Account Planner

A typical week tends to oscillate between deep research, creative team conversations, and the strategic argument that anchors a brief. You'll often spend mornings on customer interviews, secondary research, or analyzing data the agency or client has gathered, and afternoons in creative reviews where the planning work meets execution. The strongest planners hold the strategic argument loosely enough to let the creative team build on it.

Collaboration patterns tend to be tight with creatives and strategy, looser with account leadership — you'll partner closely with creative directors, strategists, and sometimes the client's own marketing team. The brief is the central artifact, and getting it right is half craft, half political negotiation. What's often harder than expected is selling planning — clients pay for ads, not for thinking, and demonstrating the value of upstream strategic work is its own ongoing argument.

People who genuinely enjoy understanding people and translating that into language a creative team can build from tend to do well here, especially those comfortable being the most reflective person in the room. Curiosity about culture, comfort with ambiguity, and the patience to defend an idea without being precious matters more than research credentials. Those who want clear deliverables and metrics often find the role frustrating.