Sometimes when I get into work in the morning, I feel like Adam and Eve must have felt during those innocent days spent in Eden. Like them, I have no precedents, anything seems possible and I am unaware of the ‘nakedness’ of my planning expertise. I work for one of the growing breed of ‘business communication agencies’. A business communications agency is an organisation that communicates to internal and external audiences (e.g. employees and shareholders) on behalf of blue-chip clients. In my case, the services we offer include event production, video production, Internet and Intranet consultancy and production and graphic design.
Why do I feel like Adam? There is very little history of planning, research or measurement in the business communications environment. Traditionally the industry has relied upon nice letters from clients and the odd bouquet of flowers. Quite suitable for a show featuring dancing girls, choked with dry ice, produced by a failed theatre luvvie but hardly evidence of an industry providing tangible business benefits and truly accountable services.
The development of a planning function at Crown, that seeks to measure the effectiveness of existing communication initiatives, has been undertaken in order to improve the quality of our creative production, to strengthen our client’s hand and our own. By analysing how well the messages we are communicating are getting through to the audience, we are able to recommend improvements to future communication strategies. In effect, we are moving ‘up the food chain’, seeking to become a valued communications partner, rather than simply a production supplier. This may be the key to the advent of business communication campaigns rather than the one-off projects and constant pitching that is endemic in our industry.
There is however a serpent in this planning Eden. The serpent is the real and cultural obstacle to the planning concept in an industry traditionally devoid of it. Internally, account directors are not used to the concept of quantitative and qualitative measurement of their creative output. Externally, many clients are not in the habit of providing any serious analytical work to justify expenditure on communication. Is that why Marketing Directors (who have the support of statistics) get to sit on the board, whilst Communications Directors generally do not?
The advent of digital media is changing all that. Since it is possible to analyse the way in which employees use a corporate Intranet (down to a mouse-click) backed up with qualitative assessment of their reaction to the content, the time is ripe for an explosion of business communications planning. It is a ‘no brainer’; the opportunity to provide evidence of the tangible success of a communications initiative gives us a competitive advantage.
This is the virgin territory in which I work every day, it can be interesting and fun. It can also be incredibly frustrating. There are times when I gaze at the esteemed halls of Advertising and Direct Marketing planners and long for the heritage and ancestry that exists there. But in conclusion, my rallying cry is twofold; on the one hand it is aimed at those struggling to develop a planning function in their own agencies – keep pushing! On the other, it is directed at those within more traditional planning environments – support the extension of planning principles wherever you see them.
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