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The Head of Strategy position at any ad agency is a very demanding job. So demanding that they sometimes (not all the time) need recruiters or head hunters to help them find the best talent when they have open positions.  This is a list of account planning recruiters that I compiled over the last nine years or so. I know this does not represent all the recruiters out there but it should give people a start if you don't know any and are looking for new career opportunities. By making this information open and transparent I hope it will help match good strategic planners with good agencies. Bad agencies shouldn't have good talent.

What are the advantages of crowdsourced research? Cost-effectiveness –- Comparatively speaking, crowdsourced research can be done at a fraction of the cost of traditional research. Quick Turn Around –- The time it takes to gather, execute, and analyze is shorter thanks to a purely digital foundation. Flexibility –- As trends emerge in findings, researchers can easily adjust their strategy to catch any shifts or “surprises.” Collaboration –- Crowdsourced research allows brands to collaborate easily with customers to ideate or improve upon products, to test concepts, ads, and experiences, and to continue the conversation over a longer term. Velocity –- Crowdsourced research can travel at the speed of digital, allowing for real-time consumer behavior analysis and insight for new technologies, memes, trends, and conversations. Marketing and Marketing Research –- Even though it’s frowned upon and often times refuted in traditional research, the nature of crowdsourced research implies there will be some form of marketing intertwined as consumers share their stories, insights, and ideas for brands they support.

Crowdtap, which is still in beta, is a tool that fills the gap between traditional research and digital, and helps with insight gathering, customer empowerment and influence. At my company, we use Crowdtap to augment our research activities, especially when time is of the essence (i.e. new business pitches, client presentations, low-budget projects). Brands and agencies can leverage Crowdtap to target questions (polls, discussion topics, and open-ended queries) to a certain demographic profile subscribed to the tool.

Planners should for example, be expected to be able to: Intelligently interrogate buyer data and apply it to the development of communication strategy Have a least a passing knowledge of some of the fundamental laws of markets and the dynamics of brands Decode tracking data and usefully apply it to the development of strategic recommendations Have point of view on how and when to use quantitative research – and be able to articulate to clients which companies to use and why Interrogate customer segmentation data Commission quantitative projects Write a research recruitment screener Design both qualitative and quantitative questionnaires Know the different the types of both qualitative and quantitative research available, their methodologies, uses, and the suppliers thereof Conduct their own qualitative research Bring to bear an informed understanding of how different kinds of communications work in different kinds of circumstances, for different kinds of brands, across different kinds of channels and touchpoints Develop effectiveness models for campaigns and activity Formulate recommendations on how to evaluate the effectiveness of communications Provide an informed perspective on the new and emergent models of effectiveness Understand the methodological differences between the principle copy-testing suppliers (know your enemy) Evaluate the commercial impact of communications activity Have an understanding of econometric modeling

Just to be clear – the planner is an advertising person. Planners work with research, but in advertising. Ultimately, they must be able to interrogate, synthesize and apply this information and insight to the development of creative work. And that does of course involve the application of intuition and imagination too. For as Stephen King wrote, “the whole process of advertising is not a safe, cautious, step-by-step build-up.”

The skills listed above are not acquired overnight. They take time to develop. And acquiring them can sometimes feel like a long and arduous journey. Sexy and cool it ain’t. The implications should be obvious: If you don’t have a boss who can teach you these craft skills, move on. If as an agency you’re not investing in the craft skills of your planners, you’re failing them. And if as a planner you’re not interested in acquiring the craft skills and find it all a bit tedious, you’re failing yourself. Worse, you’re in the way.

Name these companies: 1) The computer for the rest of us 2) Networking networks  3) The world's information in one click 4) Personal video broadcasting network These are not tag-lines. The companies who expressed these words successfully positioned the value proposition and differentiation within a simple ‘one-liner’. Founders and executives delivered these one-liners to everyone who would listen and whom they needed to fold into the cause – investors, landlords, lawyers, recruits, customers, and partners.

Information today flows every which way.  The "shape" of the brand in the minds of customers may be more varied now. Some percent of the variation is not good, but some may very well be. Over-constraining the ‘position’ with too much specificity would not reduce variation (provide management control) anyway. Therefore craft a simple, succinct statement that does a better job of absorbing or exploiting complexity (variation) rather than avoiding it.