A good communication planner provides strategic muscle to the implementation process. A comms planner understands you need different messages at different moments in a campaign
Big Picture: Comms planner does most of their work post-big idea. They work out how to bring the idea to life in the best possible way. Their job is to help marry all of the different parts of the campaign together. They are the antidote to matching luggage. A comms planner understands you need different messages at different moments in a campaign.
Why It Matters: The medium is the message. Researchers have found the most effective advertising triggers different motivations that mediated purchase intentions on the basis of consumers’ stages in the decision-making process. (Source: Revisiting the Relationship between Ad Frequency and Purchase Intentions (2019) Journal of Advertising Research)
Communication Planning has four key outputs:
01.
Comms Framework. Helps to show the different messages at the different moments during the campaign. This is inspired by the consumer journey and is usually first created before the big creative idea has been developed.
02.
Campaign Ecosystem. Shows how all the different assets work together within a campaign, this is informed by the creative idea, the media plan and the consumer journey.
03.
Tactical Briefs. Brief for the creative assets that need to get created based on the campaign ecosystem. It is informed by both the campaign ecosystem and the platform playbook which looks at the best practices for each ad unit.
04.
Blueprint. Shows how you allocate the production budget through the different creative assets that you need to create. This is the final document which is shared with the client before the tactical briefs are sent out.
