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In most of China’s advertising companies, planners are the company’s “consumables.”

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “General Liang” (ID: liangjiangjunisme ), the author Liang General.

If you are an advertising planner, here is what you are saying:

Before you leave work on Friday, you received a brief from your account manager in your mailbox. The customer background information is very vague, only a little clear: Monday proposal;

So, you pushed off the weekend’s girlfriends, converging complaints and loss, and submitted the plan at 11pm on Sunday. At 12 o’clock, the account manager said in the WeChat group that the customer updated the demand. So, once you have finished washing, you open the PPT again;

After a night, you changed your last number on an empty stomach and went out to the client company for a proposal. The proposal is at 9:00 am, the customer is in Haidian, and you are in Chaoyang. In order not to be late, you have to take the subway and drop it again;

There is no “Knife Sword” that you expected on the proposal site. The client who listened to the proposal only came to a person. He played the mobile phone halfway through the whole process, urging you to go through the trend analysis and creative deduction, and then I would like to see the resource quote… …

Above, it is the daily routine of Chinese advertising planning, this life is like a curse, reincarnation every day.

When the quarterly resumption meeting, the business department often thanked the planning for the hard work: “Thanks to the planning students to deliver ammunition for us!” You sneered in your heart: “What ammunition! Isn’t your cannon fodder?”
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At present, in most of China’s advertising companies, the planning department is a kind of “consumables”, and the business department uses planning to “take customers” instead of using planning to create real value for the company and customers.

Why are some of the curatorial values ​​of value weak? Why did you become the company’s cannon fodder? My answer to this question is:

Because most of the planning is just to support the business, not to drive the business.

01/ is not a gas station, but an engine

Any company has support and drive departments. The driving department refers to those departments that can determine the direction of the company’s performance, while the support department is the department that assists the driving department and supports them.

For example, at Google, the driver department should be the technical department, supportThe department is the Ministry of Commerce, the Department of Human Resources, and the Department of Finance.

But what if it is a mineral water company? The driving department should be the sales department, the support department is the marketing department, etc., because once the mineral water is produced, there is no need to make major adjustments.

But we need to know that the drive department and the support department are often not static. To see who is leading the company’s performance growth, the roles of the two may be changed.

In an interview with the media, Jobs attacked Microsoft’s business structure. He said that Microsoft did not make great products because the company was in charge of the sales department. And the professional thinking of sales is to cater to the market, not to lead the market, so Microsoft’s products are like 屎.

Later, we all know that Apple’s market is not driven by the sales department, but by the product department. Apple’s success has led many companies around the world to start paying attention to product experience, and even it has won the position of product manager.

You see, the same is the electronic technology company, Apple and Microsoft’s driving department is completely different. So which is the advertising department and support department of the advertising company?

It may be a business unit or a creative or strategic department. Specific reason, I can see another article Four reasons why advertising companies are “dead on the road”.

But no matter which department, the modification authority after the completion of the plan is in the hands of the business department. The plan is like surrogate a child. After the child is born, it must be adopted by others.

“Customer says, want to join short video media”

“Customer said, event marketing burns money, delete it”

“Customers say the solution is too mediocre and hopes to be innovative”

Even if these principles are just words that sales people hear from customers, or just sales subjective judgments for customersBroken, but planning must be corrected. If a plan insists on its own “strategic principle” and argues with the business department, then 99% of the game is defeated in planning.

Why is the injury always planned? Because you are not responsible for the final results. The confrontation between all departments is due to different positions. But the company has only one standard for measuring all problems, and that is performance growth.

Every cell in the business unit is responsible for performance, and planning? You may be responsible for your feelings, your profession, or even your truth, but it seems that you are not responsible for your performance.

This is the post of advertising planning, the reason why you feel “no value”. But this is not the career fate of advertising planning. The key to “returning to life” is that we must strive to be an engine, not a gas station.

“Gas station” means that you are driving your car at the expense of yourself;

“Engine” means that you can continue to work, you are the source of power for a car.

