Making sense of account planning in Romania

(1)

University of Amsterdam

Master Thesis

Making sense of account planning in

Romania

Author: Georgiana Floroiu Student number: 10971548 Supervisor: Prof. dr. Eugène Loos Date: 24.06.2016

(2)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA Abstract

This research studies perceptions on account planning among Romanian practitioners.

Sensemaking was used as a central theoretical framework, three of its features organizing the study: (1) labeling account planning, (2) account planning in retrospection, (3) presumptions about the future of account planning. A qualitative approach was used to interview 12 planning experts from advertising agencies to gain insights into Romanian account planning. Results indicate the differences on defining the practice and the similarities in planners’ actions and the techniques they apply. It was further found that doing research and finding insights is a very important part of a planner’s job, and that account planning is considered by the majority a necessity, more than a luxury. Future research directions are proposed, for both local and global advertising markets.

INTRODUCTION

Account planning is a strategic role within an advertising agency which involves interpreting qualitative consumer research data in order to find insights and integrate them in the creative development of communication strategies (Hackley, 2003). The majority of studies about account planning were conducted so far in the UK or US (Patwardhan, Patwardhan, & Vasavada-Oza, 2011), therefore there is a gap in research about this practice in other

(smaller) countries. Investigating account planning in an emerging country like Romania will help add some insights into the global advertising trends. This study used sensemaking as a central theory (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld, 2005) and focused on comprehending account planning in Romania. The question directing the research was:what is the perception of Romanian advertising professionals about account planning and how they believe account planning will evolve in Romania?

(3)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA

According to the study made by Lopez-Preciado (2013) in Mexico, account planning is defined more by the agency’s philosophy than by the discipline itself. Account planners are considered a luxury for some agencies and a necessity for others, and can have different roles and positions in the hierarchy of the agency. As the sample of the study consists of Romanian practitioners from different agencies, that allowed the comparison of their corporate cultures, get a grasp of its various applications, understanding the different labels they attribute to account planning and how they think the practice will change in the future.

We planned to conduct expert interviews with 15 account planners, but the saturation point was hit after 12 interviews. The interviews were semi-structured and the interview guide touched upon three sensitizing concepts (labeling, retrospectivity, presumptions), which lead to different topics based on the literature review. In Bowen’s (2006) view sensitizing concepts “draw attention to important features of social interaction and provide guidelines for research in specific settings.” (p. 14) The literature review contains three parts: one concerning the practice of account planning, one on the Romanian communication industry and one about the theoretical framework of sensemaking.

The study makes an important contribution to the communication field as no industry wide data regarding the understanding of account planning among Romanian practitioners is available. As Hackley (2013) said “researchers have begun to theorise the atheoretical world of advertising practice.” (p. 313) Furthermore, the concept of sensemaking is an important framework for understanding organizational life, yet, as far as we know, it has not been applied to analyze account planning practices within the advertising industry in Romania.

(4)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The practice of account planning

The first advertising agency was founded in Philadelphia, US, in 1842 by Volney B. Palmer (Vos, 2013). It took over 120 years for the ad industry to embrace account planning as a stand alone practice, the first ones to introduce it being the British leading agencies J. Walter Thomson (JWT) and Boase Massimi Pollitt (Patwardhan et al., 2011). JWT coined the term “account planning” back in the 1960s, however presently the practice can be also referred as strategic planning or planning, depending on the agency. According to Baskin and Pickton (2003) “account planning appears to be a function little known and even less understood outside the marketing communications industry even after more than 30 years since its original inception” (p. 416)

In our understanding account planning is a key role in an advertising agency that entails studying the consumer in order to find insights that will help brands build successful campaigns. Yet, there are as many definitions of account planning as there are ways of practicing it. (Lopez-Preciado, 2013) Even though agencies from both sides of the Atlantic have been including planning in their advertising management philosophy for decades, there is still disagreement on how to define it and what its contribution is. (Hackley, 2003) Baskin (2001) said that at the core of the practice is the understanding of the consumer and the brand, finding a key insight to fix the communication problem and making sure the solution reaches the target group. However, account planners have a more complex role in an agency, beyond being just “the voice of the consumer” (Pollitt, 1979).

Crosier and Pickton (2003) studied all the existing definitions at that time and worked on developing a viable working definition of the discipline, as follows:

(5)

Account planning is the marketing services agency discipline that: researches and defines the client's offering and marketplace; applies strategic thinking, grounded in intelligence and insights, to campaign planning; briefs account-handling, creative and media specialists; collaborates with them in a team, to produce pre-tested, creatively distinctive and accurately targeted marketing communications campaigns, integrated across all appropriate media; assesses, quantitatively and qualitatively, the

effectiveness of the outcome. (Crosier & Pickton, 2003, p. 414)

Even if the academic research about account planning was concentrated around the British and American markets, there are a few studies examining the practice in countries with less mature and smaller advertising markets (Butcher & McCulloch, 2003; Lopez-Preciado, 2013; Patwardhan et al., 2010). The insights of these three studies were used as a guideline on how to research the matter in emerging countries, proving the necessity of similar studies in other countries and the importance of identifying the differences of adoption of account planning. Also, the studies were used for building the interview guide (see Data collection chapter for more information).

