Planning and operations
From a business objective to an integrated plan that runs: audiences, positioning, the message house and the channel mix, then the brief, the agencies, the calendar, the budget and the governance that keep it on course.
- 1 Objective
- 2 Audience
- 3 Message
- 4 Mix
- 5 Run
- 6 Measure
Writing a marketing plan a board will approve
The structure of a marketing and communications plan that holds up in the boardroom: Kotler and Keller's outline, a situation analysis that ends in a diagnosis, an objectives tree from business to communications, strategy and the integrated mix, budget, timeline, measurement and risks, how SOSTAC maps onto it, and the one-page version.
In short
- A board approves a chain of reasoning, not a list of activities: a diagnosis, objectives tied to the business, a strategy that makes choices, and actions that are costed and measured.
- Build the objectives as a tree: every communications objective serves a marketing objective, which serves a business objective, each with a measure and a baseline.
- Show the risks and the control plan before anyone asks: a premortem, contingency triggers and a review rhythm make a plan easier to approve.
Briefing agencies: the most important document in marketing
Why the brief decides the quality of the work, what the BetterBriefs research and the industry's best-practice guides found, what a client brief contains and how it differs from the creative brief, how to run the briefing, the brief back and the debrief, and the failures to avoid.
In short
- Marketers and agencies judge briefs very differently; close the gap with one written brief, one briefing meeting and a brief back before any work starts.
- The client brief states the problem, the objectives, the audience, the money, the time and who decides; the creative brief, written from it, states one insight and one proposition.
- Judge the work against the brief, and close every project with a debrief that feeds the next one.
Working with agencies: pitches, pay, scopes and reviews
How to choose and manage agencies: whether to pitch at all, what a pitch costs, the industry's pitch principles (the Good Pitch, the Pitch Positive Pledge, the ANA and 4As), remuneration models and what the ANA found about them, scopes of work, lead-agency, roster and in-house choices, and two-way performance reviews.
In short
- A pitch is expensive for both sides: decide in writing why you need one, keep the list short, brief properly and give every agency feedback.
- Fees based on time are the dominant way agencies are paid; whatever the model, tie it to a written scope of work with clear deliverables and hand-offs.
- Review the relationship both ways on a fixed rhythm: the agency's work against the brief, and the client's briefs, feedback and decisions.
Campaign planning and calendars: from plan to schedule
How to turn an integrated plan into a schedule: continuous, flighted and pulsed patterns, what the effective-frequency and recency research says about timing, one calendar for always-on activity, bursts, launches, PR moments and events, and the lead times each discipline needs.
In short
- Choose the scheduling pattern from how the category buys: continuous where people buy all year, flights where demand has a season, pulsing to have both presence and peaks.
- The rule of three exposures is a contested heuristic. Recency planning puts reach across weeks first: plan how many buyers you reach, in how many weeks, before frequency.
- Build the calendar backwards from fixed dates using each discipline's lead time, put every discipline on one timeline, and make sure every burst has something to catch the interest it creates.
Marketing operations and governance: running integrated marketing as a system
What marketing operations does (roles, process, technology and data), how brand governance works in practice (guidelines, asset management, approvals), a RACI and stage gates for integrated campaigns, legal and compliance review, a governance checklist, and how to stop process becoming the product.
In short
- Marketing operations runs the system behind the campaigns: roles, process, technology, data and measurement. Give it a named owner and a mandate, not just tools.
- Govern in proportion to risk: pre-approved templates for routine work, brand review for departures from the guidelines, legal review for new claims and regulated topics, and one accountable person per decision.
- Process exists to protect quality and speed. Measure how long approvals take, and remove the steps that add delay without reducing risk.
Making the business case: talking to the CFO
How to link marketing to financial outcomes in terms a finance director will accept: what the IPA's effectiveness research says, the difference between ROI, ROMI and profit, how brands are valued as assets, how to hold budget and scenario conversations, and how to present measurement honestly, with ranges and confidence.
In short
- Speak finance's language: incremental profit, payback, risk and alternatives. Revenue ratios such as ROAS are not profit, and say nothing about what would have happened anyway.
- Short-term returns understate marketing's value because brand effects build over years. Show both horizons, and treat brand valuations as a direction, not a precise number.
- Present results as ranges with the method and confidence stated, keep measured, modelled and assumed figures apart, and agree scenarios and triggers with finance before the year starts.
Other tracks
- IMC foundationsWhat integrated marketing communications is, the models behind it, the customer journey, the message, objectives, budgets, planning, measurement and how teams organise for it.
- Marketing principlesThe ideas every integrated plan rests on, from the people who framed them: Kotler, Drucker, Levitt, Aaker, Keller, Ries and Trout, Porter and Sharp, in plain words and with their sources.
- Disciplines 101One primer per discipline, from advertising to internal communications: how it works, its history, what it costs, the rules, its limits and when to choose it, with every claim sourced.
- Measurement and effectivenessHow to tell what worked: brand and activation, attribution, marketing mix modelling and incrementality, and how to read the numbers honestly.
- Martech and dataThe tools behind integrated marketing, how they fit together, and the customer data that connects them, collected with consent.
- Regulation and ethicsAdvertising codes, disclosure, consent and data protection across markets, and the ethics of persuasion. Not legal advice.
- Markets and regionsWhat changes from one market to the next: media habits, languages, culture and rules, from the US and Europe to the Gulf, Egypt and Asia-Pacific.
- ToolkitCanvases, templates, checklists, worksheets and calculators to use today: each one built on a named framework, explained with its sources, and ready to fill in, print or download.