How is advertising planning responsible for performance, driving the company’s business? The first thing we have to do is to reconsider our approach with business thinking.

02/More than professional planning, but also business planning

As a mature advertising plan, producing any solution requires insight into three levels of issues:

• Industry and Competitive Analysis

• Target Consumer Analysis

• Communication Environment Analysis

But if you want to be a responsible advertising program, you can’t just consider these issues. These questions will only allow us to make a professional plan. If you are responsible for performance, you have to make a business plan.

When we intend to be completely responsible for the company’s performance, we must consider the following questions when taking over the plan:

1. Customer Decision Structure

Why do you need to know the customer’s decision structure? Because the advertising strategy is not like media procurement, it is impossible to make an objective judgment by the level of the quotation.

Strategy, creativity, and even logic, good or bad depends entirely on people’s subjective judgments. We only know who the plan is to be handed over. What are the criteria for these people to judge the plan, weCan be targeted.

Case (1)

The customer is a local Fujian enterprise. The characteristics of such enterprises are boss decision-making, and the marketing department’s right to speak is generally not high. Then when you are working on a plan, you must consider the boss’s awareness of advertising concepts and advertising products.

If your plan comes up with DMP, DSP, RTB, PMP media terms, full-frame speech is private traffic, social fission, traffic pool, then you are in addition to the face of each other, you Will not get any benign feedback. Because no boss will spend money to buy something he can’t understand.

Case (2)

An advertising company once gave an annual media plan to a global company, reporting to a media director in China.

At first, a 120-page program was made. The media director gave the opinion that the program was reduced to less than 30 pages, and each page must have data proof.

Why do customers have such a reaction? Because the actual helm of international companies is mostly foreigners, directors in China generally have to apply for budgets from headquarters, and foreigners generally recognize data.

2, the open environment of the program

First, the reporting environment will determine the presentation of the program.

Your plan is just being read, or will there be a face-to-face proposal? If the proposal is to face the marketing department, or is it involved in other departments? These factors all affect the chances that the program will be recognized.

If it is a program for reading, you should specify your intentions in the PPT, as many words and comments as possible, because the other party can’t listen to people, and the program should reduce the reader’s understanding difficulty.

If the plan is for reporting, then the program should be visualized as much as possible. Use the visuals on the PPT to capture the attention of the listener and use your dictation to add details.

Because of the proposal, the listener is far away from the PPT and cannot see all the texts above, and your explanations and words often interfere with each other’s attention.

In other words, the plan to be reported is actually composed of two parts: you + PPT = a complete plan.

For example, you are proposing in a small meeting room of a company. The two sides are crowded on a 1 meter wide round table. There are only one or two people listening to the case. This distance is not a one-to-many speech distance, but face-to-face. Communication distance.

The other party will have a strong desire to communicate. We have to explain and interact with each other. The program has to design some discussion links. It is not suitable for the theory that is too esoteric.

But if we face a formal tender, we are in a big conference, and the opposite is filled with the heads of each business unit. Our plan must take into account the interests of each business unit.

In the face of the financial department’s emphasis on the company’s financial strength, facing the market department’s emphasis on past practical experience, facing the market sales force of the sales area manager’s emphasis on the program, facing the causeThe executives emphasized the strategic intent of the program…

So, the open environment of the program will determine the form of the plan, is it to be written as a “fiction”? Make a “movie”? Or is it a “person interview”? Still a multi-role “drama.”

3, Have you learned the “real function” of your program?

Ad planning often overestimates the proportion of the program in terms of successful signing. Everyone often signs a customer contract or not, which comes down to two reasons:

1) Is our plan good enough

2) Sales customer service is not in place

In fact, a customer who chooses an advertising company to cooperate is often complicated. If you look at the problem in a dualistic way, you are stupid and naive.

If you have worked in Party A’s marketing department, or if you have done business in the front line, you will find that the reason why customers choose partners is often unexpected.

