The following is a list of notable planners throughout time and some examples of their contributions. If you add someone to the Hall of Fame, let us know what they have done to stand out.
Stanley Pollitt - Boase Massimi Pollitt (London)
Stanley Pollitt was born on February 14, 1930 in Paris France. His father was a painter who moved the family between France and Italy while Pollitt was growing up. As an adolescent, Pollitt attended the St. Paul's School at St. Paul's' Cathedral in London, where he excelled in history and the arts. He subsequently decided to attend Cambridge and initially started working towards becoming a barrister. He had a friend whose father was a partner of Pritchard Wood Partners and it was at that agency that he stared his legacy in the advertising world. In the beginning he floated from the media department, to being a copywriter, to finally, the account group. Within two years as an account person, he was working on some of the company's largest accounts, including Izal Strong Tissue Paper. Within Pritchard Wood, Pollitt often worked closely with all of the other departments in the agency. "I was in the luck position at PWP to be essentially an account director, a user of research and media services, with board responsibility for the research and media departments. It enabled me to rationalize these into a planning group, while avoiding all the usual political infighting, " It was through his exposure of the research department that Pollitt was least satisfied. To him, there were five major faults in consumer research. In 1968, Pollitt, along with Martin Boase and Gabe Massimi, started the agency Boase Massimi Pollitt. All three men worked at Pritchard Wood Partners, a company, who at the time was part of the Interpublic group, and had blossomed during an advertising creative boom. Although the trio attempted to purchase Pritchard Wood, Interpublic hesitated at their request, and so they instead created BMP along with the help of seven of their colleagues. The founders of BMP brought the Cadbury's account with them from their previous agency and established themselves with their work on this account for Cadbury's Smash potato, an instant mix potatoe powder. After the first commercial was aired, a whole Martian series was created. The series featured a Martian family, including a cat and a dog, making fun of earthlings boiling and peeling their potatoes. It was at BMP that Pollitt installed his first account planning department. Pollitt stayed with BMP until the time of his untimely death. He died prematurely in 1979, at age 49, from a heart attack.
Stephen King - J. Walter Thompson (JWT)
Stephen King, (1931-2006), was born in Melton Mowbray, attended Harrow School, and achieved a Masters degree from Oxford University in 1955, where he studied Greats (philosophy and ancient History). He joined the marketing department at J. Walter Thompson in 1957, met his wife, Sally: a JWT copywriter, conceived, named, set up and ran the Account Planning Department there in 1968, and continued working at JWT until 1988, when he retired. He was also a non-exec of WPP, the Henley Centre and a Visiting Professor of Marketing Communications at the Cranfield School of Management.
At this point, it makes sense to just hand over to Jeremy Bullmore, his old school friend of 60 years, to enumerate his many contributions to not just to the account planning discipline but to market research, brand building and marketing in general.
“He turned proposition theory on its head. He invented and propagated an extremely simple, utterly workable way of setting advertising strategy so it liberated rather than restricted creative thought” (aka The Planning Cycle - where are we now? why are we there? where could we be? etc. plus the T-Plan - or Target Plan - which concentrated on combining consumer research and insights to develop more creative and effective advertising.)
“Concurrently and coincidentally, he and Stanley Pollitt of BMP identified the need for a new, specialist agency role, that of account planner; and he formed and led the world's equal first account planning department. He was a brilliant account planner himself, and earned the awed respect of clients such as Guinness, TSB, Kellogg and Bowater Scott. When RHM (Rank Hovis McDougal) asked JWT how they might make more money from flour (to cut a long story short) he led the team that invented Mr. Kipling. He wrote and published an excellent book, Developing New Brands, and more than 40 articles, including the prescient, timeless What is a Brand?. His papers, intellectually rigorous and models of clarity, were regular award winners..
He never showed off, never used jargon (unless to parody it) and could spot - with gusts of contagious delight - bullshit at a hundred paces”
For example: “An account director once called us all together and solemnly gave us a new Unilever brief. We were to invent new product opportunities for them. Blue-sky thinking was urged upon us: we should in no way be constrained by existing manufacturing capabilities or practical considerations of any other kind. A ponderous person would have drafted a two-page memorandum pointing out the pointlessness of such a project. Stephen responded with an instant list of new product breakthroughs. The two I remember with the greatest affection were Spray-on Socks and Bed-Making Fluid. Nothing much was said about this project from then on – but it was to be a familiar King tactic. He could use wit and parody with telling effect”.
