Promotion 433
is by no means invariable, and the process may
be altogether less methodical in practice.
Creative planning is a team operation at
the agency. It involves account managers(see
‘Working relationships’), who keep the client
involved throughout the process, account plan-
ners, who bring a research-based understand-
ing of the target audience to the task, copy-
writers, who produce the words to convey the
message, and art directors, who devise the
images to reinforce it. Their collective aim is to
meet the objectives in the client brief and
outflank the opposition in doing so.
The process begins with the isolation of
specifically creative objectives from guidelines
in the brief, including a clear statement of the
key messages and target audiences. The next
stage is likely to be a think-tank session, at
which the remit is to ‘apply lateral, disruptive
thinking to the problem’, in the words of a
prominent creative director. It was inspiration
by such means that redefined the old-fashioned
convalescent remedy Lucozade as an energy
drink for teenagers and the AA (Automobile
Association) as ‘the fourth emergency service’.
Raw ideas of that kind are next subjected to the
discipline of scrutiny against research-based
analysis of probable audience responses, and
the survivors refined into more precise commu-
nication concepts. For example, travelling by
Virgin Atlantic emerged from this stage of
creative planning as a way to ‘get a life’, and the
Honda HR-V as ‘the Joy Machine’ in four
markets.
Concepts must next be converted into
creative executions. The only generally avail-
able textbook to provide an expert description
of this process was published in 1988, and has
long been overtaken by technology. Apple Mac
software and ISDN data transmission have
seen to it that ‘visualizers’ no longer produce
hand-drawn ‘roughs’ or ‘scamps’, to be married
up with the output from ‘phototypesetting’ as
‘finished art’, and dispatched by messenger to
the printer. Next comes a vital precaution
against wayward creativity: pre-testing the
outcome on a sample of the target audience and
reviewing the strategy in the light of the
findings. In practice, agencies and clients will
sometimes place their faith in the creative
development process and back their own
judgement. Once the campaign has run, how-
ever, it would be extremely unusual not to
conduct a post-test of effectiveness. Findings
relevant to creative strategy can be compared
with the objectives set at the start of the process,
and the conclusions held as an input to the next
creative planning cycle.
In contrast to the dearth of published
material on creative planning, there is an
abundance of literature on its results, which can
yield insights into the planning behind them.
The most accessible current source is a series of
collections of winning submissions for Britain’s
biennial Creative Planning Awards competition
(Account Planning Group, 2002).Delivering the message
The promotional mix offers a very diverse set of
message delivery channels. For example, the
gap between originator and audience might be
bridged by a team chosen for a sports sponsor-
ship linkage, by telemarketing operators, by the
ambience in which packages are displayed or,
most obviously, by the media in which pub-
licity and advertising appear. Little has been
written formally on the process of selecting
specific options within the first four general
choices, but a whole sub-industry is devoted to
the last. This section will therefore restrict itself
to advertisers, and their approach to media
planning.
As with development of the message, this
task is routinely delegated to an external
specialist. In the case of advertising, that will be
an advertising agency with an in-house media
department or a ‘media independent’, which
offers media planning and buying expertise to
conventional agencies or their clients, and
offers no other service. Over the past 20 years,
the latter have expanded steadily at the