Case (1)

In an annual comparison, a creative company’s plan scored the first overall score, and the advertising company thought it would win with its professional strength.

But Party A said privately, because the company’s plan was 300 pages and they were “the most correct”, they chose them.

Case (2)

An international client organization, a local company actually defeated two 4A companies that have served customers for three years, and won the international business for the first time.

The business unit concluded that the reason for winning was: Because the company’s market VP just came this year and wanted to wash away the relationship company of the previous marketing department, we chose us.

Sales When launching a brief, or when customers and advertising companies communicate a program’s needs, their purpose is often not simple.

A lot of times, they don’t want a program that has a guiding value to the brand. There are many additional purposes behind it. These hidden “purposes” will also determine how the plan is written. These purposes include:

• Sales want to use your plan to reach key decision makers

• The solution is to create a professional impression and be a finalist in the supplier’s supplier system

• The marketing department wants to use your plan to get a budget for the company

• Party A wants to replace some of her own work with your plan

• The plan is to guide the client’s bidding content and let the client plan in the area that your company is good at

Any additional purpose here will determine whether the plan is rejected or rewritten, or praised.

For example, the second point above is that the program is designed to create a professional impression and to be a short-listed customer.”Business system” is the true purpose of this brief, then your plan is to strengthen the company’s strength, increase the case display, strengthen your past service experience, rather than just strategic planning, deduct the number of execution quotes.

If a planner learns to use sales thinking to make a plan, his plan will have a broader perspective, but at the same time, his plan is likely to become a glimpse.

Why is this happening? Because a plan must consider channels, consumers, ideas, strategies, media, prices, and all kinds of complex human calculations, the logic of the program is easily broken apart in various concerns.

So, many novice planners are not crushed by the heavy friction, but are driven by a variety of disorderly requirements under a brief.

Obviously, considering the fact that more and more careful and not fundamentally changing professional cannon foci, let us return to the original conclusion:

Most planning, just supporting the business, not driving the business.

The key to this sentence is the “drive” business. The so-called drive is to plan to try to turn passive into initiative, and in the business advancement, have more voice.

03/ is not fighting for affirmative power, but establishing the right to speak

In recent years, advertising companies have always wanted to have an equal dialogue with Party A customers, such as establishing alliances, promoting payment comparisons, and hoping that the industry will develop in a benign direction.

I think that the advertising industry should continue to fight for affirmation, but also should establish the right to speak.

Strive for “discourse power” is not to let the plan uncover the uprising, engage in personnel struggles, but to promote the business from the professional level, and help the business department to sign more systematically and efficiently.

To better drive the business, the planning department has to fill in three aspects:

1. Design company’s product line, reverse-guided sales sale

99% of advertising companies do not have their own resources, so the advertising company is called Agency, which means that the advertising company is part of the agency’s marketing department.

When companies look for the agency, or when the agency develops customers, they meet each other for the first time, and there are only two questions:

Business: What can you do?

Agency: What do you want to do?

If the two sides have the right number, then the business can advancego with. However, most advertising companies generally say what resources I have, what kind of cases I have operated, and what kind of customers I have served…

But this kind of rhetoric is just talking to yourself, that is, they don’t introduce themselves to the client’s perspective. If we follow the customer’s perspective, we should simulate the customer’s demand scenario and combine our own advantages to design our own business line.

For example, I have divided the company’s business line into several major scenarios:

• IP Cooperation

• Speaker Promotion

• New listing/brand calling new

• Node Promotion

• Annual/Quarter Planning

These major scenarios basically cover the customer’s regular needs. I hope that when the company’s sales promote the business, it can clearly state what services it can help customers.

2. From the steps of developing customers, design scheme type system

When the business department promotes customers, there are roughly four development cycles: demand exploration period, demand traction period, deepening service period and demand mining period.

Requirement exploration period

When the business is in initial contact with the customer, he may need some tools to find out the real needs of the customer.

