I’ve been a practitioner and champion for agency-side Communications Strategy for well over a decade now, and while I have been happy to see more agencies embracing the power and value of this offering over time, it still boggles my mind that so many agencies out there just, AREN’T. At least, not yet.
Here, I present my argument for the top 6 reasons that Agencies NEED this practice and can become a better and more valuable partner and entity by investing in it.
It Improves Creative Execution. One of our key goals as Comms (or Connections) Strategists is to take the creative concept and apply it to our deep knowledge of the audience, the ecosystem, and the execution possibilities at our disposal, in a way that tightens the outcome and ensures it will hit harder, more effectively, and more exponentially. The right words, for the right platform, at the right point in the journey. In my time as a Comms Strategist, I have gained the trust and confidence of my creative teams and leaders by helping their genius work actually CONNECT- to the degree that my ECDs insist on having comms built into creative presentations, briefings, and client scopes to ensure they have the guidance they need.
It Provides a Strategic Framework post-concepting. For many agencies, strategic guidance drops off or diminishes once a concept has been approved and goes into execution and production. Comms Strategists can extend that rigor by providing platform- and placement-specific task briefs that ensure creatives understand the best practices and specific nuances for each piece of creative they are building to satisfy a campaign or project request, including what the audience might be expecting depending on their place in the consumer journey when they are likely to experience that piece of creative. Ultimately, this leads to fewer rounds of revisions with clients, as task briefs are more tightly aligned to client plans and expectations, and to more effective creative with stronger metrics (which obviously makes clients happy!)
It Helps Clients Understand the Ultimate Vision. Creative presentations, while generally the most exciting and graphically impressive of the presentations made to clients, can often leave clients wondering, “But how does this actually work? How (and when) will our customers SEE THIS?” Comms Planning provides a bridge between creative and media- a place within creative conversations for a higher-level, but still GETTABLE exploration of how creative will live in the world. Most clients are living in the world of tactics, executions, and expectations, and appreciate having a few more down-to-earth slides that they can use to explain the brass tacks of a campaign to their higher-ups for easier sell-in.
It Gives you a Foot in the Door of the Media Plan. I’m not sure if there’s anything more disappointing and inevitable than an amazing strategy and creative campaign that is lost in translation once it’s applied to a media plan (handled by a third party) that just doesn’t get the intention. Without Comms Planning, there is often little that a creative shop, or one outside the scope of media, can do to guide or specify how the creative gets executed. Comms Planners offer the skillset and legitimacy to help own or at least contribute to that conversation. Clients who are facing their own internal hierarchy between creative and media departments also highly appreciate when “their” agency can come to the table in comms or media planning discussions with well-founded suggestions and recommendations that are harder to ignore. In the best-case scenarios, Comms Planners can even be tasked to develop full Media Briefs to provide direct guidance to media planners and agencies on how the media should be considered to align with the strategic and creative vision (I have done this countless times).
It expands the Agency’s Language. As a Comms Strategist who has worked almost exclusively in creative or full-service agencies, I have found myself playing the role of translator and mediator almost as often as a strategist. Our backgrounds (specifically, mine as a previous media strategist) give us an understanding of terminology, practices, and executional applications that are often beyond the scope of an individual agency and can help others understand what other agencies or internal client departments are suggesting, bringing to the table, or why they have concerns (and ways we can creatively overcome those concerns and protect our ideas!)
It Opens Doors to Expanding Scopes. Making room or building on scopes to include Comms Planning is often an expansion in itself, but Comms Planning as a discipline is tangential to so many other disciplines that it can offer an opportunity for consultation or ownership of projects previously out of the question. Some of these can include Channel Planning, Media Planning, Content Strategy, Social Strategy, UX Strategy, Audience Research and Profiling, Measurement Strategy… the list goes on. I have seen each of these types of assignments added to clients that I have worked on due to excellent work that we have provided through Comms Strategy- with my last shop’s department starting with a body of about 4 Comms Strategists when I started to 20+ (various comms-adjacent specialists) by the time I left. (The agency body overall stayed fairly static in that time, so this growth was fully ours.)
If Comms Planning isn’t a practice that is currently included in your shop’s offering, it’s understandable that building out a whole department or hiring new Full-Time roles to manage it may feel overwhelming or out of budget. Luckily, these roles are excellent candidates for Freelance support, especially as the practice is built and honed internally. While the BEST Comms Planning work comes about as a result of a trusting relationship between creatives and their comms planners, Comms Planners generally are highly empathetic creatures who love the study of human behavior paired with great creative, and can quickly get up to speed on client goals, needs, and the creative response to help connect this work to the audience.
If any of this resonates and you’d like to hear more or get further advice on integrating this practice in with your own- reach out!
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