Patwardhan et al. (2011) investigated the planning perceptions in the Indian ad industry and concluded that account planning was seen as beneficial and useful by the majority of the advertising professionals. Nonetheless, planning usage was proved to be unequal among Indian agencies, only 37% of the respondents reported that the practice is fully integrated in their agency activities.

Lopez-Preciado (2013) studied how account planning was adopted in the Mexican advertising industry and what the roles and responsibilities of account planners are. One of the main findings referred to the importance of corporate culture in conceptualizing planning.

(6)

Based on that, account planners can be either part of the account management department or the creative department, and their role can vary between “strategy development”, “new business development” and “creative booster”.

Furthermore, in an exploratory study from Australia (Butcher & McCulloch, 2003), in which only senior account planning directors were interviewed, it was found that “the

expectations of the planners' role probably exceed the individual's capacity to deliver on that role.” (p. 473) The authors of the Australian research use the term “super-planner” to

describe this agency person that has to fulfill numerous roles and own multiple skills. Yet, the respondents claimed that planners in Australia have a low level of status and respect, making recruitment for this position a challenge because of the lack of trust.

The Romanian communication industry

Based on a report by Zenith Romania Advertising Expenditure Forecast, 2014 was the first year when the Romanian communication industry recorded a 3.6% increase. The investments in this industry continued to rise by 1.9% in 2015 and was expected to accumulate to 403.9 millions USD by the end of the year (IAA, 2014). Moreover, Romania is starting to become a creative hub, many advertising agencies are competing in famous advertising competitions and win (for example, McCann Erickson Romania won for the 4th time the title of Agency of The Year in the Golden Drum 2015 awards). These are just some of the reasons that prove the Romanian communication industry is expanding and it’s worth investigating if and how account planning plays a role in this.

Furthermore, prior research has proven that planning has been imported differently by various host nations (Butcher & McCulloch, 2003; Lopez-Preciado, 2013; Patwardhan et al., 2010), each country embracing the discipline according to the local circumstances of the

(7)

market. A reason more to look into how an emerging country such as Romania actively adopted account planning and what the similarities and differences with other nations are. In the study conducted by Patwardhan et al. (2010), the majority of the Indian respondents reported to having incorporated global features of account planning with indigenous techniques, appropriate for the Indian consumer (for example the brand chakras, a strategic brand planning tool from JWT India).

Besides the local differences in embracing the discipline, a global professional establishment named Account Planning Group (APG) was founded in several countries to represent the interests of account planners worldwide and spread among them the best practices. An APG chapter was started in Romania in 2007, however only a few online sources mention the organization, the last one dating from 2009. Even if no written information about its dissolution could be found, we can make the assumption that the Romanian planning market was not prepared for such an organization yet.

The Romanian communication industry has been overlooked in the academic literature even though it is believed that Romania will have the fastest-growing economy in Central and Eastern Europe in 2016 (Bernovici, 2016), growth that will most probably influence the advertising sector.

Therefore, the research question of this study is: what is the perception of Romanian advertising professionals about account planning and how, in their opinion, will account planning evolve in Romania?

Sensemaking as a theoretical framework

The central theory of the research is sensemaking, a concept that fills important gaps in organizational theory, highly relevant for this study since agencies are business

(8)

organizations. “Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action.” (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 409) This theoretical approach provides a foundation for our investigation though we do not apply the full extent of the theory. The authors highlight several distinctive features of sensemaking and three of them will be used in this research: 1. sensemaking is about labeling, 2. sensemaking is retrospective, 3. sensemaking is about presumption. These three features were used as a guideline to organize the results and build the concept indicator model (see Annex 2).

When using the term labeling, Weick et al. (2005) refer to the act of translating and categorizing chaotic experiences into clear recurring behaviors and actions with meaning. “Labeling ignores differences among actors and deploys cognitive representations that are able to generate recurring behaviors” (p. 411) As there is no widely accepted definition for account planning, labeling helped generate common ground between advertisers. Moreover, planners used retrospectivity to make sense of the discipline, by looking back over their past experiences and the roles and obstacles they had in the agency “and seeing a pattern.” (Weick et al., 2005, p. 412)

Lastly, sensemaking is about presumption, “to connect the abstract with the concrete” (Weick et al., 2005, p. 412). The planners used their knowledge, which is the abstract aspect, together with concrete cues to come up with several presumptions about the future of account planning. As sensemaking is a matter of language and communication, interviewing the account planners helped actualize situations and environments.

