How to learn planning and development projects?

The planners I have seen, whether they are from the client company, advertising agency, or marketing planning company, often make three major mistakes when writing strategies and plans:

1) Set theory

Find a marketing theory and apply it directly when making strategies. No matter what industry or development stage the company is in, marketing communications must be implemented in accordance with the requirements of this theory, and PPTs must also be written according to the framework of this theory.

2) Template

When many students start writing PPTs, they look for templates everywhere, as they don’t know how to write a plan without a template. The plan uses a large number of PPT templates. Looking at the layout, it feels rich in content. Each page is filled with various charts, diagrams, flow charts, and structure diagrams. It is full of useful information. However, after reading the entire plan, you don’t know what the core idea or strategy of this plan is. It feels very cluttered, and such a plan looks so tiring.

3) Set of solutions

The last routine in planning is to come up with a plan. This is a mistake that novice planners often make. They don't know how to write plans, and when they do write a plan, they just fill it in according to the ready-made plan structure and modules. They ask for solutions in various groups every day. After getting the solutions, they do not study the essence and strategies of the solutions, but write solutions by imitating the form of the solutions.

It can be said that it is understandable for a planner who has just entered the industry to make these mistakes. However, if you have been a planner for several years and still make the same mistakes when writing a proposal, then you are destined to have no chance of becoming a master. What is the correct way to learn planning? Today's article will discuss it from three dimensions: theory, practice, and plan writing.

I. Theory

In order to do a good job in planning, it is inseparable from the study of various advertising theories and marketing theories. As the saying goes, if you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. The study and mastery of theory is the most important ideological weapon for planners.

But before learning the theory, we first need to know two points:

First, no theory is omnipotent.

Any theory has its conditions and boundaries of applicability. Even Newton's three laws of motion are invalid when it comes to the microscopic realm of atoms. If a master tells you that a certain marketing theory can explain all business phenomena, no matter what situation or problems the company faces, this theory can be used to solve them. Sorry, this is called a cult.

Secondly, the value of theory is to provide you with cognitive models and thinking logic.

Although the significance of theory is to guide practice and solve practical problems. However, the theory does not provide specific methods, but teaches you which direction to think in order to find the crux of the problem when you encounter practical problems, and what principles to follow to solve them. If you feel that theory is useless and cannot solve problems, it is because you do not understand the logic and framework behind the theory.

Based on these two major premises, it is clear to us that the study of theory cannot be rote memorization, and the application of theory cannot be mechanical copying. Theoretical learning focuses on understanding the logic and starting point behind the theory, and understanding the business background and applicable boundaries of the theory.

So, when I teach new people how to plan, I usually tell them about the history of marketing first.

First, it is the economic and social background of each era and, in this context, what are the main issues of business, that is, what are the main problems facing enterprises.

Then, what kind of marketing theory was born to solve such problems, and what was the effectiveness and efficiency of the solution?

Finally, there are the similarities and differences between different theories in different eras, what commonalities and individualities they have; the evolutionary context between theories; what problems each theory is suitable for solving and what problems it is not suitable for solving, and what are their respective applicable conditions and boundaries.

If you make these points clear, when you get a specific case, you will know which theory to apply, where to start, how to find the crux of the case, and find corresponding solutions.

Different companies have different market and competitive conditions and are at different stages of development. The problems they face and their marketing needs are naturally different. You can't apply the same theory to them all.

Therefore, I disdain those who always talk about positioning and branding. Positioning and branding are just tools for companies to solve problems. Not every business needs positioning, and not every business needs to build a brand. Planning should not be done by cutting the feet to fit the shoes, or cutting the feet of all enterprises in the world to fit the shoes of a certain theory.

The second lesson I will teach new planners is the history of advertising .

The development and evolution of the advertising industry, the profit model of advertising companies; how the professional division of labor, personnel composition, and operating form have changed, and why such changes have occurred; nowadays, what categories can advertising companies on the market be divided into, and what are their respective business and operating concepts.

