It started in 1997 as a spark rising from the ashes of the Asian financial crisis and has been slowly gathering pace ever since. Planning, the discipline that has traditionally had short shrift in the Asian advertising mindset, has quietly grown in impor- tance as agencies realised clients were hungering for more bullet-proof solutions.
Today planning is the 'sexy' new-kid-on-the-block in an agency's repertoire and a strategic weapon in the marketing arsenal of clients. And foreign planners are queuing up for a slice of the action.
"Top-rank planners from the US and Europe are now choosing to come to Asia," says John Woodward, Leo Burnett's regional planning director for Asia-Pacific. "Past generations have viewed it as a planning backwater. Today, the best and brightest are starting to see Asia as an exciting career challenge in its own right and an essential stepping stone to a global career."
This influx of foreign imports has been fuelled by a lack of talent in what has been an almost planning-moribund Asian advertising landscape.
"The depth of talent of local planners has definitely improved, but there is still a need to import top-level talent from planning-savvy markets like the UK," says Gavin Heron, chief executive of TBWA\Shanghai ,who has 10 years planning experience working in the region. "Demand is far outstripping supply so recruiting from outside the market is often the only solution." Touching down in Asia can be a daunting prospect for any foreign planner. The culture shock means an Everest-sized learning curve in order to get to grips with a myriad of language, cultural and local market idiosyncracies.
Robert Campbell, creative planner at Y&R for Southeast Asia, is a recent import himself, fresh off the boat four months ago. His task is to build planning cohesion across Y&R's operations. As such, he needs to understand both local markets and the multi-market picture for regional clients.
His favourite learning technique was to pull a leaf straight out of London or New York urban legend -- tap the mindset of the all-knowing taxi drivers. "You need to make contact with people in those markets not in advertising," argues Campbell. "For example, Lonely Planet (publisher of the ubiquitous travel guides), comedians, magazine editors -- all sorts of people to get an idea of what is really going on."
On a regional level, he set his planners in different markets tasks so he could compare and contrast the different results. For example, taking photographs of lunch crowds, creating lists of favourite cuisines, bands of the moment or popular television shows. "It is about understanding the market in non-marketing terms, beyond reports," he says. "It is getting a better grip of what the drivers are; a better grounding."
Bringing in foreigners does have its risks. Planning has, as one ad executive put it, "been in and out of fashion" before, with some previous imports leaving a less than illustrious legacy. "More than one agency has found that importing a planner -- not just from the West or Australia, but even from other Asian countries -- has resulted in a financial and organisational setback for the planning function in the office," says Sattar Khan, executive vice-president and head of multinational clients and strategy for McCann Worldgroup Asia. "(Some) imports were more preachers than performers, more prone to mistake the locals' lack of fluency in English for a lack of sophistication in thinking, and more keen to clamour for personal privileges than fit in with the organisation's cultural norms." Others are cynical that this new-found need for planners is in fact a sop by agencies in order to charge clients more money for their services.
"Ad agencies make more out of planning than other departments; it is over- valued and overrated," says one top advertising executive. "It is becoming a tool to justify fees from ad agencies, rather than creating more engaging ads. Agencies can charge clients more money for someone from New York or London than Asia, and many clients and agencies prefer foreigners." There is an advertising axiom that states that you can't have a great campaign without great planning, but you can have a great campaign without a planner. Thailand is a case in point. Certainly not known for its planning prowess or tradition, yet Thai advertising campaigns are consistently among the most awarded, exciting creative in the region.
"Planning is still like a small kid who has just started learning to walk," says Pinit Chantaprateep, deputy chairman and chief creative officer at JWT Thailand. "We are in luck that, from the past experience, creative and account people are trained to take a responsible role for thinking of the strategy and analysing the client's brand as well."
Ratan Malli, strategic planning director for Northeast Asia at JWT China, is less charitable about the long-term viability of Thailand's style of advertising. "Thai produces great creative -- expressions of simple brand propositions that has won some awards -- but you need to separate the role of planning and winning awards. Some of their ads don't have consumer insight. Overall, there is extremely poor planning skill in Thailand."
The fact that the planning renaissance this time around is predominantly client- driven -- not just a trendy agency caprice -- indicates that the discipline is not just here to stay, but will almost certainly significantly grow in importance across Asia. "Where there is a large multinational, there is a client," says Heron. "The increasing profile of planning in Asia is largely due to a maturing of marketing professionals."
The breakneck growth of countries such as India and the opening up of previously closed markets like China mean that clients need to rethink the complexity of their advertising strategy to compete. "It used to be the case that just getting high awareness for a product was enough to generate sales," says Woodward. "Now, you need really persuasive arguments to wrangle share from other brands." Unsurprisingly, the market sucking up the most planning recruits is China. "There are very few regional planners, and in Asia (excluding Japan), it is China that tends to be sucking in the time of top-level planners," says Heron. "As Asia becomes a key focus for many multinationals, the quality of their marketing departments and staff has improved. Many of these people come from markets where planning is well established and so, naturally, are looking for the same level of sophistication in their new, more challenging, market." The level of planning expertise in Asian agencies lags behind that of their counterparts in the US and Europe, says Pei Wen Wong, vice-president of brand and marketing for mobile network O2 in Asia. She argues that if Asian agencies want to be taken seriously by clients, developing strategic planning capability will grant them a seat at the top table.
"US and European agencies are more tied in to the decisions and overall strategy of the management," she says. "Agencies in Asia are still not as tied into the strategy piece with their clients or have come to a mature stage where the CEO looks to the agencies to deliver more value than brand awareness and successful advertising campaigns."
In terms of where the opportunities lie for foreign planners, as many local markets mature there is a certain resentment to foreign imports taking what are perceived as local ad roles. "Most of our expat planning directors now are not based in 'less planning-developed' countries like Indonesia or the Philippines, but in countries like Singapore and Australia that are most culturally accepting of expats," says Woodward. He points out that within Burnett's agencies -- at least at planning director level -- India, China, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines all have locals installed. Khan points out that many of the new wave of imported planners come not from the West but from neighbouring Asian countries, where "their entire upbringing has taught them how to cross cultures fluently and to be resourceful in infrastructure-poor environments".
The rise of planning is a sign that agencies are responding to the realities of market and client maturity. For an agency to remain competitive -- and win those all-important pitches that keep the machine running -- it is almost certain that planning will play a principal role.
"To go into a big pitch without an account planner is like saying, 'we don't have a copywriter but we are very good at writing copy'," says Khan. "In Asia, account planners are now seen as tangible evidence of an agency's strategic thinking capabilities. You don't want to go into a major pitch without one."
