We should all be digital planners

I think it's silly that planning is broken into so many specialities. Connections planning. Channel planning. Account planning. Media planning. Brand planning. Strategic planning. Cultural planning. Digital planning. And the newest kid on the block - Propagation planning.

What is with the titles? Can't planning just be... planning?

Call me crazy but last time I checked our job was to find the right problems to solve and then solve them. Any and all of them. We should be ideas people. Smart on consumers - their behavior and their opinions. We should be students of what they want - able and eager to decipher what they say they want and what they really want.

I don't want to be a dinosaur (although I do want to be an ideasaur). I don't want to think only about the relevant TV and print message. I want to study people and the way they think and behave in their entirety. And then I want to help come up with ideas to help clients sell stuff to them. Help ideas spread to them. Help them spread ideas. Help messages reach them. Help better their lives. Help them impress their friends. In short help cool ideas make it to as many people as possible while still affecting the bottom line be it a corporate entity or a non-profit. I want to be about ideas. And I don't want my ideas and my contribution to be limited by my title. The end. Is that so much to ask for?

I think we need to stop segmenting planning, stop focusing on titles and stop trying to come up with the latest and greatest discipline within our discipline. Instead, we should use all that brain power to come up with the simple things that we should ALL, as whatever planner, be good at anyways, regardless of what media is involved... and that is, finding the right problems to solve and then helping figure out how to solve them.

Sorry to any digital, connections, engagement, etc. planner if I've offended you in any way.

I think technology is to blame for all of this. It's undeniable importance is what keeps spawning all of these new, emerging types of planning. The secret is, the digital world is SO integrated into consumers lives. We should all be digital planners if we are planners at all. We should know how our consumers behave in this space and be comfortable with what's going on. As the sweet spot of marketing grows older, our main consumers will soon be digital natives anyways. We should all be ready.

The info-graphic to your right is what lit a fire in my belly to finally write this post I've been contemplating for some time...