Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

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Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:04:06 GMT

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re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Vic Polkinghorne — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:13:04 GMT

Creatives do. Obviously.

I wonder if any good advertising was done before 'planners' existed... hmmmm... let me think now...

Experts agree: Ad Contrarian dead wrong on planning by freedompictures

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re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

robert campbell — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:26:13 GMT

One of the problems, I have always thought, lies in the language. To call creative people 'creatives' has somehow ended up meaning they are no good at planning. To call planners planners has come to mean they are no good at 'creative.'

And that's before we worry about the function of those people we call 'suits!'

David Abbot was one of the best 'planners' I have ever worked with. MT Rainey is one of the the best 'creatives' I have ever worked with. Lose the crappy job titles that have more to do with filling out time sheets and billing clients than they do about creating good work and let minds and ideas run free.

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re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Tod Norman — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:29:44 GMT

A great debate, tho' it would benefit from a bottle of wine. And it reminded me of a story I used to dine out on: how DT explained his slant on advertising to me 20 years ago while both of us were standing buck naked in the the shower rooms of the Great Russell Street Y. He drew a grid in the steam on the mirrors, put circles in 3 areas and a cross in the fourth and asked me which one my eye was drawn to.

But I think there is another slant on this. Whether you use a Hellenic approach ( think first), an Hebraic approach (act first, and then think about why), a Navaho approach (peyote and a lot of steam) or a neurological approach ( its all in the neurons, you have no freedom anyhow) is, frankly not the point. The point is people. Regardless of title, job description or process, great people with decent opportunities make great ideas. When we get locked into processes, structures, and titles, and the chances of great ideas coming out become more and more unlikely.

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re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Bill Eater — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:55:26 GMT

Couldn't agree more with your one sentence summary:

"I think both disciplines are equally valuable."

In fact, I've been in one agency where creative was on the left side of the building as you entered, and the account folks on the right.

Sitting and watching for a while, it became very clear that one couldn't exist without the other. And further, sometimes the "suits" had better creative ideas, and the "extroverts" had better planning/execution ideas.

Diversity of thought is almost always a good thing.

re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Wouter van de Ridder — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:20:06 GMT

Totally agree. As a planner I know there are a lot of agencies who work like this (planner > creative). Fortunately for me, we tend not to work like this, which makes planning and working together with creatives a lot nicer. With better output as well. The creatives give input/comment on the brief, just as we review their work. But I understand your frustration on working on a crap brief and expected to do your creative 'tric' in two days e.g.

re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Tom Gilbert — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:15:50 GMT

Wouldn't one way round this be to slash the media thereby forcing both sides of planing/creative divide to think much harder about creating something that not only fits the brief but that gets noticed? Of course, were you to cut the media budget to zero you would be left with a discpline called PR in which the creative not only has to be on brief but must be so compelling as to convince an editor to include it in his/her publication for no charge at all....

re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Rory Sutherland — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:54:40 GMT

In reply to Mr Herd

[quote] "Rory. Many moons ago I put forward two rather radical ideas. (Sadly Cordiant collapsed before we at Bates could put them into practice). They were...

1. Give the client brief to the creative team on day one. Once they've generated some great ideas, pass these on to the planning department to work out which are best and rationalise why & how they will work. The result of this, surely, would be great ideas, well sold.

2. Disband the traditional creative pairings and instead create new 'creative teams' made up of one planner and one creative - sharing an office and working together.

I'd still love to know whether these ideas would work. Maybe you could try them out for me?"

I do. Whenever we win a pitch, I notice that this is usually pretty much how we have worked. It would work just as well on established business, but unfortunately the "process" (ie a repetitive system of working designed for thick, unimaginative people) takes over and you never get the same chance......

If people know the true golden end of what they are doing, you don't need to adhere to procedures.

I think a book called The Medici Effect explains how, surprisingly often, the best ideas come from outside the specialism. The most interesting new diet, for instance, has come from an Economist studying nutrition.

re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Richard Hayter — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:30:53 GMT

I think an over-reliance on Planners to come up with 'something good' has got creatives out of the habit of thinking like/about their audience (which is what every one of those listed in Dave Trott's August 12 9:07am post do/did). If creative teams got the time to think about, meet or watch their audience as opposed to just read about them in a brief which took a month to write, we'd get better advertising?

Planners Vs Creatives, Round 2 « Alternative marketing thinking

Planners Vs Creatives, Round 2 « Alternative marketing thinking — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:59:27 GMT

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re: Who make better planners? Planners or creatives?

Stefano Augello — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:17:40 GMT

Dave, can't help but agree on that. And Nicholas, wonder what kind of planners you've been working with. They sound more like salesmen...