“Stephen’s writings share many qualities but the rarest is this: when you’ve read them, and absorbed them, you know exactly what you have to do. His familiar criticism of vacuous corporate advertising – ‘why are they telling me all this?’ – could never be applied to his own papers: they are all intensely practical. And so was he. He may never have bothered to clean his Ford Mondeo Parts, but he could re-fit the entire inside of a house on his own – and so indeed he did: woodwork, cabling, plumbing, the lot. He called his internal JWT manual The Account Planner’s Toolkit – and that’s exactly what it is”.
“Had his dress sense been as immaculate as his thinking, he’d have been intolerable”. (Apparently there was a brown velvet DJ in his wardrobe).
Stephen’s influence can be detected throughout the advertising world but goes largely unattributed. His benign influence has touched tens of thousands of people he’d never met. Without Stephen, (and Stanley) we would not have a job. It was he who said: ‘A product is something that is made, in a factory; a brand is something that is bought, by a customer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand, properly managed, can be timeless.’
The collected wisdom of Stephen King, comprising 20 of his best, most perceptive, papers, with commentary from 20 respected and current marketing practitioners, is published by Wiley on October 26th 2007, copies available from the APG and, presumably, Amazon. "A Master Class in Brand Planning. The timeless works of Stephen King" is the title.
Paul Feldwick - BMP DDB Needham
Paul Feldwick started his career as an account executive and became one of BMP's and London's most highly regarded planners. He went on to run the hugely successful planning function at BMP and over the years increasingly worked for DDB as a global network, developing a global framework for planning advertising and helping to found DDB University. He was Convenor of Judges for the IPA Effectiveness Awards in 1988/90, and has written and lectured extensively on how advertising works and brand equity, amongst other things. His book, What Is Brand Equity Anyway?, was published in 2002. Paul has also been Chairman of the APG and the AQR, and is a Fellow of the IPA and of the MRS
Adam Lury - HHCL - London
Adam was a BMP planner through and through but in 1987 he left Bishop's Bridge Road to found Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury (Campaign Magazine's Agency of the Decade). In many respects Adam was the vision behind the agency to Rupert Howell's ambition and energy and Steve Henry and Axel Chaldecott's creative genius. Many of the innovations that would make HHCL famous came from Adam, not least the early conversion to the cause of integration (Google up his prescient pamphlet "Marketing at a Point of Change" from 1994) . In terms of planning he created an environment where planners led from the front, worked collaboratively with creatives and account people in project teams and followed work from brief to clock number. In the work that he nurtured and planning culture he created (now exported throughout the industry by the diaspora of HHCL) he had a far greater effect on the discipline than one might suspect - a fundamentally new style based on ideas first and facts second.
John Steel - Boase Massimi Pollitt - London, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Initial google searches reveal remarkably little bigoraphical details on this highly respected planner. Heavyweight pitcher is one consensus.
Alan Hedges - researcher, author of Testing to Destruction
Ross Barr - BMP DDB Needham
Chris Cowpe - BMP DDB Needham - London
Chris and Ross were the two first graduate trainee planners (ever) hired by Stanley Pollitt, through an ad in the Evening Standard
Tony Stead - J Walter Thomson - London
Tony Stead invented the department/job title 'Account Planners'at a JWT awayday in July 1968. "We started by not knowing what on earth to call it. We thought of Brand Planner and we used that as a code for a while. Then people said that 'brand' suggests small packaged things so Tony said "Why don't you call them Account Planners?" and that was that. (Stephen King, 50 in 40 interview). He worked in the Media Department and was one of the founding members of Stephen's first Account Planning dept: "Stephen King was the new head of Account Planning and in charge of Research and Information. There were seven account planning group heads, each having two planners working for them, drawn roughly from the old Marketing and Media
Departments. Reasearch was headed by Tom Corlett with Judie Lannon and Doug Richardson.
MT Rainey - TBWA - London, Bartle Bogle Hegarty - London, Gold Greenlees Trott - London, Chiat/Day - Los Angeles/London, Rainey Kelley Campbell Roalfe - London
After studying for a PhD in the cognitive psychology of 'decisiveness' MT had a glittering planning career in London. She subsequently was one of the original UK planning exports to the US, working at Chiat/Day, notably on the strategy for the launch of the Apple Mac in 1984. Later head of Chiat/Day London and founder of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe. She Recently launched the pioneering Horse's Mouth; a heavily funded UK social venture, 'the myspace of mentoring'.
