The Eleven Miles planning team has been thinking ahead to 2023: Where can we add the most value? How can we take ourselves out of our comfort zone? What do clients need from us now? In our December series, each 11M planner muses on the single word that sums up what 2023 could hold for them.

Above all, planners next year will need to be helpful.

“Helpfulness trumps brilliance when times are tough.”

At the end of a recent client meeting we were chatting about the presentation our client had just given to a big group of internal and external stakeholders on the year ahead and the brand’s plans. Speaking candidly after the Teams call had ended, our client admitted that, with a squeezed budget and higher sales targets than ever, they felt really lost. What they needed was some day-to-day help. Not a brand revamp or new strategic direction, but just some help steering the marketing ship and making sure not a penny was mis-spent. 

It got me thinking about our role as planners. The past few years have been chaotic, to say the least, and as the economy slows and brands are aware of every penny they are spending, it’s an opportunity for planners to find even more ways to make ourselves helpful: across our agencies and to our clients. They need us to work with them to navigate the next few years and keep them focused on the bigger goals; but at the same time, help them to employ tactics that will see the greatest returns as even more pressure is put on marketing teams to deliver direct sales as well as brand fame.

As planners it’s what we’re great at. We’re interested in the right solution to the problem, not the shiniest one. And in this respect we can be helpful to our agencies as well as our clients. We can ensure that we’re giving client services (IMHO the hardest working people in the agency) the context and background to their clients’ industries and the ammunition to have the right conversations and suggest the right course of action.

We can be helpful by bringing different teams together (we’re lucky to have a big agency group, with lots of different skills to call on) and ensure that we have the right people at the table, so our clients can access the data they need to make evidence-based decisions.

We can work with our agency creative teams to give them the insights they need to make the best creative decisions and help them to put themselves in the shoes of the audience. Helping them with single-minded insights that inspire great creative work and working with them to unpick an idea when they hit a wall. 

We can help our agencies and agency culture by keeping them aware of the bigger picture and reminding people that we’re part of an exciting creative industry (which can be hard to remember if you don’t lift your head above the laptop). 

Forget the smartest people in the room, we can be the most helpful. And I think that’s a much worthier aim. 

Next time we'll be discussing why Planners need to be visible in 2023. Stay tuned.

Victoria Velky, Head of Planning