The Account Planning in Romania website has a great section in English where they have interviewed some of London's leading lights in planning. One of the questions they always ask is 'what is planning?'. I thought it would be a good idea to aggregate them here.

Richard Huntingdon: 'To make the ads work – nothing more, nothing less'

Russell Davies: 'the thinking before the doing'

John Robson: 'To provide a strong, straightforward & pure strategic brand perspective'

Janet Grimes: 'Critically they understand the difference between stimulus and response, and understand what stimulus to give to provoke a desired response'

John Griffiths: 'Account planning is a function designed to add value to the team’s work. In an ad agency this is about making the creative work more effective – and this is best done by making sure that it connects to the audience – as well as the client and a creative jury!'

My favourite is the Russell Davies quote. The others all apply to bits of planning but Russell manages to encompass everything in his pithy phrase. It also works for those of us who often work outside of pure advertising.

Tags: planning