John Bartle - Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Jim Carroll - Bartle Bogle Hegarty - Planning Director and now Chairman
His 'conspicuous contribution' to planning is the number of great, strategically sound ad campaigns he has directly helped shape. (Fifteen years of Levi's ads, ten years of Lynx ads and more). Moreover he is still actively involved in planning great campaigns. In addition Jim's contribution to the APG is the number of BBH award entries and winners over the last ten years. He is a quiet but staunch advocate of the awards and until this year, edited and proof-read all BBH entries. He has also contributed to APG training courses over the years - most notably the brief writing and briefing courses alongside Nigel Jones in the mid-Nineties. Jim is still actively involved in planning great campaigns, has a terrific reel and is still in the business of making - as opposed to pontificating on the subject.
Judie Lannon ex: J. Walter Thomson
Judie Lannon is now aconsultant in market research and marketing communications strategy. She was born in the United States and earned a BA degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan followed by being appointed by Leo Burnett in Chicago. But the majority of her career was in the London Office of JWT where she was initially hired by Stephen King to set up JWT’s creative research unit which was part of the original Account Planning Department. Please note that was Judie who brought the group discussion to the UK. Latterly she was Director of Research and Planning for JWT Europe. She truly was the first American Planner. (Move over a little, Ms Newman!)
She is also a recognised writer, editor and speaker in the field of marketing communications. She is now Editor of the strategic marketing journal Market Leader (the Journal of the Marketing Society, Great Britain) (the only trade journal worth reading) and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Advertising. She has written many award winning and seminal papers over the years, for the MRS, ESOMAR and Admap. Check out: ‘ Humanistic Advertising: An Holistic, Cultural Perspective.’ (l983) With Peter Cooper. International Journal of Advertising, 2, July/Sept. pp. l95 - 2l3. She says that her first interview with Stephen King lasted three hours and he never even offered her lunch (quite an acheivement in those days).
Louise Cook BMP
Terry Bullen
Sarah Carter BMP DDB Needham
Paul Twivy - BMP - London, Still Price Court Twivy De Souza - London
Ewen Cameron - BMP planner, later worked in New York, co-founding Berlin Wright Cameron
Will Collin - BMP Planner and later co-founder of Naked
Jon Leach - BMP, HHCL & Partners, Bell Pottinger
David O'Hanlon - HHCL & Partners, McCann Erickson
Mark Piper - HHCL & Partners
Notoriously prickly, Mark began his work career as a rocket scientist trying to 'screw up the world', and subsequently joined IMP advertising as a planner, "self-interestedly trying to wake up the world" before moving to HHCL & Partners. Mark was responsible for two major HHCL brand launches in the 90's, Go - Low Cost Airlines and Egg - Online Banking. Mark has said that in the future, he would like to be a fiction writer, "mischievously manipulating my own little world." Mark is the only planner to say with a straight face about the discipline of account planning "It's not rocket science".
Mark passed away on Sunday 12th November 2007. His send off is next Tuesday at St Marys Church, Draycott Terrace, Chelsea on Tuesday 20th November at 11.50. Drinks after at The Coopers Arms in Flood Street from 1.30 onwards.
David Cowan _ BMP head of planning
Charlie Robertson - formely of GGT, head of planning for many years at BBH, founded Red Spider
Kay Scorah
Nigel Jones - ex BMP planning director
Damien O’Malley - ex BMP DDB, later director of planning DDB NY, now McCann
Simon Clemmow - founder Clemmow Hornby Inge
Simon has worked in advertising for over twenty-five years. He has always been based in London, and always been an account planner, except for a short spell as CEO at TBWA. He is currently planning partner at his second successful start-up agency, Clemmow Hornby Inge.
Simon was turned down by JWT, got a job at Benton & Bowles instead, where Rod Meadows told him to read all of Stephen King's writings, which he promptly did, and quickly moved on to hotshop Gold Greenlees Trott in 1983. He co-founded Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson in 1988. The agency won accounts like Nike and Sony PlayStation and produced outstanding creative work, before selling to Omnicom and merging with TBWA in 1997. Simon co-founded Clemmow Hornby Inge in 2001. In 2004 the agency was British Television Advertising’s Agency of the Year, and Marketing magazine’s Creative Agency of the Year.
