Week in focus: The Future of Planning, Strategy and Innovation recap
The Future of Planning, Strategy and Innovation Week in Focus
Last week, The Media Leader put the spotlight on media planning and strategy, looking at how the roles are changing, what planners need to know now, and where the industry is heading next.
With key insights from industry leaders on the trends and challenges facing the sector, to research revealing a shortage of strategic thinking talent, here you can find a roundup of the full week’s coverage.
Cultural relevance
Tapping into culture is becoming increasingly important to brands looking to remain relevant, making the ability to identify cultural opportunities a key part of the planner and strategist role.
Newsworks released a report that, for the first time, put a commercial value on cultural relevance. Heather Denise, its insight director, unpacked the findings, arguing that adding ‘cultural relevance’ through news brands to media plans can drive a greater impact on sales.
Meanwhile, Chester Moore of Ardmore Group shared its Visit Pennsylvania FIFA World Cup case study exploring how brands can plan around ‘cultural crescendos’ – the rare moments of peak collective attention around major sporting and cultural events that can create windows of “exponential impact”.
How is planning changing?
Planning is having to evolve alongside the media landscape. In his latest column, Omar Oakes argued that the pitch is dying – and that this could ultimately be good news for media planning.
The Media Leader also spoke to nine senior planners and got their insights on the fundamental questions facing the profession: what does the media planner need to become, what should remain resolutely human, and what do planners need to know now to stay ahead of change?
Strategic thinking is increasingly in demand. Research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and consultancy Mediasense found that strategic thinking is the marketing industry’s number one talent shortage, with brands, agencies and platforms citing the need for talent with judgement, an ability to prioritise, insight development skills and business understanding rather than technical expertise.
That demand is also being reflected in agency headcount. IPA data seen exclusively by The Media Leader found that the number of account planning and strategy roles at UK agencies grew 18.5% from 620 to 735, between 2024 and 2026.
The role of media owners
The relationship between planners, media owners and the environments in which audiences consume media was another theme running through the week.
Spirit Media CEO Danny Donovan shared tips for getting the best out of B2B planning, arguing that agencies need to better understand how audiences use specialist trade media and the role those publishers play in their professional lives.
Meanwhile, InfoSum global head Nick Henthorn argued that when live signals from media owners and commerce partners feed into the planning process, the resulting plan can look very different from one built on panel data alone.
The Media Leader also spoke to senior commercial figures across TV, audio, outdoor, cinema, social and news about what agencies consistently underestimate about their platforms, where media owners add the most value to the planning process, and whether AI tools are making decisions smarter or simply faster.
And in an article exploring the importance of context, Caroline Manning, chief design officer at Initiative, argued that the question for planners is not simply whether an environment is trusted, but what type of trust or association a brand can benefit from.
Planning in the age of AI
AI may seem at odds with the traditional role of the media planner, but much of the thinking shared last week pointed to the importance of human judgement alongside automation.
The IPA’s Simon Frazier argued that the future of media will be won by asking better questions, connecting evidence with human behaviour. “Speed is not the same as wisdom,” he said, arguing that planning and strategy are becoming more essential to the future of media, rather than less.
Converge CEO Ian Maxwell similarly warned against treating AI as a way to replace media planners rather than augment them. Automation can make processes more efficient, he argued, but “efficiency without effectiveness just means spinning wheels faster without them touching the ground”.
And finally, on the podcast, The Media Leader welcomed the co-founders of independent media agency Craft Media London, Sally Weavers and Jen Jones, who also co-authored Anti-Ultra-Processed Planning. They discuss the book’s arguments and takeaways, and why they believe good planning has become increasingly difficult to find.
Further reading
Rinse and repeat? How the new agency business model will accelerate client in-housing