(9)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA METHODS

Participants

The sample of the study consisted of people working as account planners in Romanian advertising agencies. As practitioners in the field we are researching, they have the best understanding about the current state of account planning in Romania and they can make highly accurate assumptions about what to expect from the future. Regarding the sample size, the total number of participants we planned to interview was 15. Since the study was a

qualitative research, we used as a guiding principle the concept of saturation (Mason, 2010) and considered the saturation point was hit after the 12th interview, meaning more data would not lead to more information.

Patwardhan et al. (2011) found that overall the account planners they interviewed in India had similar positive perceptions about planning “regardless of age, agency role (servicing, creative etc.) and advertising experience.” (p. 275) Therefore the age of the participants is not relevant for our study, the only condition was that at the moment of the interview the participants had gathered at least one year work experience as account planners. We considered it was important for the respondents to have a minimum experience level as it is mandatory for the study that they have a basic understanding of their role in the agency and their job requirements. The participants were both females (N=5) and males (N=7) and were selected in order to either work in different advertising agencies (N=7), or to have different levels of experience (from 1 to 15 years), to have a more broad understanding of the subject and also to ensure the variety in the sample (as described in Table 1).

(10)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA Table 1. Respondents’ Characteristics

Respondent Gender Years of experience Agency size

Respondent 1 F 1 year 50-60 employees

Respondent 2 M 9 years 50-60 employees

Respondent 3 M 15 years 50-60 employees

Respondent 4 F 1.5 years 250-300 employees

Respondent 5 F 10 years 250-300 employees

Respondent 6 M 9 years 50 - 100 employees

Respondent 7 M 11 years 30 employees

Respondent 9 F 10 years 120 employees

Respondent 10 F 5 years 120 employees

Data collection

We chose to conduct expert interviews based on our past interaction with account planners. We took into consideration they have busy schedules and would not take the time to fill in a survey. Moreover, they are very competitive, as the entire advertising industry is, and would be secretive and defensive as to their roles if we were to organize a focus group with

practitioners from other agencies. As opposed to a face-to-face interview, where they could be more open, share different details about past projects and sincere opinions about their job.

(11)

Most of the participants were recruited through our personal network and some of them through snowball sampling (Handcock & Gile, 2011), recommendations from the existing study subjects. The interviews were conducted within a period of 15 days and took place in the majority of cases in the office of the participants, as they were familiar with the environment and was easier to talk about this subject in the same space they practice it. Just one interview was conducted in a public space, a cafe.

Before the interviews we asked for their consent, after informing them that their name would not be revealed and that we will record their answers. The interviews were semi-structured, therefore the interview guide was used only as a reference, extra questions were included, according to the flow of the discussion. Two important questions that arose were about the importance of doing research and finding insights. During the interviews we took notes of things that would help us during the analyzing process. All the interviews were recorded with a voice recorder, saved in digital format and then transcribed.

The interview guide was developed in Romanian (see Annex 1 for a translated version), and touched three sensitizing concepts (labeling, retrospectivity, presumptions). The interviews started with broader questions moving towards more specific ones. We asked the participants to label account planning, because every practitioner has a different way of defining it, as mentioned in the theoretical background section. The next topic used

retrospectivity to lead the discussion towards the role of account planners in the agency and the dynamics with other departments. The last topic challenged the respondents to make presumptions and imagine the practice of account planning in the future.

In building the questions for the interviews, three studies were used as a guideline: for the first part we used Patwardhan et al. (2010) as they investigated the different planning

(12)

usage in Indian advertising agencies and how the planners define the practice. Next we used the categories found by Lopez-Preciado (2013) in Mexico for the roles an account planner has (strategy development, new business development and/or creative booster) and the how the agency is structured (planning can be more part of the account management department or more of the creative one). Moreover, we used Butcher & McCulloch (2003) questions about the obstacles the planners face (strength of the creative team and/or resistance by the account service staff) and the categories of agencies based on their adoption of planning: “the imposters” (agencies that fake the incorporation of planners in their teams), “the

fairweathers” (agencies with an opportunistic approach to planning based on economic reasons) and “true believers” (agencies that show a long term approach to planning). Analysis

After transcribing the recordings, we started adding codes and organizing all the information by using the computer software Atlas.ti. Using this software ensures that the process is clear and transparent, in such way that another person can retrace our steps just by looking at the program. (Friese, 2014) During the analysis process, we read the notes made during the interviews and wrote memos to make sure we will include all our observations in the results section.

Even if the interviews were in Romanian, the codes were created in English. We started with open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) by reviewing the data line by line in order to have an overview of the information gathered. Different types of codes were used, like thematic codes to mark the discussed topic, variation codes for the things that are being said about the topic, and codes to indicate the attitudes or the feelings expressed by the

(13)

& Corbin, 1998) by making groups of similar codes according to the three sensitizing

concepts. The result of the analysis process was a concept-indicator model explained in detail in the next section of this study.