Campaign magazine’s A-List says: “Clemmow’s Big Ideas philosophy and process are a key plank in the phenomenally successful new-business story that is CHI, and its strategic output remains as strong as ever.”
Anthony Buck - BMP (and later BBH's) IPA effectiveness secret weapon. A man who could turn a scrap of cardboard and a handle into a compelling case.
Jackie Boulter
Wendy Gordon
Nick Kendall - planning director BBH
Jim Carroll - planning director BBH
Rita Clifton - planning director Saatchi's later CEO then chairman of Interbrand
Rita graduated from Cambridge and began her career in advertising in account management at JWT in the late 70's. She planned at Saatchi & Saatchi for 12 years, many of them on British Airways, becoming Vice Chairman and Executive Planning Director in 1995.
In 1997 she joined Interbrand, the world’s leading brand consultancy, as Chief Executive in London; in January 2002 she became Chairman. Her writing includes the book ‘The Future of Brands’, and The Economist book ‘Brands and Branding’, as well as the chapter on International Account Planning in the second etition of the APG's How to Plan Advertising.
She is a non-executive director of DSG International plc (formerly Dixons Store Group plc), and Emap plc. She also chairs Populus, the opinion pollster to The Times, and is a Visiting Professor at Henley Management College. Other advisory boards have included the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission, the Judge Business School at Cambridge University, BP’s carbon offset programme and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
Tony Wright - started in planning in UK, moved to Chiat/Day in US, Chief startegic officer O&M, cofounder Wrighet Cameron Berlin, now chairman of Lowe
Leslie Butterfield - BMP, head of planning AMV, founder BDDH
Mark Earls
Merry Baskin
One of the few planners who has been both an 'Ad Tweaker' (6 years as Head of Planning at Chiat/Day New York, where the planning dept was modelled on BMP, and then nine years as Head of Planning at JWT) and a 'Grand Strategist'. Prior to both of these was the planner on British Airways at Saatchi from 83 to 86. Revamped the APG in time for planning's 30th birthday, and has contributed to a couple of APG planning books. Staunch believer in planning craft skills, she has trained and inspired countless planners both here and overseas.
Mike Hall
Mike started work in research in 1975 at the British Market Research Bureau (then owned by JWT) with a degree in German. He moved on to run their European consumer research division in 1979, until he moved into advertising later that year. Other planners who came out of BMRB during that era are: Rob White, Terry Bullen, Paul Hackett, Lee Taylor, Maggie Taylor, Merry Baskin, to name a few.
He spent 10 years in Account Planning in ad agencies during the glamorous, extravagant 80s and made key planning contributions to campaigns such as ‘the man from Del Monte’ and the Harrods sales campaign that still runs today. He became Planning Director at Leagas Delaney for two years before finally recognising that he needed to be his own MD.
He set up a quantitative agency within the DRSM group again specialising in advertising research and in 1991 delivered an award winning MRS conference paper on the different ways that advertising works, founded on Stephen King's principles and theories, which has changed the face of brand and advertising research, first in the UK, then around the world. At the end of 1992 he left and his six clients joined together to encourage him to form Hall & Partners. In the subsequent years he has launched his research approach around the world, opening up USA and Asia Pacific regional groups and integrating a hugely successful qualitative business into the companies. He oversaw a worldwide office staff of more than 90 and a turnover of more than ,10 million, the best research job in the world. Mike left Hall & Partners in the middle of 2006 to pursue the other passions in his life. He now lives in a mini-stately, with his adored family and keeps sheep. Or cows or something.
Alison Hoad
Laurence Green
Max Burt
Tim Broadbent
Tim is the Regional Effectiveness Director and Regional Planning Director of Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific, based in Beijing, China. He is the only person to have won two Grand Prix in the IPA Effectiveness Awards, was Convenor of Judges of the Effectiveness Awards, and then served as Chairman of the IPA Value of Advertising Committee. He has been an account planner since the 1970s, starting at BMP. Most recently he was Planning Director and Managing Partner of Young & Rubicam, and then Chief Strategic Officer of the Bates Group EMEA region. He is a Fellow of the IPA and visiting Professor of Marketing of The University of The Arts London. His Dad (Simon Broadbent) is a pretty famous and very clever planner too. Anything these two have written, you should read.
