Media Planning Group launches to train next generation of planners
A cadre of media strategy leaders has founded a membership organisation to organise training and debate for the next generation of planners.
The Media Planning Group (MPG), launched today, will serve as a “new home” for media planners and strategists. It sits alongside the non-profit Account Planning Group (APG), a similar membership organisation founded in 1979 to support creative account planners in advertising agencies.
The MPG will run programmes, including training courses and debates on media strategy, and will produce how-to guides on the fundamentals of media planning.
The idea for the group originated from last year’s Advertising: Who Cares? initiative and was previewed by then-Electric Glue CEO, Pippa Glucklich, at its second annual event in London last October.
In an email circulated to mark the launch of the MPG, Glucklich said that Advertising: Who Cares inspired “a desire among many leaders and advertisers to ensure that the industry educates the next generation of strategists and planners at a time when social media platforms dominate client spend, fuel societal harm and are funded by advertising.”
MPG’s founders, she continued, “believe that media doesn’t need any more complexity or automation — it needs more intelligence, more transparency, more education, more inspiration”.
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Apart from Glucklich, other members of MPG’s steering group include: Craft Media founder Sally Weavers, WPP Media strategist and Media Leader columnist David Wilding, LEGO Group strategist Emily Fairhead-Keen, Wavemaker strategy lead Joe Wood, VCCP Media CEO James Shoreland, IMA media director Ben Cunningham, PHD senior planning director Pam Odumusi, Craft Media head of planning Jack Winter, Craft Media strategic consultant Greg Newman, The Independency Co chief freelance officer Matthew Knight, Goodstuff chief strategy officer Paul Gayfer, Spark Foundry chief strategy officer Venya Wijegoonewardene, and Dentsu managing business partner Jas Mahil.
The group is further supported by APG director Sarah Newman and head of operations Lexi Campbell.
In conversation with The Media Leader over the past several months, leaders from media agencies, advertisers and media owners have described running into a “young planner problem”, with early-career planners often under-trained, less likely to engage with trade press and industry debate, and potentially having a planning bias towards media channels more popular with their own cohort, including social media.
MPG will offer an inaugural in-person training course taking place on 19 May. The course aims to help attendees “understand how to approach a client brief from a strategic point of view” and is aimed at planners who already have three to five years of agency experience under their belt.
To kick off the launch, the MPG will also host a “Noise Thinking” session on the evening of 23 April, featuring speakers including Wilding, Weavers and Shoreland debating different views on the provocation: “The black box is the future of media planning.”
MPG membership costs £240 + VAT for UK-based planners, and £195 + VAT for non-UK members. A discount is offered to businesses registering a team of five.
Members will receive the same benefits as APG members, with the addition of specific launch benefits for new MPG members who join between 1 April and 31 May of this year.