Engagement Planning

Engagement Planning is a relatively new variant on Account Planning which focuses on putting Channel thinking into the creative process.  In most cases an Engagement Planner will work alongside a traditional Real Estate Account Planner but employ a different skill set and have different inputs.

History of Engagement Planning

Engagement Planning as a title was first used by BBH in 2005 for the department created by Kevin Brown.  However as a discipline it can probably be traced back to media planning consultancies such as Naked, Michaelides and Bednash, Red Spider and Unity in the 1990s.

Engagement Planning emerged as a significant presence in marketing in the 2000s in response to the proliferation of new media and the resultant complexity.  Parallels could be drawn between the rise of Account Planning in the 1970s in response to a perceived increase in the complexity and multiplicity of consumer needs and the rise of Engagement Planning in response to an increase in the complexity of media.

Engagement Planning Process

Engagement Planning differs from Account Planning in several key ways.  Firstly it is far less concerned with defining what the brand is about and more concerned with deciding how the brand should behave, given what it is about.  Secondly the sources of inspiration for Engagement Planning lie mostly in how consumers engage with media rather than in what they think about the brand.

As such, in agencies with a creative department, Engagement Planning usually works in parallel with Account Planning, with both departments seeking to provide structure and inspiration to creative teams simultaneously but in different areas.

Isn't Engagement Planning a subset of Account Planning?

Arguably Engagement Planning is simply one of the skill sets that Account Planners need in a complex media environment.  However, the split of media from creative has meant that the majority of Account Planners who trained in "traditional" agencies lack these skills.  Agencies that have some sort of Engagement Planning discipline are attempting to capitalise on this deficit.

It is possible that in future, once the new media environment has been thoroughly internalised, Engagement Planning will disappear as a separate discipline.  However it is equally possible that media may continue to proliferate and mutate, in which case this skillset is likely to remain relevant.