'Continuity Planning' - or 'continuing to poke your nose (even even when its not wanted) for the benefit of the greater good' :-) It gets even more interesting when you're the lead agency/planner for a client with multiple agencies...

Absolutely agree that planners should oversee from shoot to post-production. The sepia tint certainly adds continuity, yet I imagine the first clip was chosen in the end because colour, and the incongruity between different footage made the sense 'hurt' more real, rather than a distant glorification from ad world?

I couldn't disagree more. Planners should never be in the pre-prod, on the shoot or in the edit suite. They should be making sure evaluation measures are being put in place, getting on with planning their other accounts or any number of other things that they are paid to do. Whatever value you may add as an individual during the production process has nothing to do with planning. What on earth can strategic insight add to discussions about angle of shot, dress or edit? Sure you may have an eye for a shot, you may even have directorial ambitions but that 'aint planning.

I'm with Phil.

It's an argument for (yet more) opinion in the total absence of any relevant craft skills and knowledge.

Worse, it seems to suggest ("Any good team will have given it the treatment a go in the edit suite and backed away - which is surely what happened here") that others involved in the process cannot be trusted to make the right decisions or exhibit conviction and backbone in seeing them through.

Worse yet, it implies that the planner is the only who can.

I'm a planner. Yet the implication that we planners are by right the sole bastions of reason, truth, justice, insight, conviction and understanding... and that without us lesser mortals will get things wrong rather appalls me.

It's planning hubris.

I can see both sides of the argument here, but *sometimes*, there can be a benefit in someone who is one step removed from creative development spotting something that everyone else is too close to notice.

Not that Planners should be breathing down Creative's necks 24/7, just that it might be a positive thing in some cases if we were involved at appropriate stages.

Very interesting.

You are describing part of what I have done for a living for the last few years. But I've never met other planners who also do this.

Continuity planning pays dividends and sometimes adds value even on set. But I admit these are rarer moments, more often related to the creatives, director or talent wishing to try something previously not discussed in the pre-prod.

The role as applied to film (TVC, cinema, digital), for me at least, is close to that of producer-come-planner.

The contribution offers inherent value from the brief writing to the post-production and media planning stages.

The function described and debated here is that of the creative director, and nothing else, in my book. Creative directors, however, do (and/or should) have somewhat of a "planner mind". Questioning, never getting too close to, and in love with, a solution not to be able to say, NO - It's not good enough. Planners and CDs should stay in close contact through out the work - but planners should not have to attend shoots and editiing process. You'll find yourself not having time to do your job. Kind of like an account exec also doing account man. job - there's no time for "what's next" only "getting this done". That's my oppinion.

Richard,
you are simply talking about the application of craft. A good planners involvement throughout a project is invaluable, however the magic at which you are marveling is second nature to a talented creative.
I think this is another example of the true value of pure aesthetics, and their increasing relevance in what we do.

If only Richard Flintham and Juan Cabral, or Carty and Campbell, or John Webster had taken a planner along to the shoot and into the edits they'd have made some decent ads. Never mind, at least in future we creatives won't fuck it up thanks to you guys

"Of course on some projects planners might wish to be at the shoot simply to preserve the team dynamic" ... fuk up, more likely!
Hey – let's get a consumer focus group in as well.
Creative opinions are like a**holes – everybody has one and they all stink.
Planner hubris sums it up.
Unfortunately, this all-pervasive dumbing-down canker has spread to every corner of the creative world. Aesthetics by committee does not work.

I agree with Nils - with one little semantic quibble. What's being described here is creative judgment, an instinct which ought to be be informed by some genuine consumer insights (cue our speccy friends in the planning department.) If your creatives are so lacking in judgment that a planner, or for that matter the receptionist, needs to be present throughout the production process, I say sack the turnips. But Continuity Creativity: now that does have a nice ring to it. Get us humble writers/art directors involved at the start. At the very least our clients would have to sit through fewer "brand polygon" slides.

I knew you guys weren't busy enough!

Oh come on creative kind lay of the defensive bit.

Firstly I with Nick on continuity creativity. The quid pro quo of what I am talking about (and by the way it was just to illustrate that post matters to the effectiveness of an ad and that planners need to take some responsiility at this stage) is that creative teams work with the planners to frame the strategy thereby ensuring that the idea that is then worked into a brief is exciting enough to yeild great work.

The point is that there is no point of hand over either way.

On the subject of shoots I think it is rather natural if a team has been working on an idea together for six months that they might want to see it come to fruition. There is nothing a planner can or should be doing there (and remember I'm not keen on planners attending shoots) but sometimes it feels right to keep the team together. Plus they almost always provide time to focus on the campaign and think about other stuff that we could be doing away form the distractions of the agency.

This is a collective endevour after all. Collective thinking collective responsibility.

If everyone is good at what they do, and confident that they are, what's the harm in another opinion? Creatives get awfully possessive of their work, often forgetting that it isn't "their" work at all, but a collective effort that has taken a lot of months from a lot of different people. Planners should stay involved to the end, and creatives should get involved from the beginning. As a creative myself, I think we too often forget that we're not the only creative people in the building. And as a creative, I think planners often forget that they're not the only brilliant and strategic people in the building. A good agency knows that a good idea, creative or strategic, can come from anywhere.

Why don't planners just change the name for what they do to Process Police? Seems apt. God knows how we've got by in edits etc until now

Someone's thrown a planner in the works.