In order to show that the findings were a true reflection of the phenomenon that we are looking into, we tested the reliability and validity of the study (Morse et al, 2002). For reliability we tested the interview guide before starting the interviews and adjusted it accordingly. The pretest consisted in an interview with an account planner that was not part of the final list of respondents. He suggested we include questions about the tools planners use in building a strategy.

To check the internal validity, we used peer debriefing and thick description. Peer debriefing means we discussed the study with some of our colleagues and the thesis supervisor, to allow for a fresh outlook on the data and test whether we see the data in the same way.

In the results section we used quotations, meaning thick description. Only the most relevant quotes that were included in the study were translated from Romanian to English. For external validity we looked at transferability, to what extent this study can be applied to different contexts. An example could be that part of our study about the future of account planning could be transferable to studies researching the future of Romanian advertising in general.

RESULTS

Because this research uses sensemaking as the central theoretical framework, we used three distinctive features to categorise the responses we got from the interviewees in order to understand account planning in Romania. We start with labeling account planning, where we

(14)

have included all the definitions given to planning by the respondents, the steps taken into building a strategy for a campaign and the tools used. The second category is account

planning in retrospection, containing all the roles an account planner has, how the research is done and the insights for campaigns are found and what obstacles are faced by planners. The last part of the interviews covered the presumptions about the future of account planning, with both positive and negative answers.

Labeling account planning

Lopez-Preciado (2013) mentions in his study that every corporate culture that adopted account planning in Mexico had a distinct definition for the practice. Our research found there are differences on how the Romanian account planners understand the practice, but also similarities in their actions and the techniques they apply.

Insight into the understanding of account planning. When asked how they would

define account planning, the respondents based their responses in relation to three elements: the consumers, the creatives and the clients/the brands.

First, almost all the respondents mentioned that one of the most important jobs a planner has is to understand the consumer and its needs, consistent with Pollitt’s definition (1979) from decades ago, who asserted the planner is the voice of the consumer. The planner should like people and feel empathy, to lose all preconceptions, be curious to get to know the consumer and observe their behaviour.

A planner should want to know a little bit of everything, to not have barriers for things that are not of interest to him, to have some knowledge of psychology,

sociology and neuromarketing. To not get lost in details, to go deep to the essence of things. (R10)

(15)

Similarly, the planner was described as “a detective and a lateral thinker” (R9), his role being to investigate, to gather information about the consumer and the market, to select the most important findings, to interpret and translate them. He was compared with “a chemistry lab” (R10) because a lot of data is mixed together and the result should be distilled, clear and concentrated. The planner should be “down to earth, fast, to be able to see the big picture, to connect the dots.” (R11)

The second category of definitions were related to the creative department, and how the planner collaborates with the creatives. Even if the metaphors used by the respondents were different, they all pointed to the same direction: the planner’s primary role is to help the creatives come up with the best ideas. R5 suggested that strategy is a springboard for

creatives, the main source of information for them, their library and librarian. R8 compared an advertising agency with a football court, the planner being the player who passes the ball for the creatives to score. “A strategic planner is a servant for creatives” (R12), a very good one can give them an amazing idea and make them think it’s theirs, the creative part should fit perfectly with the strategic part. (R9)

If you think of a concert, the creatives are dancing and jumping in the first row, while the planners are sitting in the back, more quiet and observant. Or you could say the planner is the screenwriter, an intermediate, the raw material for others that can’t be used as such. (R8)

The last type of definitions given to planning were related to the clients and the brands. Some of the respondents believe strategic planning should be an interface between the research company and the client, to translate the data for the client, and also “the department that

(16)

reduces frustration for both clients and creatives, that conciliate the client’s problem with the creative solution”. (R1)

Moreover, the planner should understand the brand and try to find common ground between the consumer’s needs and the brand’s needs, and make them work together. Part of his job is to look at the brand’s communication history, to analyze the market and to

comprehend the client’s business model. “The planner is not a creative nerd, he is a businessman”. (R5)

The strategic process and the tools used. One important aspect in understanding the

practice of account planning are the tools used by the practitioners in building strategies. If in India (Patwardhan, Patwardhan, & Vasavada-Oza, 2011) the planners have developed local tools, specific to the cultural background, in Romania, according to our study, there were no instruments created and used by Romanian account planners for the local communication industry. On the contrary, all the planners that work in agencies that are part of an

international network said they have various working structures and tools used across the entire network. “There’s a network knowledge and expertise you can access to help you clarify who the consumer is, or some international research that offers you some trends.” (R12)

When asked about the strategic process, three types of processes were identified, based on the type of the client: 1. there’s a new client and you take part in a pitch, 2. an old client gives you a brief for a brand you already know, 3. when the agency takes the initiative and wants to come up with a campaign for an existing client.

All the respondents described the same steps when working on a campaign for new products.

