winged/wicked things

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis on how the account planning discipline has adopted and evolved outside the UK, where it origins from.

The paper has been structured around three historical strands, which Stephen King pointed out would be important for the future of account planning. These were; How Account Planning Started, Views On “How Advertising Works” and The Agency Environment.

In the first section, the paper takes a look at how and why the account planning discipline started out in the UK and follows on to presenting how and why it has started in other countries. It finds that account planning grew out of a need due to increased client, consumer and market sophistication.

The second section gives reflections on how agency structure will affect the adoption of account planning. Or rather that, implementing account planning demands a change of agency philosophy, both in structure and understanding of the relationship between advertising and the consumer. It finds that successful implementation only exists in those agencies that have changed their philosophy.

The last section presents the importance of agency environment and how this is affected by cultural heritage, competition in the marketplace and marketing communications environment. The section presents how the environment was when account planning started in the UK and goes on to present the current environment that affects the advertising industry today.
It finds that the agency environment is closely linked to views on “how advertising works” and that the environment of which the agency act in will affect how the agency sees and understands advertising, and in turn how account planning is executed.

The paper concludes with a brief analysis of the three strands and the importance of them.

Lastly, the paper gives recommendations to how future agencies can successfully adopt and implement account planning in to their agency.