The toolkit
Canvases, templates, checklists, worksheets and calculators to use today. Each one is built on a named framework, explained with its sources, and ready to fill in here, print or download. What you type stays in your browser.
Canvases3
One page that holds a whole idea, filled in together.
- The IMC plan canvas: the whole integrated plan on one pageEight boxes, filled in order, that turn a business problem into one integrated plan: situation, objectives, audience, message, mix, timing, budget and measurement. Built on PR Smith's SOSTAC and the marketing plan outline in Kotler and Keller.
- The brand platform canvas: purpose, positioning, personality and proof on one pageEight boxes that write down what a brand stands for and how it shows up: purpose, vision, values, positioning, personality, promise, proof and distinctive assets. Drawn from Aaker, Keller and Kapferer, with distinctive assets after Romaniuk.
- The customer journey map: stages, touchpoints, needs, feelings and ownersA canvas that lays one customer's journey along a line, from discovering a need to recommending the brand, and fills in what happens at each stage: the touchpoints, the need, the feeling, the message and the team that owns it. After McKinsey's consumer decision journey and the touchpoint research behind it.
Templates4
The documents a plan needs, with the headings already right.
- The message house template: one umbrella message, the pillars and the proofA one-page house that turns a brand platform into messages every team can use: the umbrella message on the roof, three or four pillars, the proof points under each, and the values and facts that hold the foundation. A practitioners' tool whose origin is unclear.
- The creative brief template: one problem, one insight, one propositionThe page a planner hands to a creative team: the problem the work must solve, the audience and the insight, the single proposition and its proof, the tone, and what the work should make people think, feel and do. From the account-planning tradition and the industry's briefing guides.
- The agency brief template: the client's business brief to every agencyThe brief a client sends to its agencies and internal teams: where the business is now, where it needs to be, who it must reach, what the work must achieve, the budget, timing and rules, and how success will be measured. One brief for every discipline, after the industry's joint briefing guides.
- The campaign calendar: phases, key dates and the flighting of every disciplineOne timeline that shows every discipline phase by phase: when each is off, light or heavy, the phases of the campaign, the fixed dates it must respect and the dependencies between teams. With the scheduling patterns of media planning: continuity, flighting and pulsing.
Checklists1
What to check before it goes out, ticked off as you go.
Worksheets1
Questions to work through, one decision at a time.
Calculators1
The arithmetic behind a rule of thumb, with its source and its limits.