(17)

After the briefing and the debriefing with the client, the planner looks at what was done in the past, what the competition did, finds an insight about the consumer that overlaps with the brand and then comes up with some strategic directions for the creative team. After the creative proposals are finalized, the planner works on the presentation for the client, writes the arguments for each proposal, puts them into a story and describes the thinking behind the idea. (R10)

Another similarity in the process was found in the percentage of time that is allocated to planning when building a campaign. The answer was 30%, as the planners agreed that the creatives should have and need most of the time given for any particular project.

Account planning for Romanian brands versus international brands. We asked the

respondents if there is a difference between conceiving a strategic direction for a local brand and an international one and without exception, they all said yes. The reason given was that international brands already have a well-established strategy and tool-kits that the Romanian planner can only adapt in order to make them relevant for locals while maintaining the same large communication platforms as for all the other countries. “They come up with some macro solutions and you need to do some fine tuning here, locally.” (R11) A different approach from the one used when working on a local brand because then the planners can build a strategy from scratch. (R12)

The Romanian account planning community. The majority of the interviewees complained about the lack of a Romanian planning community and considered the few existing initiatives ok, but not enough. One of them is a Facebook group called “Planners Ro” created half a year ago by two strategic planners from two large advertising agencies

(18)

where (at the time of writing) 35 Romanian planners shared industry-relevant articles, commented and occasionally collaborated.

Another initiative that many planners thought was worth mentioning was a meeting organized by Effie, the advertising awards offered for the most effective marketing

communications ideas. All the Romanian planners were invited to that meeting to be informed about changes in the judging process of the case studies.

A controversial subject for the planners was the dismantling of the Account Planning Group (APG) Romania. Some of them said that the association might come back to life, other thought that there is no point because many good planners left the country so there are not enough practitioners compared to the size of the advertising industry to justify the recreation of a professional association. (R12)

While R11 thinks that “account planners tend to keep for themselves the researches and the data, to be more individualistic”, R9 said that “planners are more united than other people from agencies, I can easily tell you five account planners from other agencies that I admire and with whom I can talk about campaigns, and have informal meetings.” The difference in perspectives might be caused by the fact that they are part of different professional generations, R11 having only three years work experience and R9 over ten years.

Account planning in retrospection

The respondents were asked to look back at their experiences as an account planner to get a better understanding of their day-to-day work and the results show noticeable differences between the corporate cultures of the agencies and the way planning was adopted.

(19)

Role of the account planner in the agency. Previous research (Lopez-Preciado, 2013)

found a planner should have three types of roles: strategy development, new business

development and creative booster. While most of the interviewees agreed all these three roles are part of their job to some degree, there were two different perspectives: R10 said a planner has considerably more roles than just three, “it’s like a sum of roles that you need to play and a sum of characters you need to identify with”. Contrary to his perspective, R7 thinks

planning is very simple, “a matter of common sense, I feel like people just want to complicate things when in fact they are quite simple.”

Moreover, when discussing about the role of the account planner, a new topic was brought to attention, namely whether planning is a luxury or a necessity. Based on their responses, in Romania planning is considered more a necessity than a luxury, even if the number of planners is low compared to the size of the other departments in an advertising agency. Some of the planners interviewed mentioned that the importance of account planning increases as the clients are starting to rely less on creative solutions and more on strategic ones. (R6, R9) On the other hand, there were interviewees who said planning is a luxury, as there are so many good agencies that function very well without a strategic department, and even if they have one it is not used across all clients.

It's clearly a luxury. The main objective of the planner is to make himself useful for the agency because the agency can operate without a planner. That's the biggest danger for a planner. And a planner who does not understand this is doomed. (R3) One respondent said many professionals in the industry are starting to realize that there is a need for a planner, but not everyone understands what for. “An account planner is like a panic button, he has to disentangle and fix other people’s mess.” (R10) Likewise, Blais

(20)

(2003) mentions that planners “became the go-to people for everything remotely related to strategic thinking.”

Prior research (Lopez-Preciado, 2013) puts the planning team either closer to the client service department or the creative department. In our study six out of twelve planners said account planning is a separate entity, a standalone department, three placed it closer to client service and three to the creative team.

Doing research and finding insights. Two main components of a planner’s job are

doing research and finding insights. The results show that research is being done similarly across all the agencies, depending on the deadline and the information available from the client, as opposed to finding insights, where each planner has his/her own way of doing things.

