Is a planner the heart of every campaign?

New Delhi: In the world of brand building, the planner is often the unseen engine driving clarity and human relevance.

Creativity, media, and account management are vital, but without planning, campaigns risk becoming just noise, disconnected from real human needs.

Planning isn't rocket science. It’s harder — because it deals with something infinitely complex: people.

A good planner draws from psychology, sociology, mythology, behavioural data, and cultural shifts to find emotional truths that audiences don't even know they’re carrying. This deep understanding inspires creative teams to produce work that isn’t just flashy but deeply resonant.

Planning isn’t something you master through business school. It’s cultivated through relentless curiosity, a sharp eye for observation, a passion for learning, and the ability to connect the dots across disciplines.

At its best, planning injects soul into campaigns, making brands part of people’s lives rather than just part of their media feed.

Planners today: Navigators in a digital storm

In today’s digital-first world, the planner’s role has evolved dramatically.

Access to massive amounts of data, real-time feedback, and endless analytics could have made planning mechanical. Instead, it has made the planner’s role even more crucial because interpreting the data and finding meaningful human insights has become harder, not easier.

Today’s planners must filter out the noise. They must distinguish between superficial trends and real behavioural shifts. They are tasked with simplifying overwhelming complexity into clear, actionable human truths that brands can build around.

A dashboard can tell you what people are doing. A good planner tells you why they’re doing it — and that ‘why’ is where the creative magic lives.

Client Briefs: Cutting through the clutter

The quality of client briefs today is wildly inconsistent. Some briefs are sharp, focused, and inspiring. But many are overloaded, trying to solve too many problems with one campaign and driven by multiple stakeholder agendas.

This often leads to vague or diluted starting points that confuse rather than clarify.

This is where a planner’s value multiplies. A strong planner re-interrogates the brief, reframes the challenge, and identifies the single most important battle to fight.

They help focus the agency’s energy on one big, meaningful idea — the kind that can actually move people. Without tight, emotionally sharp briefs, even the best creative teams risk producing work that is clever but irrelevant.

Why pitches set planners on fire?

New business pitches are a planner’s playground. Pitches allow planners to operate free from legacy issues, free from past baggage.

They can think boldly, dream fresh, and create a strategic foundation that will guide a brand’s future. The adrenaline of a tight timeline, the high stakes, and the blank-canvas nature of pitches push planners to operate at their creative and strategic peak.

More than that, pitches allow planners to make a real, immediate impact — defining not just a campaign, but a brand’s voice, positioning, and long-term strategy.

For planners who thrive on crafting powerful narratives and building something from scratch, pitches are not pressure — they are pure opportunity.

Real insights don't come from a desk

The best planners don’t rely only on Google searches, market reports, or brand trackers. They know that real understanding requires being there — in homes, in shops, on streets, listening to conversations, and observing behaviour.

Visiting markets isn’t a "nice to have" — it’s essential. A planner sitting in a big-city office risks missing the nuances, contradictions, and realities of how people truly live.

Especially in diverse markets, assumptions can be deadly. Small-town aspirations, regional traditions, unspoken cultural codes — these details shape how people perceive and interact with brands.

The more time planners spend in the real world, the richer and more authentic their insights become.

Planning talent: Scarce and strategic

There’s a real shortage of great planners today — and agencies are feeling it. Good planners need to be part researcher, part psychologist, part storyteller, and part business thinker.

Few possess all these skills naturally, which makes planning talent extremely valuable — and increasingly rare.

Agencies are addressing this challenge by:

• Training from within, converting sharp-minded account managers and researchers into planners.

• Hiring from outside advertising, bringing in anthropologists, journalists, and cultural strategists.

• Building mentorship programs to nurture young talent faster and better.

More than ever, agencies understand that investing in strong planners is not optional. It’s essential for creating work that cuts through, connects deeply, and delivers results.

Conclusion: Planners keep brands human

In a cluttered, distracted world, it’s easy for brands to lose their emotional anchor. Planners are the ones who keep brands rooted in human truths.

They are the protectors of relevance, the champions of clarity, and the silent partners behind the campaigns that actually touch hearts.

Today, when audiences are savvier and more sceptical than ever, the role of the planner is not just important — it’s indispensable.

As someone said, you don’t get to learn planning in business schools, but it is the hunger for knowledge, curiosity, the power of observation and experience that drives you to be a sound planner.