So what is your f-cking job, media planners?
Opinion
Lumen’s Mike Follett responds to feedback on his provocative comment that planners “do your fucking jobs”, lest they risk replacement by AI tools.
I blame Peter Field. And, to an extent, Heather Dansie. But mainly Peter.
Trying to match his contrarian energy on the recent Media Leader podcast, I got a bit over excited and found myself berating modern media planners, demanding that they “do their fucking job”.
This has generated some thoughtful and well argued responses from Omar Oakes and Francesca Coia.
And I don’t dispute with any of their thinking: Omar argues that clients have to let media planners do their job. Too right! Francesca argues that media planners are already working hard to deliver value for their clients — and who could disagree?
Instead, I want to ask a different question, which might add an extra insight:
What is this fucking job that media planner should be fucking doing?
Forced analogies
A good media planner, in my view, has the virtues of an old-fashioned greengrocer.
Not the faceless supermarket buyer squeezing suppliers for fractions of a penny. I mean the grocer who knows their customers, knows their produce, and takes pride in putting the right things in the right baskets.
1. Quality Control
A proper planner tests, grades, and compares the produce. They know that not all impressions are created equal. They dig into the difference between an ad that’s merely “served” and one that’s actually seen. They benchmark platforms, formats, and placements against meaningful standards of quality: attention, yes, but also engagement, trust, context, and on to outcomes.
They hold suppliers to account, whether that’s Meta, ITV, or the local news site, and they don’t accept spoiled goods: ads running below the fold, in low-attention environments, or next to inappropriate content.
We often talk about how we shouldn’t compare apples and pears. Knowing the difference is a full time job for a media planner.
2. Price Control
Then there’s price.
A grocer doesn’t just pay the ticket price; they know what something ought to cost. They understand value — and when they’re being sold a pup.
The same applies in media. A good planner knows the difference between CPM and cost per meaningful impression. They know that reach without attention is like fruit that never makes it to the customer – technically purchased, but functionally wasted.
And crucially, they know when to pay a premium for quality. There’s no virtue in cheapness for its own sake; the virtue lies in fairness — paying a fair price for something that truly delivers.
3. Curation and Combination
Finally, a planner curates.
They combine different media ingredients into packages that meet specific client needs. Just as a good greengrocer knows what’ll go nicely with a roast dinner, or a piece of fish, so a great planner will know how to mix the perfect combination of media options to deliver a brand message or a short term sales spike.
To change this (rather forced) analogy slightly, media planners are mixologists: they know that the impact from one media will affect the reception of another.
It’s not for nothing that when Neil Borden championed modern media mix modelling at Harvard in the 1950s, he chose the metaphor of a perfectly blended cocktail for his new discipline.
Stop blaming planners. It’s their clients who make media ineffective
Real, human value
Planners earn their keep by having more information and more insight than their clients can get on their own.
They reduce search costs: they’ve done the testing, grading, pricing and mixing so clients don’t have to. And they provide economies of scale and scope — accessing data and tools that no single advertiser could afford alone. They bring a human understanding of culture, creativity, and context that doesn’t fit neatly into a dashboard.
That’s where the real value lies. If you’re not gathering and interrogating data, testing hypotheses, and turning that into actionable insight — if you’re not bringing something the client couldn’t have discovered for themselves — then, frankly, you’re not doing your job.
Of course, some will say this all sounds quaint. Surely AI can do most of that now?
History is full of once-essential trades that became obsolete. The phone book is littered with the surnames of those who were replaced by progress: Thatcher, Smith, Cooper, Chandler, Bowyer. (It’s only because technology outpaced the need for their services that we don’t have generations of people called Mr and Mrs Phonebook-Compiler).
And yes, automation will take over many of the mechanical parts of planning: reporting, optimisation, maybe even buying. The platform owners would love us to believe that their algorithms can do the rest.
But, as Mandy Rice-Davies might say, they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Earning your keep
The reality is that we live in a complex, competitive, and only somewhat predictable world. Data is messy. People are surprising. Markets are irrational. And in that environment, bargains exist — places where insight, creativity, and courage can produce outsized returns.
AI can analyse patterns; it can’t make leaps. It can predict what has worked before; it can’t imagine what might work next.
That’s where planners earn their keep: by spotting the unseen opportunity, challenging the default setting, and giving their clients what every brand craves: an unfair share of attention.
So yes, my comment was provocative. It was meant with affection, and I am glad that it has been taken in that spirit. But it was also meant with urgency.
The planner’s role is not to be replaced by algorithms or reduced to execution. It’s to stay curious, to test, to challenge, and to use every scrap of data, attention insight, and creative judgment available to make smarter, fairer, and more effective choices for clients.
In other words, to do the job — the fucking job — that only a good planner can do.
Mike Follett is founder and CEO of Lumen Research.