Some respondents believe a planner should “do his research constantly, to store constantly” (R10), to go on the field, be close to the consumer, observe its behaviour in his environment, to not settle on being just a “Google planner” (R11), a desk-bound researcher. Even if, in the best case scenario, the client gives access to multiple studies and sufficient information, that does not guarantee the success of the campaign, the planner needs to analyze it in order to find an insight. “Many are under the impression that information gives them power but actually power comes from how you interpret the information.“ (R11)

An insight is an observation less obvious to others, about the consumer or the brand, that can be used as a differentiator when building the campaign. On the one hand, some planners say insights are found via research, listening to what people say in focus groups or reading the statistics, translating the numbers into creative action. On the other hand, insights seem to be more related to the gut feeling of the planner, “there are some things that can’t be

(21)

extracted from research” (R8), it’s not wise to rely only on what people declare in focus groups (R10). 11 out of 12 respondents acknowledged the importance of an insight, only one believing that the stake is not with finding the insight but predicting the brand’s problem. “Only 7% of the brands in the world have a good insight, so a brand can live without one”. (R12)

Obstacles the account planners face. The biggest obstacle identified by the

respondents was the resistance of the creative department to the strategic input from the planners. “Creatives have huge egos” (R11), they want to find the insights themselves, they are stubborn and will fight with your strategic directions if the argumentation is not clear. (R5) Nonetheless, one of the planners (R9) insisted a large agency should not tolerate this kind of behaviour, all the departments should work together to form an efficient team.

Regarding the adoption of planning in the agencies, three planners said their agency could be categorised as “the fairweathers” and nine as “the true believers”, in conformity with the definitions given by Butcher and McCulloch (2003).

Presumptions about the future of account planning

Towards the end of the interview, the respondents were asked to think about the future of account planning in Romania and what trends might arise.

Positive presumptions about the future of account planning. It is believed planning

will continue growing because of the growth of the advertising industry as a whole, but most planners think it will evolve into something different. Two opposite global trends were mentioned by the respondents: specialization versus combo. Half of the interviewees believe that in the future the planner will become more specialized on a niche, for example a digital planner that will focus on understanding the consumer’s behaviour online. Similarly,

(22)

Hackley and Tiwsakul (2011) when talking about the mark the digital age leaves on

advertising management and professional identity, mentioned that advertising professionals are under pressure to come up with solutions which fit the new digital landscape.

It seems that account planning develops towards a very clear specialization and it is good because you can go very deep, to the essence of things, but on the other hand it’s necessary to take into account that people are still people, be it in a physical store or an online one. (R10)

The opposite trend that might be borrowed by the Romanian agencies refers to the

disappearance of strict roles in all the departments, meaning a strategic planner could be also an art director, or a project manager, “people with mixed skills will take down the barriers which exist between the departments.” (R1)

In the future planning services might be separated between development and

consulting, according to some of the respondents. (R5, R9, R10, R11) Development services will be the ones offered today by all the planning departments, and consulting services will be provided by consultants who will offer only recommendations to clients.

Negative presumptions about the future of account planning. Just a few interviewees

believed that planning departments will decrease in size in case the advertising industry will go through an economic crisis again.

I think fewer agencies will have planning in the future if things will evolve in the same way on the market. Unfortunately, the big players in communication in

Romania are international companies that work with international platforms. And in this case the planner’s job is very reduced. On the other hand there are many local brands which require strategy but do not understand they need it and if they do

(23)

understand it, they find it an expensive service because they can’t see its finality. (R12)

Others think a consultant does not solve a problem, it's just a false illusion. Consultants are good salesmen, very charismatic, with cheaper service packages than an agency’s but they have no interest in finishing the project as they are paid by the hour. (R2, R4)

Based on sensemaking, the central theoretical framework for this research, and its three features we used the results to build a concept indicator model (see Annex 2) with three dimensions: labeling account planning, account planning in retrospection and presumptions about the future of account planning.

CONCLUSION & DISCUSSION

This qualitative research looked into the practice of account planning in the Romanian context. Three sensitizing concepts, labeling, retrospectivity and presumptions, guided the interviews and helped built the concept indicator model. Our results uncovered different issues associated with the understanding of account planning by both the planner and the agency. As our study was the first of this kind to be undertaken in Romania, further research efforts need to occur for more firm conclusions to be drawn. However, we can underline some important findings about the Romanian account planning from our research.

Firstly, when trying to define account planning, the planners gave responses that can be split in three categories: definitions related to the consumer, the creatives or the clients/the brands. Even though Crosier and Pickton (2003) worked on developing a viable working definition of the discipline, they failed to mention the close relationship that exists between the planners and the creatives, and how the planner’s primary role is to help the creatives come up with the best ideas.

(24)

Moreover, the Romanian account planners we interviewed told us there were no strategic tools created specifically for the local communication industry, the majority of them using various international working structures. A different result to the one found by

Patwardhan et. al (2011) in India, where the planners have developed instruments specific to the Indian cultural background, such as the brand chakras.

No major differences were identified in the workflow of an agency and in the percentage of time that is allocated to planning when building a campaign. While the Australian advertising industry was reluctant in embracing the Western planning model (Butcher & McCulloch, 2003), in Romania almost all the agencies accepted the imported concept. Only one difference was mentioned by R3 between the Romanian approach and the international one. According to him, outside the country, after planners give the brief to creatives, there is no resistance to the strategic directions and no negotiation about the creative ideas.

