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 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.
- The measurement framework: from objectives to organisational impactA canvas that links the organisation's objective to the communication objectives, then to inputs, activity, outputs, out-takes, outcomes and impact, with a metric, baseline, target and source for each. After AMEC's Integrated Evaluation Framework and the Barcelona Principles.
Templates2
The documents a plan needs, with the headings already right.
- 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.
Worksheets2
Questions to work through, one decision at a time.
- The PESO channel audit: paid, earned, shared and owned on one gridA worksheet that lists every channel the brand uses under paid, earned, shared and owned media, with the job each does, its budget or effort, its owner and its KPI, so gaps, overlaps and over-reliance show at a glance. After Gini Dietrich's PESO model.
- The integration RACI: who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informedA matrix of the activities in an integrated programme against the people and agencies involved, marking for each who does the work, who signs it off, who is consulted and who is kept informed. A general project-management practice, defined in PMI's lexicon, applied to marketing teams and agencies.
Calculators4
The arithmetic behind a rule of thumb, with its source and its limits.
- The objective-and-task budget calculator: cost what the objectives needBuild the communication budget up from the objectives: list the tasks each objective needs, cost each one, add a contingency, and see the total. The objective-and-task method taught in Kotler and Keller, with the checks the budgeting research recommends.
- The brand and activation split calculator: a starting point for the balanceEnter a budget and a context (consumer brands, B2B or financial services) to see the split between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation that the evidence suggests as a starting point: 60:40, 46:54 or 80:20.
- The excess share of voice calculator: are we spending like a brand that intends to grow?Enter share of voice and share of market to see excess share of voice (ESOV) and the share growth that Binet and Field's rule of thumb associates with it: about half a point a year for every ten points of ESOV. A sense check on ambition, not a forecast.
- The customer lifetime value and acquisition cost calculatorEnter order value, orders a year, gross margin, expected years and acquisition cost to see a simple, undiscounted customer lifetime value, the ratio of value to cost, and the months it takes a customer to pay back what it cost to win them. After Gupta, Lehmann and Stuart's work on valuing customers.