Comms planning is, in a lot of ways, similar to stretching before or after exercise. We generally know it’s important, but there are differing opinions on how, why and when we do it. We learn mostly from watching how others do it and, when we do it wrong, it tends to hurt.
There are lots of different ways to comms plan, this is just mine. Like any framework, the terms are only here for alignment and the entire process should be a flexible guide, not a dogma. Comms planning is most powerful when it is focused on an output, not on a process.
Defining Comms Planning
One way to describe Comms Planning is…
The way a brand approaches a consumer, deciding how and where they intersect with their world.
We know a message is empowered by the context around it, so comms planning is integral in creating the right experiences to give a campaign the greatest chance of success.
Building a Comms Plan
In my own view of comms planning, a strategist needs to answer 4 key questions with specific components:
‘How’ a brand should behave in communications, defined by the ‘Communications Principles’
‘What’ we are aiming to achieve with communications, defined by ‘Communications Tasks’
‘Where’ we are going to achieve each task in media, defined by ‘Channel Roles’
‘Why’ we are activating each channel effectively, defined by the ‘Formats’ and ‘Messaging’ guidance we can provide
Every communications strategy does, in some way answer each of these questions, even if we use different steps or terms.
Creating the ‘How’: Communications Principles
Also Called: Comms Behaviours, Role for Communications, Campaign Principles
The consumer perception of a brand goes beyond the message from a campaign, to ‘how’ it approaches consumers in their life. How a brand goes about interacting with consumers impacts their perception of it. The communications principles behind this are the single biggest contribution communications can make to the long term success of the brand. Does the brand come off as premium or approachable, focused or ever present, innovative or traditional?
Comms principles separate competitors in media, such as Apple (preferring to build aspiration and premium beauty perceptions by default) vs. Samsung (more approachable, focused on demonstrating technology’s human benefit by default). As David Wilding put it recently in Campaign, “if your brand could simply swap media plans with a competitor without anybody noticing the difference, then media planning has missed an opportunity.”
Creating Comms Principles should be a series of choices, combining how a brand should always behave and how it needs to behave to achieve an objective.
Are you everywhere to reinforce scale or focused on building an association with a moment or need? Are you disruptive to drive new ways of thinking or complimentary to a consumer’s life, supporting them to make the everyday better? The most important of these choices should be captured as a simple 1-3 sentence statement that guides everyone on the brand’s widest behaviours.
Clarifying the ‘What’: Communications Tasks
Also Called: Comms Jobs, Jobs to be Done, Comms Phases
If Principles are the biggest contribution comms can make to long term brand success, Communications Tasks are the most integral contributor to short term campaign effectiveness. All advertising aims to change consumer behaviour. However, large campaign level behaviour change is usually created by a series of smaller changes or barriers to overcome.
Understanding ‘what’ steps are needed to take consumers from their existing behaviour to one that achieves the campaign objective is the guide in creating communications tasks. While the tendency would be to think of comms tasks as the consumer journey: ‘Awareness’, ‘Consideration’, ‘Action’, ‘Loyalty’ – creating a more bespoke ‘behavioural ladder’ can make campaigns more effective and focus the channels that help execute each task. ‘Awareness’ can be a KPI of a task, but we should consider how you can more engagingly highlight how you’ll increase it.
Inferring a comms strategy from 2019’s ‘Listen Like You Used To’ campaign by Spotify, there are several prominent principles & tasks. The campaign, focused on giving Spotify a point of view on music and highlighting it’s wide music catalog, doesn’t actually feature much music or even audio. Instead, it appears to focus on driving a cultural discussion around nostalgia and music with wide reaching, shared channels.
If a shared experience and cultural music discussion are guiding principles, clear tasks emerge underneath these:
Establishing a Point of View: Put their point of view on how music has changed in culture. Overcoming a lack of awareness about the Brand’s music credentials.
Sparking Discussion: Spark discussion around their point of view and how people feel about music changing. Amplifying the campaign and extending it’s longevity through discussion.
Relate It Back to the Listener: Make the discussion personal in terms of each listener’s music history and preferences. Making it personally matter and increasing product relevance.
These three tasks create a consumer change, shifting people’s behaviour from seeing Spotify as just another streaming platform to one that is as knowledgeable and passionate about music as a consumer feels they are. Each task serves as a ‘mini-brief’ for how channels are used to achieve it.
Establishing the ‘Where’: Channel Roles
Also Called: Channel Tasks, Channel Briefs, Channel Imperatives, Role of Channels
Every channel, from specific platforms like Facebook or YouTube, to macro-communication disciplines like PR or influencers can be used in different ways depending on your need. Just like a hammer, a channel’s usefulness is dictated by it’s application and your understanding.
A hammer makes a wonderful tool for driving a nail into a wall but a middling to terrible bottle opener. Understanding that just because something can do something, doesn’t mean it should – is key to using channels effectively.
Creating an overall channel toolkit should come from an understanding of what your audience is using (e.g. reach, frequency, engagement), what the channel’s strengths and weaknesses are and what budget you have available to you (e.g. what’s affordable).
Prioritising channels within a toolkit should consider how well they can achieve a task. If you’re looking to create discussion, how well does it create a shared experience to do this? If you’re aiming to make an impact in culture, what channels have the biggest avenue to do this?
A channel role should answer these questions succinctly – saying what part of a task a channel can address. It should set a channel level KPI to diagnose success & guide media or creative teams in how they might achieve it – with format & creative guidance.
Guiding the ‘Why’: Format & Messaging Guidance
Also Called: Channel Briefing, Format Brief, Messaging Matrix, Copy Brief
While a Channel Role lays out how a specific channel should be used, the media formats chosen or messaging changes make this a reality. Every channel role should help to guide how those making the content / messaging or choosing the formats should act. It helps to answer detailed questions. Are there specific types or formats or innovations that can be leveraged? How does a creative platform or messaging shift to activate the channel?
On broad use digital channels, such as Facebook, format guidance can help to indicate what types of placements should be used. Are you aiming to tell a deeper story to increase consideration? An instant experience ad or unit with more detailed storytelling may be needed. Are you aiming to drive engagement? Innovation such as AR filters could be a consideration.
Messaging needs to also flex to be ‘platform right’. While a creative platform can remain consistent, the way it’s articulated through each Comms task and each channel needs to ‘flex’. Are you driving awareness? Your message might need to be more impactful and quickly perceived. Are you driving action? A harder CTA or clear path to action might be needed.
While it may be detailed, how formats and messaging change in every channel are small shifts which combine to make a greater impact to overall campaign success.
Putting It All Together in Practice
The theory of Comms Planning is only as useful as it’s execution. As mentioned in the beginning, any model for communications needs to allow ‘flex’ and revision. Depending on agency size & workflow, a comms strategy should be made in phases, collaborated on with clients & wider partners or revised based on the creative idea it’s executing.
While things can fit together in a variety of ways, communications only empowers a campaign when it is fully integrated with the wider strategy and specific activities, from creative through to experience or product. When comms planning helps to tie everything together, it most importantly, allows agencies & marketers to start to understand how consumers will experience the campaign.
