Daddy, what's a planner? Part II

A while ago I wrote about my inability to describe what a planner is to my mum and concluded with this great little ditty on being an Explorer by Keri Smith:


In truth this sidestepped the question of what a planner was and instead gave a really nice description of what they should do but it seemed a far better approach. Nearly a year on and I came across this post from Leon Phang of Swedish agency of Jung von Matt. He’s managed to round up an assured collection of top-table planners from Russell Davies to Faris Yakob and asked them all one simple question (sounds dangerous already):

“What’s your best advice for the next-generation of young and ambitious planners?”

Predictably, answers were broad ranging with a whole host of words of wisdom from “solving the problem is more valuable than last week’s copy headline” (Spicer) to “planning is all about getting people to do stuff” (Davies). However, what was really interesting was that so many of the wisdom inspired words seemed to preach the same basic principles of being an ‘Explorer’. Be observant, build rapport, be instinctive, be intuitive, be interesting/interested, read!

When I was thinking about writing this post I was trying to think of a typically over-opinionated response to all of this advice from the so-called top dogs. What would my answer be? What would I pass on to the young in my future days of planning guru-ship? What have they missed? There must be something insightful I can throw into the mix?

But, I think I’ll stick with the Explorer for this one. Not just because it sounds quite cool and because it’s written in quite a twee way, but because it really hits the nail on the head for me.

Or maybe I’m inadvertently taking Yakob’s advice after all – “Steal everything – every trick and idea – and make them your own”.

No, it’s my blog and I’m sticking with the Explorer.


PS Interestingly Leon Phang actually links his job description to the Wikipedia entry for Account Planner. Wish I’d found this a year ago, would've been a lot easier.

Daddy, what's a planner?

Whenever there’s been a bad day at the office our creative director has got a great leveller/motivational line:

“It could be worse; we could all be doing real jobs.”

And although it’s meant as a light hearted gag I’ve always thought he’s right, to some degree. Now whether what we do counts as a real job or not is a bigger question. The problem for me is that whilst I find it unproblematic telling my mum the bits about work that make it not a real job, I struggle to actually explain the real job that I do! It’s easy to wax lyrical about the crèche-like atmosphere, table football, well-known brands and boozey lunches, but really difficult to explain what a planner does.

Now, as a planner you’d think this would be easy – a vaguely abstract idea translated into an easy to swallow thought piece. But it’s not. I don’t really know how to explain exactly what I do. It’s a bit like a doctor being the worst patient.

I even looked for advice from the APG and got an even more complex answer listing the variety of characters a planner can play – social anthropologist, brainstorming facilitator, data analyst, think piece polemicist, and so on. None of which are very ‘mum facing’.

I’d like to think that I know what I do (or am at least meant to do), and to be fair there are different types of planners that specialise in different types of fields and that work in very different ways. Yet this is a very ‘inward-facing’ explanation – you get it if you work with planners. However, outside of adland all I end up with is “I do thinky stuff and google a lot” or something vaguely attempting humour (side-stepping the question).

Whilst this plagued me for a while, I’ve decided to give up trying to explain it and have taken a different tact. Rather than think about “What a planner does”, I’ve gone for “Who a planner is”. And I found this (thanks to my boss):

I don’t know who wrote it or where it’s from, but I like it. And in true planning style it distinctly resemble a beer induced back-of-a-fag-packet solution.

So if the client asks, I’m not a planner, I’m an explorer.