Goodby Warns Planners Are Fading Away

NEW YORK Account planning could soon disappear from agency life if steps are not taken quickly to save the profession from "the verge of irrelevancy," said Jeff Goodby, co-chairman and creative director of Omnicom's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, in a speech to colleagues at the APG Conference in Boca Raton, Fla., this week. Goodby, who described his San Francisco shop as one of the most "dyed-in-the-wool planning process agencies around," said a quick survey of his staff revealed that because planners are disenfranchised from the creative process, they are losing their relevancy."I was shocked at how many suggested we didn't really need a planning department at all," Goodby said.Furthermore, planning seems to be slipping from client consciousness, Goodby said. Once demanded by clients as an integral part of the process, planning has now become something "clients only want to do now and then, when they're not sure about some new tactic."As a result, agencies are beginning to make do without key planning positions, he said. Chief planning jobs remain vacant for up to a year, suggesting shops do not consider filling posts as a top priority.The blame, Goodby said, falls squarely on the profession's shoulders. Planners spend too much time in client meetings and too little guiding creatives. They judge the work in absolute terms, rather than sitting in on creative sessions and helping to shape the work, he said. "Their contributions were becoming compartmentalized," Goodby observed of his own planning staff. "Papers passed under the door to the people who would take it from here."Instead, planners should stay in the room after the client has left and contribute their own ideas to the mix, rather than re-entering at the end to judge the work, he said. "Guide, don't judge," Goodby said. "Planning is not an end. It is a means to an end."In addition to working more closely with the creative department, Goodby suggested planners shake the focus group habit and find more insightful research methods. To thwart an end to the age of planning, Goodby suggested planners drop the moniker altogether."It never made any sense. Planners don't plan ... They make connections, they seek perspective," Goodby said. To that end, he suggested planners conceive media innovations of their own, since today's clients seem more interested in the ability to come up with the next Web film or scratch and sniff promotion."Let's make sure we're doing the right work. Right now, in the planning departments of the world, I'm not sure we are," he concluded.Reaction to the speech was mixed. While some planners agreed that their ideas had become mired in "process" and that the discipline needed "a pretty big hand grenade" to re-establish the profession, few enjoyed hearing Goodby's dire predictions. Said one, "If I were a planner at Goodby, I'd be scared to death of losing my job."

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Goodby Warns Planners Are Fading Away

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