AAF: District Two

Natural Curiosity
Alan Snitow on the specific traits of the successful Account Planner.

Name: Alan Snitow
Agency: Deutsch Inc., NYC
Title: Account Planner
Years in Profession: 6

What are the main responsibilities of your job as an account planner?

Developing communication strategy particularly as it pertains to the use of research and the perspective of the eventual consumer. Deutsch is very big on integration and planners work across all media. In any given account if it's fully integrated, I could work on TV and then on print and then on direct and then on interactive and then on PR and promotions - all in one day. So, the whole picture. I make sure that the strategy and look and feel are consistent across all the channels.

Background on company - How many people make up the account team? Tell me a little about your offices and location in New York.

Deutsch has two main offices, one in Los Angeles, one in New York. The New York office probably has about 500 people, the LA office probably about 300. There are up to 15 people in the Account planning dept in New York.
We're located in Chelsea, and we're in this huge loft space, it's an enormous building. We have the entire 14th floor. We've expanded to a piece of the 15th floor. The length… It's a full city block -- all the way round. And it's one of the longest blocks in the city. So a lot of people have razor scooters to shoot around the halls on.

The look is very unfinished, very industrial, hard concrete floors, exposed air vents and poles in the ceilings and walls. It's very, very open. The cubes are all half cubes. None of the offices have doors that block you out - they're all sliding glass doors - so it's very, very open. Normal, average people share a cube and even senior vice presidents share offices. So it's very communal like that.

How do you start your day? Is there a routine?

I probably start my day the way everyone does, check my voice mail, email and read the New York Times on the web. And then reacting to whatever fire drill that's come up between the time I left and the time I got back in.

Can you describe a typical day?

Lots of meetings, both internal and with the client - often a trip out to a client to present creative or to present a strategy or to talk about some initiative or other. I spend a lot of time writing creative briefs, a lot of time developing or conducting or analyzing research. Yeah, I'd say that's a typical day.

What are the essential skills necessary to your job?

A balance of left-brain and right-brain. I would say a natural curiosity and interest in people. An interest in research. Some appreciation of creativity. Strong communication skills. You don't necessarily need to be as good on attention to detail, organization and inter-personal skills as say an account person.

So in your shop, what is the difference between an account person and an account planner?

Like in any agency the account person is the point person, the liaison with the client - the person who has the responsibility for that relationship. I don't. You know, the account people are much more like generalists. They're going to be doing things that I never deal with like timelines and production budgets and going to shoots and scheduling and all sorts of stuff like that. While I'm involved in the process from the very start through to the development and creation of advertising, I miss out on the production phase. I don't have a hand in that.

Planners are the people responsible for developing advertising strategies. We help figure out who the target audience is and what are the key strategic messages that we want to get across. We use research to develop insights into the audience and the brand and figure out what we should say and whom we should say it to. Planners basically figure out whom we're going to talk to and how we're going to say it and the creative guys figure out a clever way of saying that.

What are the essential personality traits necessary to your job?

I would say curiosity. An appreciation of subjective and objective thinking. A love of advertising. Creative and rational intelligence. I think you have to like the idea of getting inside people's heads and being interested in how people think and make decisions and act.

How many accounts do you work on? How many projects within that account might you work on in a given day?

Most planners tend to have two or three accounts at a given time. At Deutsch, most people have more than one account, but some concentrate on one -- depending on the size, needs and staffing of the account. But most people, you will find, have two or three accounts. Yes, I work across all three all the time. These things are cyclical. Sometimes one account is busier than the other. It depends what stage in the advertising lifecycle it's at. For example, if one account is in production right now and they're shooting for three weeks, it's probably not going to be as busy. Then you might have another with a large research element coming up, so it depends. But, yep, all three -- all the time.

What brands have you worked on - any favorites?

My current clients are Snapple, Cadbury Adams and Novartis. For Snapple - that includes base-brand Snapple, 'Elements' -- that's like an energy drink line -- and Snapple a Day, which is a meal replacement, a new product. For Cadbury, I work on Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish and Chiclets. For Novartis, I work on a brand called Zelnorm. When I was at Saatchi, I worked on Tylenol and UBS/Payne Weber.

Where have you worked before?

I worked at Saatchi and Saatchi in New York, FCB Worldwide in NY, and I got my start in account planning interning at DMB&B in NY. So it's been account planning all the way.

What inspired you to go into advertising - did you study advertising at school?

No, I studied anthropology actually and with account planning people tend to have backgrounds in psychology, sociology, and anthropology as opposed to marketing and business -- because these are really rooted in people and humanity and culture and how people think. I think on some level I'd always thought advertising sounded interesting - I didn't really get into it until the end of college and through some internships and reading some books, I found that it was really well suited to my skill set. I went to Washington University in St. Louis. As a child, I wanted to be a lawyer.

In your capacity as an account manager you deal with many disciplines within the agency. Tell me a little about what it's like to work across all these different skill sets and bring them together effectively.

We work pretty closely with all the disciplines and particularly with the media folks, because a big part of media is who is the target audience and how do you reach them and how do you make the information relevant to them. So it's just as important to get the message to the right people as it is to have the right message.

And the creatives... Well, the reason I'm in advertising is because I love cool advertising and the creatives are the people who make it. And you know creative people are different to everyone else in the business - they've got their own unique perspective and skill set. So I always enjoy hanging out with creative people, I find them to be interesting people.

And the account people are really good because I rely on them to keep me in line and on time and organized - so I look to them as I would a parent or something (laughs). They keep me out of trouble and where I need to be. But they're also partners in developing strategy and helping to manage the client. They bring a lot of understanding of the clients agenda and help us to grab stuff that the client may feel is of value.

Any good work out there that you like.

Pretty much anything for NIKE and Volkswagen.

What would you tell aspiring account managers to do to make that all-important first impression?

I would tell them to get informational interviews from anyone and everyone they can because there's really no such thing as an informational interview and if they like you they'll try and find a spot for you. And because this is such a dynamic industry with business coming and going all the time with a huge turnover of people, you never know when an opportunity is going to come up. So the more people you know the better.

It's a small industry and it's an even smaller discipline and word gets around. It's really old-fashioned networking and by talking to the heads of planning departments, you get a sense of what the agency is like and how they approach planning and where you might fit. And the more you know the more chance you have of getting into the place.

What kind of training would you recommend?

University of Texas in Austin has a planning program, Virginia Commonwealth University - Miami Ad School has something called the Bootcamp for account planners, which is a three- month course in account planning. There are actually formal courses out there. With the exception of Austin, most are classes you might take after school - additional coursework. I would say if you can take advertising classes at school you definitely should, but one of the skills and hallmarks of a planner is they tend to have diverse experiences and backgrounds and perspectives. Just have as rich and well-rounded an education and lifestyle as possible. Read lots of books, not just advertising books, take lots of classes and then be able to draw on all these different influences to develop your own unique experience.

What do you love most about your job?

I really like learning about how people think and how culture impacts them. I spend a lot of time outside the office interviewing people, finding out about the environment, the culture. I really like seeing something we've made change society and have an impact by changing peoples perceptions and then their behavior.

A Day in the Life aims to uncover and showcase the many careers available in the Advertising industry and the people who truly make these careers their own. Nominate someone you know for A Day in the Life.


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