Steel said this. In Truth, Lies, & Advertising. And I've been thinking about blogging about this for some time. Because it is the number one quote I think about everyday. It's really easy for planners to feel a sense of "what am I doing? Am I contributing?"
And the answer is never black & white. It would be easy if you always came up with the big idea. But you hardly ever do. You recognize big ideas. Hell, I'll take a good idea. It doesn't have to be a big one. But that's what we do. That' s the real value of a planner inside an agency. That's why we can never explain to people at a cocktail party what the hell it is we do. Because we're ideaists. Sure, we do research. We write briefs. We analyze the quant results to let our clients and creatives know that the work did well and we can run it. But what we really do, is help ideas. We help them get started. We help them grow. We help them survive. And we help them live.
So sometimes I get to asking what my real role is here and will it be obsolete someday. And the answer is "no". Because we need idea helpers now more than ever.
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