When talking about the role the account planner has in the agency, most of the Romanian interviewees agreed with the three roles identified in Mexico by Lopez-Preciado (2013). Yet, one planner said it’s more than that, it’s a sum of roles, similar to the “super-planner” Crosier et al. (2003) refers to, defined as a planner that requires multiple skills and one that could successfully handle more roles.

Another mentionable result was finding out that planners in Romania consider

account planning to be more a necessity than a luxury. Some respondents think the practice is becoming important because clients are starting to rely less on creative solutions and more on strategic ones. Conversely, Nyilasy, Canniford and Kreshel (2013) maintained “it has long

(25)

been recognised that creativity can extend positive consumer and marketplace leverage beyond what rational planning would predict.”

Regarding the adoption of planning in the agencies, the results showed that nine out of twelve Romanian planners said their agency could be categorised as “true believers”, very different to the results Butcher and McCulloch (2003) found in Australia, where only a handful of agencies could be considered “true believers”. Hence, participants in our study agreed with Pollitt’s (1979) premise of the need for total commitment to the role on the part of the agencies. Moreover, same as in India (Patwardhan et. al, 2011), the majority of the respondents, regardless of size of agency or years of experience, “indicated that their agencies used planning at least in a basic way; only a very few reported no adoption.” (p. 273)

When asked to think about the future of account planning, the interviewees believed planning will continue expanding because of the growth of the advertising industry, in line with the presumptions made by Barry et al. in 1987, who observed that external or market factors have been key drivers in the evolution of the practice worldwide.

Therefore our research question “what is the perception of Romanian advertising professionals about account planning and how they believe account planning will evolve in Romania?” can be answered shortly by mentioning that account planning is perceived as a necessity, as an important and complex role in an advertising agency that will grow in the future, even if it might change to adapt to the needs and drivers of the communication industry.

(26)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA Limitations

A first limitation to our study is the lack of industry-wide data and academic studies about the Romanian advertising industry. More qualitative and quantitative studies about the day-to-day work in a Romanian agency and the collaboration between departments would be useful. Then we would be able to compare our results to other studies and draw some more specific conclusions about the Romanian communication market. Secondly, data collection and analysis were done only by one person, extra help would have streamlined the process and might have offered a second opinion on how to interpret the data. Thirdly, the interviews have been conducted exclusively with representatives of agencies in Bucharest - although the capital city is still considered the creative hub and the powerhouse of the industry in

Romania as a whole, this focus can be seen as limiting to the scope of the research. And lastly, a few interviews did not occur under the best circumstances, namely one of them happened in a cafe surrounded by noise and potential distractions, and two respondents (R2, R3) insisted on taking part in the interviews at the same time as they worked in the same agency, therefore some of their responses might have been influenced by the presence of the other person.

Future research directions

This study offers a snapshot of the current perceptions account planners have on the practice in Romania. The results could be considered a benchmark for future studies, either on the Romanian advertising industry or for comparative studies with other countries. The relevancy of this study is given by the investigation of local planning attitudes that will contribute to the global communication literature. Future research could study the perspectives on planning of account directors, client service managers or the owners of the agencies to see how they

(27)

understand the practice and what role they think it should play in the overall strategic development of the agencies.

Moreover, the study could be replicated over a longer period of time with more respondents in order to get more accurate results. Keeping track of the Romanian planning trend would supply useful data for both local and global markets. Also, it might be worth researching into whether Romanian practitioners will develop specific tools for the local market, thus moving away from the currently more prevalent practice of 'importing' tools and structures from the mainly Western professional tradition.

(28)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA References

Baskin, M. (2001), “What is account planning? (And what do account planners do exactly?) A revised millennium definition”', Retrieved April 17, 2016. From: www.apg.org.uk Baskin, M., Pickton, D. (2003). Account planning – from genesis to revelation, Marketing

Intelligence & Planning, 21, (7), 416-424.

Barry, T. E., Peterson, R. L., & Todd, W. B. (1987). The role of account planning in the future of advertising agency research. Journal of Advertising Research, 27(1), 15-21. Bernovici, A. (2016) “Romania could be the fastest-growing economy in CEE, Erste

estimates”, Retrieved April 17, 2016. From: http://www.romaniajournal.ro/romania-could-be-the-fastest-growing-economy-in-cee-erste-estimates/

Blais, E. (2003). What account planning was meant to be: Agencies are in a unique position to galvanize insights, strategy, and creativity. Marketing Magazine, 108(40), 30-30. Bowen, G. A. (2006). Grounded theory and sensitizing concepts. International journal of

qualitative methods, 5(3), 12-23.