We don’t naively think that customers can explain his needs. He can only tell his basic needs. Many details must collide in a specific matter to understand the complete idea of ​​the other party.

The plan of this period may not be in the fine but the miscellaneous. It is necessary to issue multiple “signals” at the same time to see which signal the customer responds to the most.

Demand Traction Period

After clarifying customer needs, advertising companies must try to guide customers to the right route, or to guide you in areas that are good at it.

The plan for this period is to communicate marketing logic, operational experience, procurement resources, and manage customer expectations, so that customers and themselves should not be biased.

Deepening the service period

When a customer signs up with us, we need to constantly adjust and optimize the previous strategy during the service process so that the strategy can be perfectly implemented.

The plan for this period is to help customers analyze and make decisions. Because any spurt in execution will “stun” the customer, let the customer or the person inside the customer company question the cooperation.

We need to help our customers build confidence and avoid the pitfalls of execution.

Demand discovery period

If the first cooperation between the two parties is still enjoyable, the advertising company will strive for the second and third cooperation, and we will explore other customer needs.

The plan for this period must be based on the previous round of service experience, so that the strategy is in line, and set a high entry threshold for competitors;

Further, the program will provide strategies from a broader, longer-term perspective, allowing customers to see broader, more diverse partnership possibilities.

3. From a theoretical perspective, design the company’s marketing model

What is the significance of the advertising company’s marketing model? The model is a refined version of the methodology, just like when a child is learning mathematics, the meaning of multiplication is greater than that of a famous expert.

Excellent companies will build their own models at the marketing level. Models allow newcomers to quickly recognize their intellectual assets and make it easier for society to quickly recognize their professional characteristics. For example:

In the consulting company, Huahua’s marketing model is the “super-symbol” theory, which has sixteen words “cultural maternal, reason for purchase, super symbol and shelf thinking”;

In the Internet media, Ali’s marketing model is the “global marketing” theory, the customer’s marketing path in the Ali system is condensed into four letters A – I – P – L (cognition – interest – – buy – loyalty);

In the advertising company, Ogilvy’s marketing model is “360° brand steward”, and the process of brand management is divided into six steps:

1, the information collected; 2, brand test; 3, brand probe; 4, BrandPrint; 5, how to use the BrandPrint; 6, check brand core.

For example, General Liang also set up a marketing model of product synergy for the integrated marketing of head content. The specific model operation principle can refer to my first article spend tens of millions voted IP, crop failure Why? .

This model is “cited” by many peers in the circle. For example, the WeChat advertising department “quotes” this model.

Thanks to the recognition of the WeChat team, it would be more reasonable to add a reference source to the PPT.

The marketing model allows a company to form its own professional identity in the industry. If your model is really effective, it can trigger customer interest and desire to learn, thus changing the service relationship between you and your customers.

Companies without a marketing model: customer demand – planning a customized marketing strategy for customers

Company with a marketing model: Customer proposes a demand/customer interest model—plans to adjust customer strategy according to model

From “custom” to “adjustment”, this saves a lot of time and cost, allowing customers and advertising companies to work more efficiently.

It can be said that the theoretical model of marketing is the largest intellectual property of advertising companies, and it is the past experience of many years.

This responsibility should fall to the head of the strategy, and it is worthwhile for each planner to constantly improve in practice, thus leading the entire planning department to seize the professional initiative in the stacked brief.

Summary

Recently thinking about the functions of the planning department, so with the above article, introspection is also provincial.

Confucius said four words, I especially want to give to the planning of this profession, called “gentlemen do not device”, the basic meaning is: a cultivated person, do not live into other people’s tools.

If a plan doesn’t want to be a professional cannon fodder, try to drive the business instead of supporting the business.

I know, this means that you have to do more things outside of the brew, squeeze more of your brain cells, but life is a wrestling, if your goal is just not to be down, then you will always It is impossible to bring down the opponent.

You will become more and more relaxed as you become more active.