Chris Riley
Jane Newman
Barry Pritchard
Roddy Glen
Richard Reed
Will Collin
Gary Duckworth – Name first on the door – ditto.
Rob White (now running his own agency, ex Fallon Worldwide, ex Chiat/Day LA, trainee of Mike Hall
Sev De Souza – wrote the original What is Planning? Ex Still, Price Court Twivy, etc etc.
Possibly the most extravagant, memorable and much missed name in the history of advertising.
Marilyn Baxter
Beth Barry – founded the APG planning awards
Chris Forrest –
1982 -86 Chris was a qualitative researcher working for top dogs like Roy Langmaid and Roddy Glen.
1986–91 he was at Ogilvy & Mather where he became their youngest board director.
Then from 1991-97 he was Planning Director Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters where he won APG and IPA Effectiveness Awards for famous campaigns like 'That'll be the Daewoo' and during this period was Vice Chair of the APG.
Now co-partner running the Nursery, planning’s favourite creative development qual research company.
Rod Meadows – Benton and Bowles, introduced Simon Clemmow to SK’s writings.
Charles Channon – founder of the IPA effectiveness awards, intellectual and camp, used to leave notes for his partner and write his shopping list in latin.
Emma Cookson – Built BBH US into the force it is
Neil Cassie – The idea for his new company is grounded on Stephen King brand principles
Nick Kendall – BBH veteran luminary, still inspiring generations of IPA trainees.
David Brent– PIONEER OF THE AD AGENCY PLANNING ROLE IN AUSTRALIA – 1965 / 66
David Brent was a para-military police officer in a long counter-insurgency war in Malaya in the fifties in which he also served in the nation’s secret service. After work in Singapore in market research, ad agency account service and creative writing and in Sydney in ad agency account service and media management he joined Unilever in Sydney as a market researcher specializing in advertising research and then later as general research client contact. After years working with Unilever’s marketing teams and Unilever’s many successful brands involved in many forms of market research, especially advertising research, David believed that the modus operandi of ad agencies was inadequate. At the end of 1965 he conceived the idea of a specialist role in the ad agency combining marketing, market research, intelligence and advertising. In 1966 he launched the new role in a medium size Sydney ad agency, Thompson Ansell Blunden [later Grey Advertising].
In the second ad agency he again launched the planning role in 1969 and over the next 8 years the agency, Hertz Walpole Advertising, experienced rapid growth with the combination of powerful planning and spectacular campaigns.
It is possible that the initial version of planning launched by David Brent in Australia was more inclusive than the initial version in the UK with concern for total brand health as well as the advertising development process. Probably this was due to David’s background and experience with Unilever concerned with the many facets of brand performance and health.
Possibly the world’s only exclusive story of the conception and pioneering of the ad agency planning role in 1965/66 with detailed case histories and comments by appreciative agency chiefs and clients can be found at www.originplan.com .
Don Cowley
Editor of How to Plan Advertising | Download pdf
Does anyone remember at which agency he was planning director late 1970s / early 80s?
Neville Darby
Planning Director at Ogilvy & Mather, late 1970s / early 80s. A founding father of Account Planning Group (see also Charles Channon). A down-to-earth Londoner.
Before it got all WPP'ed into shape, Ogilvy & Mather was a glittering jewel in the advertising business for many decades. They had a culture that treated people with respect. They had an old ad guy called Neville Darby who used to run courses training people in the trade. As trainees, we were always taught the mantra of David Ogilvy: if we ever encountered a piece of advertising - no matter how good - that 'could be for anything' (i.e. it wasn't indelibly linked back to the product it was advertising in a relevant and easily accessible way) - then it was BAD advertising.
Source: Meditations in an Emergency, by Sean Boyle, BrainJuicer Group, UK, on Campaign Brief website
Graham Hall
In the 1990s he was founder and boss of Informer, a groundbreaking youth insight service, then Planning Director at Starcom and Chief Insight Officer at Bravo (Y&R / WPP) in New York. Currently the founder and director of The Insight Edge, based in rural Somerset. He's still making waves after 25 years in the planning and insight world. And he's still got the red hair (not so much of it these days), the Buddy Holly specs and the Manchester vibe.
Comments (1)
Anonymous said
at 5:17 pm on Feb 21, 2007
No rules for this page. Pile in, add/edit information, agencies they worked for, contributions to communications, books papers written, theory, observations, great campaigns they worked on and and anything else that adds a human dimension.
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