Butcher, K., & McCulloch, R. (2003). A lack of true believers in the account planning discipline in Australia? Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 21(7), 473-479. Crosier, K., Grant, I., & Gilmore, C. (2003). Account planning in Scottish advertising

agencies: a discipline in transition. Journal of Marketing Communications, 9(1), 1-15. Crosier, K., Pickton, D. (2003). Marketing intelligence and account planning: insights from

the experts, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 21 (7), 410-415.

Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2014). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. London: Sage.

(29)

Hackley, C. (2003). Account Planning: Current Agency Perspectives on an Advertising Enigma. Journal of Advertising Research, 43, 235-245.

Hackley, C. (2003). How divergent beliefs cause account team conflict. International Journal of Advertising, 22(3), 313-331.

Hackley, C. & Tiwsakul, R. (2011) .Advertising Management and Professional Identity in the Digital Age.In Mark Deuze (Ed), Managing Media Work (pp. 209-216). London: Sage.

Handcock, M. S., & Gile, K. J. (2011). Comment: On the concept of snowball sampling. Sociological Methodology, 41(1), 367-371.

IAA (2014). Piața de publicitate din România intră pe un trend ascendent. [The advertising market in Romania enters on an upward trend.] Retrieved January 16, 2016. From: http://www.iaa.ro/Articole/Analize/Piața-de-publicitate-din-romania-intra-pe-un-trend-ascendent/7446.html

Lopez-Preciado, L. (2013). Account Planning in the Mexican Advertising Industry: A Snapshot of a Discipline in Growth. International Journal of Communication, 7, 1754–1767.

Mason, M. (2010). Sample size and saturation in PhD studies using qualitative interviews. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research,11, (3). Morse, J. M., Barrett, M., Mayan, M., Olson, K., & Spiers, J. (2002). Verification strategies

for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research. International journal of qualitative methods, 1(2), 13-22.

Nyilasy, G., Canniford, R., & J. Kreshel, P. (2013). Ad agency professionals' mental models of advertising creativity. European Journal of Marketing,47(10), 1691-1710.

(30)

Patwardhan, P., Patwardhan, H., & Vasavada-Oza, F. (2011). Does planning make perfect? How advertising practitioners in India perceive account planning, Asian Journal of Communication, 21 (3), 262-278.

Pollitt, S. (1979). How I started account planning in agencies. Campaign, 20, 29-30. Weick, K. E, Sutcliffe, K. M., Obstfeld, D. (2005) Organizing and the Process of

Sensemaking. Organization Science, 16, (4), 409–421.

Vos, T. P. (2013). Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency. American Journalism, 30(4), 450-472.

(31)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA Annex 1. Interview guide

Procedure:

● I will indicate the topic: research on the practice of account planning in Romania. ● I would like to record the conversation. You have agreed to this in an earlier time

when you signed the informed consent, do you still not mind me recording the conversation?

● I will use this interview for the purpose of writing a paper at the University. In this paper no references to any specific individual will be mentioned and therefore it is completely anonymous.

● Do you have any further questions before starting? 1. Labeling account planning

Aim: insight into the understanding of account planning and the feelings towards it

For how many years have you been practicing planning? Could you tell me how would you define this practice? What steps are you following when building the strategy for a campaign?

What planning tools and techniques do you use? And did you have a chance to work for international brands, were they different from Romanian ones? Do you think there is a lack of a Romanian planning community?

Items:

● information and feelings on account planning ● doing account planning for Romanian brands

versus international brands ● planning community 2. Account planning in

retrospection

Aim: insight into opinions and experiences regarding the practice of account planning in a Romanian advertising agency

Now that I’ve got an overview of how you define and understand account planning, I would like to dig deeper into this. Can you describe what is the role of the account planner in your agency?

● strategy development ● new business development ● creative booster

● other?

Would you say the planning team is more part of the account management department or the creative

(32)

And how is the interaction with the other departments? Is planning used across all clients?

What obstacles do you face?

● Is the strength of the creative team one of them? Are they able to accept other points of view and input?

● How about the resistance by account service staff to adoption of the planning role? Does that happen in your agency?

If you were to include your agency in one of the following categories, based on their adoption of planning, what would it be?

● the imposters ● the fairweathers ● the true believers Items:

● corporate culture & differences between agencies ● responsibilities of an account planner

● research and insights

● obstacles and adoption of account planning 3. Presumptions about the

future of account planning

Aim: insight into positive and negative presumptions

regarding the evolution of account planning in Romania

By now I’ve got an insight into the current landscape of account planning in Romania. But what can you tell me about the future? How do you think Romanian account planning will evolve? Why?

Are there some international trends you think will emerge in Romania in the future?

Items:

● positive expectations from the account planning practice

● negative expectations from the account planning practice

Wrap up:

Thank you for helping me to understand how account planning is perceived in Romania and what the future holds for this practice. Do you have any questions?

(33)

MAKING SENSE OF ACCOUNT PLANNING IN ROMANIA Annex 2. Concept indicator model