Hi friend – Rob here.

Let's talk about Comms Planning 101.

A fair few people have messaged me about this.

And it's a part of the discipline i think (still) doesn't get enough love.

So let's put down some foundational principles to how i've seen it done well.

Let's get into it.

🚨 Problem:

People confuse comms plans with media plans, which means most comms plans end up looking broadly the same.

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💡 Solution:

Combine audience barriers, roles of comms and media thinking to get the most out of any comms plan you ever write from now on.

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🧭 Execution:

Let's look at the constituent parts.

Audience barriers.

Let's be real: there are only so many possible audience barriers out there.

Lack of awareness is one, but it's over-used and rarely the source of the problem.

Lack of consideration is a big one, especially in more mature and saturated categories.

Image is an extremely overlooked one, where people don't associate us with certain category entry points.

Intent to purchase closes the loop on this simplified (but largely true across cases) model.

So provided you have a clear set of objectives, your job is to know what gets in the way.

When a premium telco under-indexes with a younger segment, our job is to ask why:

• Lack of awareness? (Unlikely unless you're a new entrant)
• Lack of consideration? (Possibly but this still doesn't tell us why)
• Not seen as value for money? (Ah we're getting closer aren't we)

So in a comms plan, having a clear role for 'reframing value' is important.

Roles of comms.

This is the next level of your thinking.

You now know what are the barriers for people to buy from you, so you gotta tackle them.

If there's a barrier around value for money, now you know one of the roles is to tackle that.

But you can go deeper, because there are many ways of reframing value.

Let's consider a brand who offers a loyalty programme where you get top-tier access to a sports match.

How do you package that value?

• Reminding people of what we offer (pretty basic, hard to have a competitive edge unless the offering is truly unique)
• Showing the benefit of having those things (still pretty basic, but probably better than what most companies would do)
• Showing the problem of not having those things (we're getting somewhere, as now you're playing into loss aversion like a mofo)
• Showing the unexpected problem of having those things (aha, now you're showing me it's so good i will have new, better problems to solve!)

I am purposefully not writing down an answer, but do you see how each of these leads you down a different creative path?

This is more than simply saying we're going to be on channels X, Y and Z.

Here we are applying imagination to what the comms angle should do, from the get go.

Some folks will say this is part of the creative briefing, i prefer to bake it in as early as possible to save time and stress test the client's ambition.

And then, last but by no means least, there's the media side of things.

Media thinking.

Here again the craft goes way beyond what we assume happens:

• Get client brief
• Input it into a little piece of software
• It spits out a recommended media plan

I mean, sure, that happens in a lot of places, but the best media planners then find a way to combine different ways to do impact.

The basic approach is that everything is now about reach and frequency, and extremely short-form assets.

The problem is that the evidence i've seen shows these are good at driving salience, but not so good at growing brand meaning and difference.

Simply put, they do a big part of the job, but they can't do all jobs.

For that, you need a mix of other channels which you know are going to compromise on your CPMs, but they pay off in other ways.

They are proven to, for example, be stronger at growing brand image because they have greater long dwell times.

(Which is still a big argument for TV, sponsorships, experiential and so on).

Or there are other tactical levers where again your CPMs might drop, but a more engaged audience means information is encoded more effectively.

(This is often how i argue for creators, but even there i've seen evidence that on a CPM basis you still get greater bang for buck vs paid social.)

The point is: spitting out channels is easy (a machine will literally do it for you), finding effective ways to combine those channels is the real craft.

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📝 In summary:

Any good comms plan, regardless of specialism, combines three things:

1. What are the audience barriers? (Always go beyond 'awareness')
2. What is the role for communications? (Be specific with your angle)
3. What is the right media mix? (Reach is crucial but not sufficient)

Now go kick some comms planning ass!