Carol J. Pardun - Advertising Account Planning: New Strategies in the Digital Landscape

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pardun, Carol J., author. | Barnes, Beth E., author. | Broyles, Sheri, author.

Title: Advertising account planning : new strategies in the digital landscape / Carol J. Pardun, University of South Carolina, Beth E. Barnes, University of Kentucky, Sheri Broyles, University of North Texas.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019005089 (print) | LCCN 2019007374 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538114087 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538114063 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781538114070 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Marketing research. | Advertising campaignsPlanning. | Advertising media planning. | AdvertisingManagement.

Classification: LCC HF5415.2 (ebook) | LCC HF5415.2 .P374 2020 (print) | DDC 659.1/13dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005089

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Thanks for reading Advertising Account Planning: New Strategies in the Digital Landscape . This book came about after I started teaching account planning on a regular basis. I wanted to focus on research tools and social media in a way that I hadnt seen covered in the few books that were available at the time. I asked two of my advertising friends to join me in the projectand they graciously jumped in! The book is much stronger with the contributions of Drs. Barnes and Broyles, and I thank them for joining me in thinking through how to create an account planning book that would connect with students.

Advertising Account Planning is organized around a typical university semester, covering a new topic roughly every week. At the end of each chapter we have included suggested activities that you can do in class (if your professor wants to) or that you can use on your own as a way to interact with the material.

After reading the book, I hope youll see that advertising is not only complicated and changing rapidly but also a worthwhile endeavor, both as a potential career and as an academic subject worth studying.

Among my coauthors and myself, we have nearly a century of teaching experience. Im guessing we have crossed paths with hundreds of advertising students over the years, yet we still get excited when a new semester is about to begin. Our students inspire us to continue thinking about advertising in new ways and to diligently figure out ways to better explain the advertising process to the next group of students who enter our classrooms. With that in mind, Id like to thank all my recent advertising students at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications. The future is bright for you all!

Carol J. Pardun
January 2019

Walk into just about any advertising agency and youll know youve entered a company that is vibrant and creativeand busy. If its a large agency, youll see all types of people. Youve probably heard stories about indoor basketball hoops, late-night donut deliveries, and even a trampoline or two. While advertising agencies have myriad personalities (and some do, indeed, have indoor basketball courts!), certain categories of employees consistently exist within many agencies, regardless of their size.

If you know anything about the structure of an advertising agency, you know that lots of different jobs encompass what people in advertising do. The creatives develop the actual ads that we consume. This includes a bevy of copywriters, art directors, and graphic designers (and others, depending on the agency). And the account people do the work that helps the creatives succeed. These include media planners, media buyers, and account managers, just to name some of the main jobs. There are also account planners.

Ad Age published an article on September 15, 2003, that explained what account planning is. The writers defined account planning as an approach for generating consumer insights that aid in the development of strategy and tactics and in evaluating communications campaigns. In other words, the account planner tries to deeply understand the consumerand how to connect that knowledge of the consumer to the brand for which the advertising agency is responsible.

If you break down the Ad Age description, youll see three main emphases for account planners: developing consumer insights, formulating a strategy for the advertising, and evaluating the effectiveness of the messaging. In its simplest forms, you can think of consumer insights as understanding the consumer in such a way that will help you connect the consumer and the brand. Developing an advertising strategy is similar to creating a map, pointing you in the right direction for a successful advertising campaign. And evaluation uses creative research tools to help you determine whether youre on the right path.

In other classes, you may have studied the basics of a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). Using the SWOT framework is also helpful to think about what account planners do. As an account planner, youre helping the team figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the brand and the opportunities and threats to the market of your brand . Typically, this is accomplished using extensive secondary research (investigating as much as possible about what is already known about your brand and your potential target audience) and employing quantitative and qualitative primary research (original research that you do yourself) to further understand your target audience and your brand. This may also include studying trend reports and other insightful messaging that can help you project the opportunities and threats that may be awaiting the market in which your brand resides.

But ultimately the account planner has to commit to the following four core beliefs.

Think of the account planner as the Voice of the Consumer. In the ancient media world (presocial media) of a few broadcast television channels, thriving newspapers, and mainstream magazines, advertising agencies didnt have to worry about the consumer as much as they do in the present media environment. While it may be hard to imagine, limited media outlets typically resulted in a reduced need to understand the consumer beyond basic demographics because there were only a few media choices vying for your consumers attention. In todays unlimited media landscape, however, its imperative to deeply understand how a consumer thinks about the world. Media choices are now so segmented and so numerous that if you dont hit the right target audience, its possible to lose contact with your consumer altogether.