Matt Perry demystifies the world of channel planning.
Everyone is claiming to be a channel planner these days. Every time I pick up a trade title I read about another creative or media buying agency adding a “channel planner” to their ranks.
Either that or someone has just left a very high paid advertising job in Pyrmont and set up a “media neutral, connections planning agency” in Surry Hills, specialising in “synchronising consumer touchpoints by harmonising the creative and media processes”.
This is all very good, however the question for many of us is: what does it all mean? Well, quite clearly it demonstrates a niche that has been emerging since the late ’90s and, pioneered by agencies such as bellamyhayden and Razor, has become a very popular trend. The problem is that the definition of channel planning is as diverse as the number of agencies who now claim they are experts in it.
Depending on who you speak to, channel planning is about:
• Making sense of the explosion of (old and new) media channels in the context of increasingly fragmented consumer audiences.
• The sequencing of multiple channels in a CRM/response marketing strategy.
• Identifying a unique insight into audience attitude and behaviour in order to connect/engage a brand and its customers via (communication) channels.
• Integrating an above-the-line communications strategy with internal and external stakeholder marketing objectives.
• Acting as a link or bridge between the media and creative process.
The reality is that channel/ connections/touchpoint/engage-ment planning is all of this and much more.
At bellamyhayden we define channel planning as the discipline of considering any channel with the potential to connect a brand, a product and an audience to meet a marketing objective.
In other words, the world of communications has become much bigger and more involved than the world of advertising. A channel planner’s role is to make sense of this complexity and bring channel selection to life in unique and exciting ways for clients.
Channel planning’s end product is a communication strategy, which creates a stage for the brand’s key messages, and acts as a powerful input into the creative process in terms of audience and channel insight.
Finally, it helps a client galvanise and organise a number of disparate marketing disciplines into a coherent and integrated communications plan.
This is precisely the reason why independence from media buying or creative execution is a fundamental starting point for any true channel planner and, consequently, it is the reason why many of the traditional creative and media buying agencies are struggling to find a solution to it.
The rise in importance of this discipline has lead to another problem: where do you find a channel planner?
The explosion of “new” communication channels and the rise of “new” media are relatively recent. As a result, a structured platform for training in the discipline has not yet been established.
Unlike media planning or art direction there are very
few people with genuinely relevant experience to teach the industry’s talent pool.
Enter AFA AdSchool. AFA AdSchool will be running a course dedicated to understanding channel planning’s role in the marketing communications mix.
The course will start on 26 September 2006 and will run for five weeks. It will help managers, on both the client and agency side, gain a better understanding of its role and the benefits it brings to the complexities of the marketing process.
Matt Perry is planning director at bellamyhayden and will teach
the AFA AdSchool course.
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