When you think of Digital Planning what springs to mind? The comprehension of band width, RSS feeds, online hits, page views, traffic stats, unique visitors vs registration figures, static banner ads vs a beautiful flash creation and all the rest of the complicated matter that just gets in the way of what is such a strong and simple area of planning.

I’ll elaborate. In the beginning when ad agencies had media buying imbedded within the agency, agencies were able to talk to clients from the CEO down. Now that media pulled the ejector seat on ad agencies (i.e. the numerical promise media buying can make of investing X amount will give you a return of Y amount), no longer can an ATL agency get that senior management exposure, so what we are left with is straight discussions with a Marketing Director informing him/her that this print/TV execution will bring XYZ equity/image to the brand (a now fuzzy and cloudy promise). Whatever numbers/justifications are brought in to support this, are nine out of ten times weak. I mean where did they come from?

A. The reasons this will work came from research groups we commissioned

Okaaaaay, so that means that when you roll out my national/global campaign you’re basing its potential success on what 10 people said in an orchestrated environment…and that you orchestrated that environment. Get out

B. The reason this will work is from thorough competitive analysis

So what you’re telling me is that this campaign will work because you’ve looked at what everyone else is doing and we’re either going to be similar or so dramatically different that we become irrelevant. Get out

C. We are the creative agency, we know this will work

That’s what VCCP said about the new Coke Zero campaign. Get out!

So as you can see, ATL agencies are at a ceiling, okay, it’s not that bad but it could be soon. It’s the reality I’m afraid, it is soon and it’s time to smash the champagne flute and kick the life out of any idiot you see wearing a black turtle neck or a t-shirt and a suit jacket who mentions ‘brand equity’ and then has nothing else to say.

Rocking in the free world is the potential of digital and interactive planning. Let me demonstrate the contrast.

I’m working on a project for my agency right now outside of my usual tedious account handling role. I’m part of a planning team designing and building an online infrastructure for a well known passenger carrier. I request data such as call centre statistics, offer redemption figures, costs of tickets to all destinations and in which season.

Now I’m no fan of numbers nor can I compute econometrics, regression etc….not without flipping into a rage and only finding release by drowning a puppy.

However, it’s relatively easy to spot that it costs the client £6 per call from their call centre to a prospect and when broken down the acquisition of prospects taking up offers brings in an average of £4 per call. They are losing money with the current offer that is in place and with the data they are using for prospects. I show this to my Planning Director and he formulates it and presents it back to the client.

Now we have access to the CEO and any part of the client’s organisation as we need to have that contact in order to build a new and efficient online/digital/interactive whatever infrastructure. It’s obvious when you think of it. A TV ad goes out…that’s it whereas you build an online environment that offers X Y and Z you need to think of.

1. Having the technology to support it being accessed/downloaded i.e. a voucher
2. In store staff being aware of it so they are on board to support offer redemption and the process behind it
3. A system in place to track redemption so that you can build up numerical evidence that supports your campaign
4. Which area does this benefit the client? Is it a simple ROI, is it an acquisition of new customers, is it retention of loyal customers and more times than not you’re also ‘branding’ at the same time – where, how etc?

I hope I’ve explained this well enough. The point I’m trying to illustrate is how as a digital planner you can have such a more fulfilling exposure to your client’s business by almost putting on a Management Consultancy hat on. It doesn’t take being gifted at number crunching, it doesn’t take being able to take a company’s balance sheet and give a Good Will Analysis (I googled that under ‘finance’ by the way and have no idea what it means). All it takes, in my humble opinion, is a deeper curiosity in how a business works than standard ATL Planners who are more than capable to think this way if they choose.