede
control to customers in ways they’re simply
not ready to do.
It’s easy to imagine why, when faced with this
onslaught, brand owners find solace in areas
where they can assert control – over an
approved message, over creative execution,
over a media plan and campaign outputs.
Is this the fault of clients, or agencies?
I would argue that Communications Planning
agencies need to employ some of the insight
skills I’ve venerated here when assessing their
own client’s motivations and desires. It might
start with the client, but if the agency doesn’t
change its behaviour when fully aware of the
consequences, they only have themselves to
blame.
This cannot happen any longer.
What used to be merely the role of
Communications Planning agencies is now a
fully-fledged responsibility.
They need to re-assert the importance of
context in the decisions that individuals make,
and demonstrate the knife-edge impact
context has on a brand’s relevance.
And they need to understand how hard it will
be for a client to change.
I believe Communications Planning can prove
its value to a client base fixated on using
media to drive margins rather than loyalty
But I don’t think agencies can achieve this in
their current form.
They need to change.
In the final section, I want to outline some
ways in which I think this might happen.
Chapter Three

TEN PRINCIPLES FOR

COMMUNICATIONS
PLANNING AGENCIES
Start making stuff

Producing content isn’t about encroaching on the turf of

agencies that already do this. But it is absolutely necessary
if communications planning agencies want to sell their
insights as effectively as they do their media buying.

Making things turns the abstract into something tangible,

turns an idea into a campaign. Connecting the consumer
insight more explicitly to the execution makes it easier to
protect against the forces of non-marketers within the
client organisation, and prevents agencies looking like
they’re too smart for their own good.
 Define your
proposition

Communications Planning could learn from account

planning here. What is your product? What do you want
different clients to think, feel and do as a result of
interacting with the product? Is that prolonged string of
diversified services starting to look like a shopping list?
What exactly is it you’re trying to achieve?

This sounds harsh, but I’d be surprised if many agencies

find the time to do this in any meaningful way, at least in a
way that would be relevant to its clients. Some design
thinking here wouldn’t go amiss here, either, to regain
control over how the agency is perceived by those that
come into contact with it.
 Reject interim
metrics

A discipline obsessed with context should publicly look

down its nose at attitudinal tracking. Such data is
advertising-focused, and entirely unrelated to behaviour
in the real world. Briefs that include such data as evidence
or targets should be rejected until they contain desired
behavioural or business outcomes.

I believe we need new contextual metrics, and that

agencies should be developing new measurement
frameworks to illustrate what is required (see #1). One
form of this might be measurement purely around
participation, as opposed to awareness: perhaps mobile or
location-based, centred around in-store interactions, or
monitored and aggregated across digital destinations –
whatever the form, the approach and the
recommendations should be communicated to the client.
 Real-time planning

It’s no good simply talking about this, it needs to be done.

Whether you have license to or not, make a habit of
monitoring and reporting weekly on campaign
performance, and highlighting opportunities for a
campaign to move in a different direction.

Data is Communication Planning’s greatest weapon of the

next few years, it needs to be used. Search data, buzz
monitoring, interaction measures, facebook likes – all
used currently either to inform post-campaign
measurement, or for optimisation within the individual
channel.

We need to establish was of inter-channel optimisation in

real time.
Everything’s a
channel

What actually constitutes content is going to become

even more fluid, and the outlets available for content
distribution are going to be increasingly numerous. Brands
will be looking for advice on how to navigate this new
terrain in a more integrated way than they currently do.
The opportunity is for communications planning agencies
to provide the overview - the ‘why’ that precipitates the
‘what’.

Agencies should become literate with stuff of Content

Management Systems, with what’s happening in mobile,
in the retail space, with social connectivity – and be
making recommendations across the piece. It should be
the job of communications planning agencies to remind
clients that nothing exists in isolation, not the other way
around.

The aim should be to solve problems, not raise them.

 Smart resourcing

Back to the design thinking in #2.

Arguably, no one client should be resourced the same

way. From a planning perspective, I’d like to see agencies
getting braver with the skillsets that are placed at the hub
of the account.

If everything’s a channel, and nothing occurs in isolation,

why wouldn’t we want to have a team that consists of at
the very least some combination of communications
planner, data analyst, programmer, creative.
Skillsets, not
departments

It’s tempting, when something like social media comes

along, to recruit practitioners who sit separately within an
agency set-up as the function beds in. For a new practice
to truly be ‘at the heart’, though, it needs to be diffused
throughout the agency, not segregated off and practised
only by individuals who don’t get enough access to clients’
business to know how best to apply their skills.
 Advocate
automated buying

Counter-intuitive, I know.

Media agencies already compete with their own clients in

SEO, PPC and certain aspects of social media. Google and
Facebook already take advertising on a bid basis, and the
convergence of TV and the internet means a similar
system for TV sales houses can’t be far away.

My guess is that this will happen anyway, so why try to

prevent the inevitable? Instead get stuck in to helping
clients with the transition. It will at least avoid clients
adopting the new process behind the agency’s back, and
should assist in migrating the perception of the agency to
something more consultative, and more valuable.
Empathy over
experience

You don’t have to have loved, or even experienced, a

client’s product to be able to plan effectively for them. But
you do need to be able to intuit how people who do, or
who have, really feel about it. Empathy is where it’s at for
planning.

That’s the real quality for a client-facing planner – not

media knowledge.

Agencies should look for different perspectives, and

potential recruits, from tangential disciplines where
consideration of the perception of others is paramount.
One UK advertising agency has recruited a specialist in
data visualisation, for example – purely to better
communicate to clients, and each other.

So, how about a bit of that for Communications Planning?

Or game design, maybe, or project management?
 Test ideas.
Properly.

There’s no doubting the rigour agencies apply to the early

stages of the communications planning process. But
rigour applied to creativity is arguably more difficult than
it is applied to data and insight. Here there are lessons to
be learned from the advertising and digital agencies,
which have learned how to thoroughly think through an
idea before it goes before a client.

This brings us back full circle to the idea of making stuff. If

you recommend a game, design and build the game – or
at least demonstrate the process that will be required.

The time that communications planning ideas could rely

on powerpoint and a line on a plan is gone.

Agencies need to realise that and adapt – before clients

themselves notice the shortfall.
In summary
The world is changing.
But people are still largely the same – and
understanding the context of people’s
decisions remains central to the
Communications Planning opportunity.
Agencies can help clients to finally fulfil the
potential of marketing, and provide real utility
for their consumers. The paradigm shift in
media technology is the trigger for advertisers
themselves to change.
To achieve this, Communications Planning
agencies require greater influence with
clients, and will need to overhaul the way they
engage with clients.
This will require some innovative thinking
around structure, servicing, and skills – to lead
their clients by example, not rhetoric.

Thank you for reading.

The author

James Caig
Communications Planner at MEC, London.
Email: james.caig@mecglobal.com
caigjames@googlemail.com

Blog: See What Happens, at jimcaig.wordpress.com