This will make it easier for planners to have a macro-understanding and overall grasp of the entire industry. When I encounter these different types of companies during pitching in the future, I will generally know how to deal with them. Even if I want to change jobs, I will know what kind of company to join.

Students who have not attended my two classes don’t need to envy me. I have written articles on the history of marketing and advertising on my official account. You can click on these two articles: "A Brief History of Marketing: Understand a Century of Marketing History in One Article" and "A Brief History of Advertising: From Accenture Taking Over Advertising to the Demise of JWT".

2. Practice

After theory comes practice. When doing planning, you must understand how different industries and companies do marketing, such as advertising, media placement, holiday marketing, public relations hype, e-commerce live streaming, and event promotions.

Because of this, everyone is looking for plans and PPTs on the Internet, and I often meet many people asking me if I have any good plans to share. This kind of thinking is very normal, but I always reject this approach. Because it is not reliable to learn planning by looking for plans on the Internet. First, the solutions on the Internet are unreliable, and second, many people use the solutions in an unreliable way.

First of all, there are many errors in the solutions on the Internet.

For example, last time in the fan group, I saw someone sharing a plan for a popular creative hot shop in China. Out of curiosity, I clicked on it and took a look. I found that the plan structure was poor, the creative work was terrible, and the methodology used in the plan was wrong - I recognized that methodology, it was from another 4A company.

In particular, the ratio of the PPT is still 4:3, which is not in line with common sense. Current plans are basically in 16:9 format, and only plans from ten years ago used 4:3. So it's obvious that this scheme is a fake.

Although the Internet is well developed today, it is easy to find solutions for various industries and brands online, and you can find a lot of them. But the quality is really mixed, and the probability of finding a good solution is very low. If you study according to this plan, you will only get worse and worse.

Secondly, even if you have seen a proposal, you don’t have a brief from this company.

This means that you don’t know the problems and needs of the company, why the plan is written in this way, and what the considerations behind the plan are. Moreover, you don’t know whether the plan has been implemented. It may just be a proposal and has not been released. Of course, you don’t know why it was released or not.

What’s more, some plans will be anonymized before being posted online, deleting key strategy pages or some important data, and you don’t know what is missing from the plan.

Therefore, if you want to study the marketing methods and strategic thinking of major brands, the key is not to look for plans online, but to do case studies yourself.

You should collect all the marketing actions and communication content of this brand yourself, and then do a comparative analysis.

This will certainly take more time and energy than looking for a solution, and requires you to calm down and do research seriously, but your gains will also be tangible.

This kind of collection and analysis, first of all, is a longitudinal comparative analysis . The specific steps are as follows:

1. First, look at what the brand does every year and collect their marketing actions over the years;
2. Through comparison, study whether their brand strategy and market strategy have changed;
3. Then look for data on the brand’s annual revenue, growth rate, and other data to see how the company’s performance has changed;
4. Combine strategic changes with actual performance.

That way, you'll know why their strategy changed, what the rationale behind the change was, and what results the change produced.

The second is to do a horizontal comparative analysis , and its operation steps are as follows:

1. Focus on an industry and understand its development trends and core target groups;
2. Collect the marketing strategies of different brands in the same industry and category, analyze the similarities and differences, what are their commonalities, and what are their respective characteristics;
3. Study the differences in product features, selling points and target groups of different brands, as well as the similarities and differences in channels, pricing and promotion methods;
4. Compare and analyze why different brands have different approaches to the same product.

After this comparative analysis, you will know clearly how to build a brand. How to promote and operate brands for products with different functional selling points and different target groups? For example, in my book "Transparent Copywriting", I have written comparative analyses of Extra and Trident, and comparative analyses of Head & Shoulders, Pantene and Rejoice. You will understand after reading it.

The marketing knowledge you gain through your own collection and analysis, as well as the differences in marketing methods you experience personally, are the knowledge that truly belongs to you and can be used at any time. It is ten thousand times better than downloading a bunch of solutions and letting them gather dust in the corner of your hard drive.

3. Solution

After learning the theory and practice, let’s talk about how to learn to write planning proposals .

