Advertising account planners play a key part in developing advertising campaigns for a diverse range of products and services. The planner is responsible for writing the formal creative brief and for providing the ideal environment for creative development. Acting as the voice of the consumer within an agency, a planner uses research data to identify suitable audiences and the best methods of communication.

Planners combine market data, qualitative research and product knowledge within a brief to enable the creative team to produce advertising ideas that resolve defined business problems. With increasing public awareness of marketing strategies, a key challenge is to develop innovative ways to reach consumers.

Advertising account planner typical work activities

Typical activities may include:

• liaising with clients to identify specific business problems and develop ideas;
• communicating with colleagues within the agency, such as creatives and account managers, in the process of developing a campaign;
• gaining a comprehensive context for advertising strategies by analysing a wide range of information in great detail, including demographics, socio-economics and the market for the client’s product and market share;
• commissioning research from outside organisations to inform advertising strategies, using both qualitative methods, such as focus groups and structured interviews, and quantitative methods, such as demographic profiling and questionnaires;
• running qualitative research groups;
• using a variety of market and research data to monitor cultural and social trends and their impact on consumers’ attitudes, behaviour and perceptions;
• finding an ‘angle’ on a specific product or service on which to base an advertising campaign;
• researching the product or service to be advertised, which may involve gaining technical or specific knowledge;
• reconciling the differences between consumers’ current perceptions of the brand and the way the client wishes the brand to be perceived;
• meeting the client to learn the background to the brand and advising on possible approaches or adaptation of approach to the target market;
• providing the creative team with a clearly defined brief that contains concise information on the product, audience and strategy, so that they can develop creative ideas applicable to the media channels that will promote the idea most effectively;
• presenting conclusions and ideas to clients and other agency staff;
• analysing and interpreting customer response and sales data to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign.

via Advertising account planner: entry_requirements| Prospects.ac.uk.