The Account Planning Group convenes in Singapore

Hosted at new agency Newton Circus, the meeting opened with a presentation by the APG Asia chairman, GMT+8’s Neil Cotton, in which he addressed some of the issues surrounding the planning discipline.

Cotton said that Jeremy Bullmore’s thoughts on planners were as true today as they were over 30 years ago when the APG was first founded. “At your most valuable, you will illuminate and inspire; you simplify the complicated, provide insight and intuitive hypotheses and clarify and crystalise. At your least valuable, you can complicate the obvious, invent your own language, your own religion, your own self-congratulatory, inward-looking, impenetrable jargon.”

Helmed by a committee comprising Cotton, Publicis’ Richard McCabe, TBWA’s Robin Nayak, BBH’s Frank Reitgassl and Lowe’s T Krishna, this is APG's first representation in Asia outside of Australia.

Cotton said that APG was looking to raise the profile of, and provide a voice for, the planning discipline in the region.

Points for consideration and discussion included whether planners had lost sight of the world outside ‘their world’ and whether planners had also lost sight of the discipline's basics. “What is the perception or misperception of planning? Do we ‘settle too easily’ – should we be more ‘prickly’?” asked Cotton.

Nokia’s head of marketing for Southeast Asia and Pacific, Will Harris, then shared his thoughts on the planner’s perceived role as the voice of the consumer within the agency.

“With the advent of digital, the consumer has much more of a voice as we enter an age of real time marketing,” he said. With planners having lost some of their mystique, Harris said he thought digital planning was key to regaining it.

Nayak then chaired a panel discussion featuring McCabe, Cotton, Harris and Nokia’s Nic Burrows.