I used to work in an advertising company, and I often helped with the formulation of questions, written tests, and interviews for campus recruitments. As a result, I saw the resumes of many college graduates. I found that many graduates would attach a planning assignment they did in school practical classes when submitting their resumes. The document was dozens of pages thick, sometimes in electronic form and sometimes printed out.

After reading nearly a hundred such plans, I sincerely advise all dear college graduates not to attach such plans when submitting resumes in the future. It has no other effect except wasting paper - if there is any effect, it is negative.

First of all, their planning ideas are all cut from the same mold, and the structure of the plan is uniform:

Background analysis-SWOT analysis-strategic appeal-creative expression-activity execution-scheduling roadmap-budget allocation.

Secondly, for example, if the entire plan is 100 pages in total, then the background analysis takes up at least 60 pages, and most of the background analysis is information excerpted from the Internet. Not to mention that there are no unique insights and discoveries, there is even a lack of organization and summary of the information. What is the point of such background analysis? Isn't this a waste of paper?

What’s even more exaggerated is that the strategy section only takes up half a page, and the so-called strategy is just an advertising slogan. What kind of strategy is this? Looking further down, there are only two planes for creative expression. Generous students will add a 15-second TVC script, but the format and shots of the script are all wrong. Lastly, the budget allocation and campaign execution schedule is complete bullshit.

This is not only a mistake made by college students who have not yet entered the advertising industry. Even many experienced planners with several years of work experience follow this pattern when writing PPTs. This is really frustrating.

We often find that we take the PPTs we write as proposals to the client. As soon as the proposal was introduced, the clients picked up their phones and started looking at them. They didn't look up until the part about strategic creativity was mentioned.

Who is to blame for this?

Your proposal starts with a lengthy, clichéd product analysis, business analysis, industry analysis, and competition analysis; it lacks data and insights, and is entirely subjective user analysis and market analysis (the classic model is a sentence about life attitude and consumption proposition, accompanied by a user portrait found on Visual China).

You have no opinions, just piles of information. Don’t your customers know more about your products, company, industry, and competitors than you do?

Fortunately, SWOT analysis has not been popular in the industry in recent years. Of all the analysis tools, I hate this empty and useless tool the most, which depends entirely on your subjective considerations. It seems to cover all aspects, including the internal strengths and weaknesses of the enterprise and external opportunities and threats, but in fact, you can emphasize S, W, O, or T, depending on what you want to sell to Party A.

The strategy part is not to identify what the core problem the customer is currently facing and provide a solution. Instead, they force theories on customers and tell them that they must follow certain theoretical requirements.

The creative communication part has no eye-catching original content, topics, or communication highlights. It has no creativity. Instead, it piles up a lot of media resources - hard advertisements on major platforms, various IPs, and various cross-border collaborations, and even the budget allocation has become a matter of sharing pork.

The execution part is always the standard warm-up period, startup period, detonation period, and continuation period. There is no design for user behavior guidelines, no gamified activity mechanism design, and no activity brand and IP design.

This is the reality of most so-called integrated marketing communications programs.

In fact, there is only one core logic for writing a plan: goal-problem-solution.

1. What is the purpose of writing a plan and why do we need to do this plan?
2. What was the biggest challenge we faced in achieving this goal? How do we define what type of problem this is?
3. What is our solution? Is the solution creative?

Answer these three questions clearly. There is no need to use theories, templates, or other solutions. Your solution itself has clear logic and strong persuasiveness.

In addition, various flow charts and structure diagrams are not necessary for writing PPT. People who like to use these layouts often do so because the plan itself is not strong enough and lacks logic, so they use charts to enhance the momentum and expressiveness of the plan.

PPT template is an application technique that intentionally makes simple problems look complicated, thereby enhancing one's professionalism.

It’s okay to use it occasionally, but don’t be obsessed with it, and don’t regard it as the solution itself. That is just fancy moves without inner strength, not the inner strength itself.

That’s all for today.

Author: Empty-handed

Source: Empty Hands (ID: firesteal13)