Engagement, Inspiration and Comradery, Oh My!

The 2008 Account Planning was an amazing experience overall. The breadth and depth of knowledge in the room was overwhelmingly incredible. The fellow planners were nice, intriguing, and inspirational. While I cannot honestly sit here and tell you one thing in particular I specifically took away from this experience (and yes, I would call it an experience, not just a conference), I can tell you that I have learned to think in different ways, think ahead and embrace change.

There seemed to be two themes to the conference: simple, as well as the thought of, “from concept to content and back again”. There was also plenty of mention of the importance of actively engaging your consumers with your brands.


Tom Caroll, CEO of TBWA and AAAA Board of Directors referred to planners as “cultural arbiters” that should have simple, original thinking. We need to keep refining, keep experiencing, and keep moving forward with our brands.”

For Tom Carroll, the means to that end is relatively simple: “There’s no substitute for being out in the market. Planners need to get back into the market - touching people and touching things. Original thinking happens on beer trucks and in fast-food restaurants. The blood is in the market."


I was also fortunate enough to experience a sense of massive “planning comradery” that makes me excited to be a planner. Suzanne Powers, Worldwide Strategy Director of TBWA had said to us, “The greatest thing that you will take away from this conference is the conversations that you will have with one another...these conversations will be priceless”. I found this to be very true as some of the conversations I had I will take with me for a very long time.