The Communications Planner is one of three strategic leaders on major accounts:
- The Account Director, who, in addition to client management, is responsible for defining the business problem or opportunity to be addressed through our work.
- The Insights Strategist is responsible for understanding how the audience and culture relate to the brand, and for using those insights to develop powerful and inspirational creative briefs.
- The Communications Planner is responsible for understanding our opportunities to connect with consumer throughout the customer journey and marketing funnel. The Communications Planner uses this knowledge to formulate a media/messaging strategy that is given to the Tactical Media Planners and Buyers to implement and to further inform creatives about specific messaging opportunities throughout the funnel.
These three leaders work together to set the course for integrated campaigns at Copacino Fujikado that deliver high-impact creative and generate results that far exceed the client's investment.
Detailed Role Description
The Communications Planner must:
- Possess strong working knowledge of the strategic strengths and weaknesses of all media channels
- Possess the ability to work hand-in-hand with the Insights Strategist to develop a detailed customer journey map
- Possess the ability to align the customer journey map with client objectives throughout the marketing funnel
- Possess an understanding of performance metrics at each stage of the funnel and how to apply them to maximize campaign planning opportunities
- Have the ability to translate all of the above into a clear operational brief for the tactical media team, including decisions about overall budget allocations by general channel (e.g., traditional, digital, social, experiential) and by the level of the funnel. For example, the Communications Planner does not need to decide how a digital budget should be allocated between vendors or sites or how a traditional budget should be allocated between radio and OOH. But the Communications Planner should define (for example) 'building audience at the top of the funnel is a high priority for this campaign, therefore approximately 50% of budget will be allocated to traditional media and 30% of the budget will be allocated to digital media at the awareness level.'
- Be responsible for presenting, defending and selling overarching media strategy to clients
- Collaborate with creative teams about specific messaging needs and opportunities at various stages of the funnel. In this mode, the Communications Planner can help the creative team understand the "where" and "how" elements of the campaign
- Function as a liaison between media and creative during campaign execution (as opposed to the Insights Strategist who collaborates with creative during campaign development)
- Have the ability to assess data reporting on the campaign and use it to make recommendations for adjustments across channels to improve performance (adjustments within channels are the province of the tactical media team)
- Be responsible for overall performance summary reporting and insights to the client, and for using that information to help inform future communications strategies
- Review all KPI documents prior to client review to ensure goals and measurements are clear and lead back to the strategy
- Along with the Director of Insights, play an important part in educating the agency about the importance and definition of this role. While many in the agency have a general understanding and acceptance of these ideas, it will be important to stress how the Communications Planner interacts with other members of the team and the overall importance of this role in helping CF develop more powerful and effective integrated campaigns.
The Communications Planner will report to the Director of Insights. The career path for a Communications Planner is to Senior Communications Planner, generally within two years. Ultimately advancing to Director of Communications Planning.
