It is a bit different here, but not to the same extent as the media agencies where I envisage (having never been in agencies for any longer than 90 minute meetings) a much wider bank of influences is more actively encouraged. Presumably, this helped “light a fire” in the plannersphere

In terms of planning at research agencies, Tom is probably the best example of a person I know doing something similar (my first agency had a couple of similar people attempting it, but they weren’t as active online outside of project work). Certainly something for me to aspire to, but more difficult when you only have a dozen people around you working flat out

Can other departments catch up with planning? I’m slightly sceptical as that collaborative, playful environment isn’t as naturally suited, but hopefully pockets can emerge

All the best
Simon

And more importantly, I love the post too. Planner/Researcher crossover is high; my first media job was in the media research department at BJM (long since rolled into TNS), and it provided me with an invaluable grounding in thinking about people.

And to Neil’s point about media owners, I spent three and a half years in the ‘planning & insight’ department at Viacom (now CBS) Outdoor. So I’ve got a decent understanding of the cultural differences between those places.

In addition to your points above (which I very much agree with), I wonder if there’s something about the space that already exists in a planning function at an agency (read & think about & create things) that doesn’t necessarily exist in the majority of either research agencies or media owners…

…and it’s a space where blogging acts as a marvellous foil to the job. But if you were the MD of a company and someone asked for more time to think about things, the write about them where the competition can pick up everything for free… creating that space in companies where it doesn’t already exist is hard I think.

But what we might see, increasingly, is more people like yourself, Tom (and Neil on the media owner side) start to write and contribute to blogs ‘without permission’ from the folks who run the companies they work for.

So maybe ‘Planning’ got there first because the space/culture was there already. I’d have thought other divisions and businesses in the marketing sphere will start to catch up…

It never fails to amaze me how many companies measure the wrong elements to judge success. What is even scarier is how many of them don’t realise that the ’success’ they are claiming is nothing more than ego-fodder.

I just had a situation where a multinational invited us in for ‘a chat’ and it became immediately apparent that the reason why they were not achiveing the goals they sought was because they weren’t tracking the metrics that actually mattered – and if I could see that, then that’s even more worrying because I’m hardly Mr Astute Brand Manager.

Anyway, all the best and here’s to a great 2010 for all of us.