Strategic Planning in Advertising: What a Planner Is and What They Do

In today's communication landscape, brands compete to capture attention in increasingly saturated and fragmented contexts. In this scenario, strategic planning has become central to providing coherence and direction to the decisions that guide the development of advertising campaigns.

What is Strategic Planning in advertising and what is it used for?

Strategic planning in advertising is the discipline that defines the strategic approach of a campaign Based on an analysis of the brand context, the market, and the consumer, in order to establish a clear direction for communication.

Their main functions are:

• Understanding the consumer and their relationship with the category.
• Analyze the brand's positioning against the competition.
• Identifying strategic opportunities for communication.
• Define a territory and a central message to guide creativity.
• Align business objectives with communication objectives.

What problem does Strategic Planning solve within an advertising campaign?

Strategic Planning addresses the problem of lack of strategic focusThis occurs when a campaign is built without a clear definition of who it is speaking to, what it wants to change in their perception or behavior, and why that message is relevant in its context.

By structuring the communication problem and prioritizing a single strategic direction, it prevents creativity from being scattered across Ideas disconnected from each other and poorly aligned with brand objectives, making it easier for all the pieces to respond to the same purpose and communication logic.

What exactly does a planner do in an advertising agency?

The planner is the professional who connects brands with people. Their job involves researching, analyzing, and transforming information about the market, the consumer, and culture into clear insights to guide the creative and communication strategy of a campaign.

What are the day-to-day functions of a planner and what teams do they work with?

In daily work, the planner primarily collaborates with the account, creative, media, data, and research teams.acting as a link between business vision and creative execution.

From that interaction, Their main functions are usually:

• Consumer research, trends, and cultural context.
• Brand, competition and market analysis.
• Definition of insights and strategic territories.
• Drafting the strategic brief for the creative team.
• Supporting the creative process to ensure consistency with the strategy.
• Conceptual validation of ideas and campaigns before their presentation.
• Evaluation of results and learning for future actions.

What is the difference between a strategic planner, a brand planner, and a digital planner?

Within the planning area there are different approaches depending on the type of project and environment:

• Strategic planner: It focuses on the overall vision of the brand and the business, defining positioning, purpose, and major lines of communication.
• Brand planner: It works more closely with the day-to-day operations of a specific brand, developing its tone, narrative, and consistency over time.
• Digital planner: It focuses its analysis on online environments, behavioral data, platforms, user journeys, and opportunities for interaction in digital media.

What is the Strategic Planning process step by step?

Strategic planning typically follows an orderly process: starting with a business or communication problem, researching to understand the context and the audience, finding an insight that explains a real tension, and translating it into a clear strategy to guide the brief and the creative idea.

How to research consumers and competitors to find actionable insights

The research seeks to move from “data” to “findings” that can be used to make creative and communication decisionsTo arrive at actionable insights, you typically work with:

• Review of existing information: previous studies, historical performance, campaign lessons learned, internal reports.
• Consumer research: interviews, focus groups, social listening, analysis of habits, motivations, barriers and real language.
• Data analysis: Digital metrics, searches, platform behavior, segmentations, patterns, and changes over time.
• Mapping the cultural context: trends, codes, conversations, social tensions, and categories in motion.
• Competitive benchmark: messages, tone, promises, formats, investment, frequency, differentiators and commonalities.
• Brand audit: values, personality, consistency, current perceptions, and gaps between what is said and what is believed.
• Synthesis and formulation of the insight: Identify a specific tension and express it in a simple, clear way that is applicable to the creative idea.

How to define a strategic brief: objective, audience, message and tone

The strategic brief breaks down the strategy into simple decisions so that the creative team and the rest of the agency work in alignmentTo construct it, these four elements are defined:

• Aim: What is the goal and how will it be measured (change in perception, intention, consideration, sales, adoption, etc.).
• Public: who is being spoken to, what is the main need or tension, and what features differentiate them within the category.
• Message: What central idea do you want to establish, what promise or proposal does it support, and what should remain in the audience's mind?
• Tone: how that message is expressed to be credible and consistent with the brand (registration, attitude, style, cultural codes and boundaries).

What deliverables does a planner create and how do they translate into creativity?

The planner's work materializes in a A series of documents and tools that translate research and strategy into clear guidelines for the creative teamThese deliverables aim to inspire, organize, and focus, so that the ideas respond to a real problem and a concrete communication objective.

What is an insight, a value proposition, and a single-minded proposition, with examples?

Within those deliverables, there are Three key concepts that structure strategic thinking:

• Insight: It is a relevant human truth, based on a real consumer tension or motivation, that explains why they behave in a certain way and opens up an opportunity for the brand.
  Example: “I want to eat healthier, but I feel that healthy food is boring and unpleasant.”
• Value proposition: It is the way the brand responds to that insight, explaining what it offers and why it is different or better than the alternatives.
  Example: "Healthy food that is also delicious and enjoyable, without sacrificing pleasure."
• Single-minded proposition (SMP)It is the synthesis into a single central idea that should guide all communication; a simple phrase that condenses what to say and why to believe it.
  Example: “Eating healthy can be a real pleasure.”

What is the customer journey and how is it used to target messages and channels?

The customer journey is the map of the journey a person takes from detecting a need to choosing, buying, and becoming involved with a brandThis journey is divided into stages (discovery, consideration, decision, use, loyalty, among others) and allows us to understand what the consumer thinks, feels, and needs at each moment.

Based on this analysis, The planner defines which message is most relevant at each stage and which channels are best suited to make an impact.ensuring consistency between strategy, creativity, and touchpoints.

What skills does a planner need and how to get started from scratch

The planner's role combines analysis, cultural sensitivity, and the ability to synthesize information. It requires Understanding businesses, people, and brandsbut also knowing how to translate all that into clear ideas that inspire creativity.

To start from scratch, it's key train in strategy, practice consumer observation, analyze campaigns, read trends and develop your own judgment, beyond the technical tools.

What skills should a junior planner have: critical thinking, research, and storytelling

At an initial level, there are three fundamental competencies on which the profile is built:

• Critical thinking: ability to question briefs, data and assumptions, detect real problems, find tensions and not just stick to the obvious.
• Research: ability to search, filter, interpret and cross-reference information from qualitative and quantitative sources, transforming data into relevant learning.
• Storytelling: ability to organize ideas and findings into a clear and persuasive narrative, which allows explaining an insight, a strategy or a brief in a simple and inspiring way to other teams.

How to train in Strategic Planning and build a portfolio with Miami Ad School

Miami Ad School offers fSpecific training in strategy and creativity geared towards professional practicewhere learning is based on solving real-world briefs and working in teams with creative professionals. The focus is on developing strategic thinking, building insights, and transforming all of that into concrete campaigns.

Furthermore, the project-based work model allows that each exercise becomes a portfolio case studyshowing not only final ideas but also the process: research, problem definition, strategy and creative proposal.

What to learn in a planning course and how to create case studies for your planner portfolio

In a Strategic Planning training You learn to research consumers and markets, identify insights, define positioning, write briefs, and build a clear single-minded proposition.

Based on those lessons, The portfolio is built by turning each project into a complete case study. that shows: problem, insight, strategy, planner's role and how that strategy was translated into a creative idea and a campaign.

If you want to train as a professional strategic planner, get in touch contact Join us and take the first step to start your career