ABSTRACT
The planner’s role as ‘insight’ expert brings us back to the purpose of the workshop. It is during workshop meetings that planners best demonstrate their persuasive skills, creatively positioning the agency’s strategic thinking and proprietary research tools in ways that add value for the client. Workshops are occasioned by a new relationship with a client, either after winning a pitch or after having been assigned a new business opportunity from an existing client. The brand workshop offers an ideal setting in which to analyze the ways an agency manages strategies in building relationships with its corporate client. An agency must manage information while it seeks to foster affinity so as not to put its client off. Making an agency sizzle, especially in the early stages of building client relations, is increasingly a function of the account planning department. Account planning helps generate new business by demonstrating an agency’s strategic competency through its proprietary marketing approaches and brand and consumer models.
