Digital planners? What? Who? Why?

Do you use digital planners? Even if you do, what are they and most importantly what value do they bring? And if you want one what skills should you look for?

I should ‘fess up before I start and let you know that I am a digital planner, but these are actually questions I’ve been grappling with myself. In the ad agency world it’s pretty clear what a digital planner is and does, how they relate to the rest of the team, where their responsibilities start and stop. In an agency like Imagination, where I work, the boundaries are more blurred and that is the space I suspect the majority of BIMA members inhabit.

First off, here’s what I think a digital planner is - that person who does the research and thinking that  synthesises data with experience to contribute to a creative process and deliver a digital project.

Or - the person who keeps the team on the right track so that you deliver great ideas for client and audience that will actually work.

That role could be fulfilled by a number of people or one, or it could be split between more than one person, particularly when your creatives have a lot of experience of delivering digital work.  But if you are working with advertising agencies or clients that use them there is definitely an advantage in having a defined role , it will just make them feel more secure. Equally if you are rushed off your feet in all other departments who is taking care of the customer? The digital planner.

So the question then becomes, Who? I think it is important here  to look for a  combination of experience and research. If you have research without experience the danger is that you deliver a rip off of someone else’s ideas,  something that worked well in a casual environment such as YouTube but which you will be villified for copying.

If you have experience without research you run the risk of developing apps and experiences that are so cutting edge they speak to the minority and get you great kudos with an irrelevant audience without delivering breadth or worse, sink beneath the waves.

Pulling the two together not only delivers you a new justification and rigour to your deliveries (statistics and insight) but can deliver you a new creative string to your bow. One of the biggest mistakes agencies make is to restrict “creativity” to graphic designers and copywriters, when if we think about it we know that technologists, producers, finance people etc are all creative and the best can ideas come from wierd places. But only if they have the right direction behind them.

And I think that answers the Why? The right digital planner is also a digital creative, they can help  your whole organisation look at things from a different angle not only in terms of consumer insights but the wider field and if they are experienced (not necessarily in planning maybe in development or design, editorial or production)  they can bring with them knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

Now, having justified my existence I am off for a cup of tea and a bit of research.