Welcome to Marketing Chronicles. A newsletter where marketers come for expert industry commentary at the intersection of strategy and creativity — every Wednesday sent before daybreak. If you like what you see, join us for free.

In this edition:

• Column: Strategists And Creatives Are Advertising’s Most Formidable Pairing

• Inspiration: Guinness “You Were Always On My Mind”

• Webinar Recording: Pedro’s Take On What Marketing Trends To Watch For

Column: Strategists And Creatives Are Advertising’s Most Formidable Pairing

Up until roughly 1968, advertising was primarily run by account executives and creatives.

It was a wild world — account men (yes, they were mostly men back then) taking their clients out for benders while copywriters and art directors were drinking and smoking all night at the office thinking up of imaginative ways to bring brands to life.

When Bill Bernbach first paired copywriters with art directors, an explosion of creativity ensued. Others followed suit.

And, as a result, the golden era of advertising that built the consumer brands we know and love today had its well deserved run.

But when you look back at it, researchers were largely hidden in the backrooms of agencies or outsourced to companies specialized on it. An account person would sign a new client, a couple weeks later a research report would land on their desk and they would discuss the findings with the creative director — whom then gathered his copywriters and art directors to find a key insight to build creative upon.

It worked fantastically well, until a couple of gents, Stanley Pollitt (from BMP) and Stephen King (from J. Walter Thompson) — unbeknownst to each other —, started assigning an “account planner” to do the synthesizing of research and insight digging.

This individual was analytical, but also had a knack for the arts. They would understand what moved people and had fantastic communication skills. They were the perfect mix of account execs’ people skills with researchers’ curiosity to learn.

A new era of advertising was just around the corner.

The Birth of Account Planning

Planners, nowadays also known as Strategists, were sort of like unicorns.

It’s incredibly difficult to find people whom have both sides of their brains highly active. And so, whenever one was found, they would get paid fairly well.

This newly formed profession in the world of advertising didn’t have any precedence to look back upon, so many relied on Stephen King’s JWT Planning Guide as their “bible”.

In it, Stephen King laid out his philosophy to account planning, in true planner style.

Short, concise, and rich in insight.

As you can see above, the framework isn’t overly complex. But the work within it requires a lot of skill to perfect.

In today’s marketing world, the above can largely be summarized into the following:

1. Research: diagnose the situation through primary and secondary research

2. Strategy: determine the desired brand’s positioning in the market by uncovering key insights, who we'll be talking to and what are we trying to achieve

3. Tactics: bring that to life through media planning

4. Reporting: Track results over time

Sounds simple, but the above can take anywhere from 100 to 300+ hours to accomplish — with a large variance in speeds and budgets depending on the brand.

The groundwork was laid for millions of future planners to build their careers upon… only if they took as much interest at studying the past as they now do at trying to predict the future (but that’s a topic for a separate column).

A Match Made In Heaven

While the copywriter/art director pairing will forever be the most iconic duo in advertising, the relationship that creatives build with their account planners is just as important.

Creatives and strategists are wired differently — while designers and art directors busy themselves keeping a pulse on what’s trending in the art worlds (fashion, music, literature, etc.), strategists spend most of their time trying to connect the dots between human behaviour and commercial intent.

Their main point of contact comes when the strategist briefs their creatives on the strategic direction of a project. This simple, concise, and yet incredibly difficult document to create typically involves the following:

• What’s the objective of the project

• Who are we talking to

• What do they care about

• What’s happening in culture that’s relevant to this situation

• How will we position the brand

• What are the brand’s distinctive assets

• What’s the budget and timelines

• What’s the key insight

When the above is properly done, strategists effectively build a diving board for their creatives to launch from.

But read the last sentence carefully — “for their creatives to launch from”, not for the strategist himself.

This subtle, yet crucial detail, can make or break your campaigns. Because when strategists and account executives begin trying to come up with big ideas they’re not only often shit, but they’re also splashing soap all over the diving board.

Creatives work in very different ways than strategists do. Oftentimes their work-lives and personal-lives blur together because the quality of their ideas typically comes from a sustained diet of inspiration — which takes place in the most random moments in life.

Therefore, throwing in ideas on the brief is not only a waste of a planner’s time (let the professionals do it), but can also be counterproductive by messing up with the creative process’ starting point.

I’m not saying that strategists and account execs can’t come up with great ideas — sometimes they do! But chances are that they haven’t spent the time to actually move through divergent thinking (when insane, often bad ideas randomly appear) and into convergent thinking (when the good ideas are shortlisted for further ideation).

And so knowing one’s role in the machine is not only important for their mental health and self-esteem, but also for the proper functioning of its parts.

Take Your Creatives For A Pint

Because planners and creatives are such different creatures, it’s well advised to allocate some team-building time aside to get to know each other.

Go to the bar in the corner near the office, buy each other a pint, talk about sports, films, gossip, you name it. But save shop-talk for later in the night.

Diversity in staff, thinking, backgrounds, perspectives have been proven to breed higher functioning teams. But in order for diversity to work people need to talk to each other and truly be open to learning new perspectives.

This isn’t some motivational speech I’m giving here, I swear — there’s nothing I detest most than delusionally optimistic business coaches. What I’m getting at is that this formidable pairing between strategists and creatives is a delicate one.

It’s one that requires patience, empathy, and a certain level of comfort with each other that is rare to find in today’s digitally-distanced world.

But when this pairing finally clicks, the agency begins firing on all cylinders.

Inspiration: Guinness “You Were Always On My Mind”

Nothing gets me more excited in marketing than when I see iconic brands playing with their distinctive assets.

Guinness, which for years has held the crown of most popular beer in the UK, is one of the most iconic brands in the world.

Founded in 1759 in Dublin, Ireland, the brewery had a fantastic run across the 19th and 20th centuries (it still sounds crazy to read that sentence), until 1997 when it merged with Great Metropolitan to form the international giant Diageo.

But what impresses me the most about Guinness isn’t just its longevity — but also their marketers’ ability not to f*ck with its brand assets.

It’s a well known fact in our industry that whenever new CMOs, brand managers, directors, take up their roles they want to leave their mark. So, what we often see are distinctive brand assets being changed for the sake of someone’s reputation, in turn sinking the brand along with it.

But not Guinness.

These guys keep finding creative ways to bring their world famous black and white pint to life, without compromising its integrity — instead bolstering it to new levels of fame.

Webinar Recording: Pedro’s Take On What Marketing Trends To Watch For

Last week, WJ Agency and I hosted a free lunch and learn titled Marketing Insights: Winning with Emerging Trends.

If you missed the webinar, we’ve uploaded the recording to YouTube here for you to watch at your own leisure.

In this 1-hour webinar I dive into 5 challenges that I believe are slowly shaping the future of marketing:

☑️ How to avoid the trap of short-termism

☑️ The importance of creating connections where customers are most present

☑️ The revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence on campaigns

☑️ The growing influence of virtual worlds in gaming

☑️ How a strong brand identity can serve as a powerful differentiator in a crowded market

If you have any questions on the topic, just drop a comment in this LinkedIn post and I’ll answer it!

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 🍻 Come by the WJ office for a brew

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • Is Pricing The Most Important Marketing P?

  • How To Sustain Product Innovation

  • Mobilizing Resources Through Objective-Setting

PPA 

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.