Admap published a writing competition results – best articles about “Planning 3.0”– How will we be planning in 2020? The winner, Nick Hirst said “We need to transcend the often polar disciplines of ‘conceptual’ (creative agency) and ‘practical’ (media agency) planning to deliver, not communications, but great brand experiences.”

I couldn’t agree more! Although mr. Nick Hirst’s and other rewarded articles were great, what really made an impression to me was the pre-words the judges wrote. They analyzed the articles they received and came to conclusion that the future of planning looks like… ‘We don’t know’, or at least, ‘we don’t agree’.

According to judges the most striking theme about the entries was not about how the entries were presented but how they represented a clear new chapter of planning, not necessarily a consistent chapter, but a new one nonetheless. This new era could be dubbed the, ‘the post-specialist era of planning’. 

Planning has grown around specialists in data and analytics, user experience, information architecture, trend analysts, digital strategy search optimizers, social media and crm gurus… Until now, the dominant conversation about strategy has been about the need for these specialists, and for them to be distinct and separate from what has gone before.

Entries to this Admap Prize competition no longer championed the specialists as skill sets that deserve their unique place. Instead, they argued that they should be the very future of planning in its entirety; the planning specialism becomes the planning mainstream.  According to judges, authors wrote of the data and analytics skill as simply becoming planning – all tasks of planning would become measurable and, therefore, the measurement/analytic skill would become planning. Or, the specialist skills of social media strategy would become the fundamental of brand planning, given the very social future that brands face.

According to main judge, JWT’s Guy Murphy two things will happen

1. There will be a sense of planning returning to be a more singular and holistic way of working. Certain planning tools will become the norm for all planners – just as the notion of ‘paid, earned and owned’ seems to have become standard currency for media thinking today.

2. Planning will become more influential. The assimilation of its new-found specialists skills will make it a richer, more effective and more confident force. It will make a decent fist of managing the huge and growing complexity that faces brand building and communication. This will shift the role it has been playing.

In my opinion 2020 is far far away and everything mentioned above is already happening. Planning is rapidly facing new requirements for its effectiveness and moving towards more holistic view. Actually this holistic approach is gaining momentum in general.

Last week IBM organized “Smarter business day 2012” event in Helsinki. Data analytics was an issue there too. What IBM’s director for Analytics division Juha Teljo presented that the whole analytics business is moving from application centered approach to analytics centered approach by 2020:

So, along with planning, also the whole infrastructure is becoming analytics – that is planning – centered.  Once I search about this matter, I also found IBM’s view on how to create Analytics Center of Excellence inside your own organisation. The 150-page material is attached here: 5Keys to BA Program Success

The winning article by Nick Hirst agreed with this idea of holistic planning. He recognized User Experience planners as the first breed of future planners: “User experience goes way beyond Information Architechture. While the latter is a specific discipline concerned with the organisation of information to ensure its swift, intuitive navigation, User Experience considers the experince of the user as a whole: their expectations, their level of interest, their attitudes  even how they feel. Concepts like surprise of disruption, or even entertainment – all proven tools for affective and effective communications – are anathema to a classical Information Architect, but entirely within the imaginative realm of the User Experience Architect.

Even now they think about both the effect of an indivicual, small experience – a piece of copy, a picture, the way a button workds – and the overall journey. Even now, some agencies are recognizsing the ‘planneriness’ of what they do, and reconceiving them as Experience Planners. But just imagine what would happen if we unleashed that kind of thinking on everything else that comms agencies do now.”

I think the future of planning will be even more amazing than expected and I do think that Nick Hirst’s dream is becoming reality. Here’s what I think:

1. Planning marketing will be about planning competitive advantage, that is corporate strategy and operations. see Forbes article here
2. Corporate Image will be more and more about actual experiences and shared opinions – planning will be about designing and managing customer interfaces and experience. Article here https://futurecmo.org/2012/11/10/marketing-do-or-die-managing-customer-interfaces/
3. Comms and marketing to customers will become service experiences – event based automatic communications that integrate with the customer’s situation and needs in any given location or interface. Marketing automation becomes service automation along the customer’s journey. The center of gravity will be the Customer Journey understanding and design.
4. Planning will become more holistic than ever – we are moving towards business design. At this point planners will become the McKinsey’s consultants of tomorrow or McKinsey’s consultant will take care of the business design on behalf of marketing planners of today. McKinsey is already moving towards customer journey and experience planning, see this article http://cmsoforum.mckinsey.com/article/winning-the-consumer-decision-journey#.UIOLl_Mukic.email I would take it even further, here’s why https://futurecmo.org/2012/10/21/customer-decision-making-journey-flow/

Companies that are taking analytics and planning seriously are already doing much better than their peers. By 2020 you really have to be great in order to survive. And let’s not forget – analytics is useless without understanding and decisions (generate corporate autism) – planning and management. I thinks this means the dawn for customer journey planning and management as the new breed of holistic planning work!

SEE ALSO:

“The CMO 2013 Study insights and what CMO’s should do now”

Lost insights and Corporate Blind Spots

Business Design with customer centricity

How to enable smart company and avoid corporate autism

Author: Toni Keskinen, Marketing Architect & Customer Journey Designer

http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonikeskinen

Join FutureCMO Movement LinkedIn Group here