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Account planning grew out of a combination of the complementary roles of consumer research and media planning. Over time it has moved away from the traditional advertising agencies to media independents that act as ever more influential advisors into their clients’ marketing communications strategies. Media strategists have usurped part of the original account planning role in giving advice on how to reach consumers, but they stop short of recommending what the message should be when contact is finally made. This remains the preserve of account planning and the creative team. However, account planners and media planners exhibit their own vested interests. This paper reports on an emerging new generation of marketing communications strategists who seek to overcome the limitations of both. They extend their perspectives on marketing communications beyond advertising and have no vested interest in any particular media solution (media neutrality). These companies do not execute the implementation of the campaign, produce the creative content, or pay for its delivery, yet they act as campaign integrators.

This paper briefly outlines the origins and development of the account planning function within advertising agencies. The transformation of the marketing communications environment during the 1990s is discussed together with the evolution of marketing theory and practice. The main focus of the paper examines if and how account planning has responded to the challenges of the marketing environment during the 1990s and the increasing demand for integrated marketing communications. It questions the extent to which account planning is meeting marketing communications needs in the new millennium both in terms of its traditional internal agency functions and the much debated topic of media neutral planning. The term media neutral planning is analysed and the distinction is drawn between media neutral ideas and neutrality in channel choice. The paper concludes that planning is an inherently flexible discipline and that its prime function is to place the consumer at the heart of creative marketing and communications planning.

This viewpoint, based on research undertaken by Forrester Research, aims to assess the impact of technological change on consumer behaviour, especially media habits, and the implication this holds for marketing planners. Currently, it is believed that marketing planners are out of step with new customer behaviours growing out of the changing consumer technological environment. Left Brain Marketing Planning emphasises the need, opportunity and the means by which planners can adopt more analytical procedures to improve marketing planning by greater use of data‐driven approaches that permit the selection and allocation of marketing resources based on an holistic picture of customers across all points in the buying process.

A two stage approach adopted by Forrester Research. First, a marketing allocation tool was devised using Forrester's Consumer Technographics^® data to understand how consumers interact with 13 media. These were used to index each medium against four marketer inputs: business goals, target audience, product type, and targeting approach. Second, interviews were conducted with marketers and agencies to understand current marketing planning processes and best practices and their response to the marketing allocation tool. Interviews were also held with marketing planning experts for additional perspectives around how they anticipate marketing planning will change over the next five years.

Principally, current marketing planning processes are based on traditional approaches that take too little account of the new realities brought about by technological change. The media selected in the marketing planning process do not reflect the media habits of today's consumers. New technology has changed customer behaviour and new technology holds the means by which this can be monitored and evaluated to assess the effectiveness of marketing plans as they are implemented. Changes need to be made, and the means are at hand to achieve such changes, that allow more analytical approaches to marketing planning in understanding what is happening in today's marketplaces and not just an emphasis on marketing metrics for the purpose of meeting internal financial imperatives.

There is much debate about the dynamics in marketing planning between creative approaches and a greater emphasis on marketing metrics to ensure greater marketing accountability. This paper highlights the importance of analytical approaches that do not, of themselves, limit creativity. While encouraging the use of measurement and analytical tools, the paper emphasises the need to use these throughout the planning process and exploit the facilities enabled by new technology to assist in the process of better understanding consumers and communications and buying processes.

It is generally recognised that companies spend approximately 50% of their marketing budget on promotional activities. Advertising belongs to the most visible areas of a company’s activity. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the average recipient associates marketing with advertising, competitions and leaflets about new promotions delivered to houses or offices. Advertising, especially Internet advertising, is one of the most effective forms of marketing and one of the fastest developing areas of business. New channels of communication are emerging all the time – the Internet, digital television, mobile telephony; accompanied by new forms, such as the so-called ambient media. Advertising benefits from the achievements of many fields of science, that is, psychology, sociology, statistics, medicine and economics. At the same time, it combines science and the arts – it requires both knowledge and intuition. Contemporary advertising has different forms and areas of activity; yet it is always closely linked with the operations of a company – it is a form of marketing communication.

The indices of marketing communication presented in this chapter are generally known and used not only by advertising agencies but also by the marketing departments of many organisations. Brand awareness, advertising scope and frequency, the penetration index or the response rate belong to the most widely used indices; others, like the conversion rate or the affinity index, will get increasingly more significant along with the process of professionalisation of the environment of marketing specialists in Poland and with increased pressure on measuring marketing activities. Marketing indices are used for not only planning activities, but also their evaluation; some of them, such as telemarketing, mailing and coupons, provide an extensive array of possibilities of performance evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to call for a scrutiny of the dualist approach to business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) marketing in industries driven by consumer-generated content. It posits that individual consumer-centric factors are influential for B2B marketing as well in sectors such as the travel industry and investigates the determinants of tourists’ intention to use social media websites for travel planning.

Integrating constructs from IS and marketing literature, the paper proposes information quality and perceived enjoyment as antecedents of perceived usefulness, attitude and intention to use. The research model is tested using data from social media users with experience in travel planning.

Results show that perceived usefulness and information quality are stronger predictors of attitude and behavioral intention than perceived enjoyment. Enjoyment was not found to be strongly influential. Relevancy and reliability of information and its usefulness concerning travel-planning needs were found more influential.

Data were collected from social media users, raising possible issues of representativeness.

The paper offers clarity regarding antecedents of downstream user behavior which can be of significant value. Demarcations in B2B and B2C perspectives blur in the context of social media, enabling more effective integration.

The paper brings in and validates the roles of information quality and enjoyment as influencers of behavior. Identifying the travel industry as a sector having greater likelihood of B2BC convergence, the paper extends IS adoption research to user-interactive sites in the travel-planning context, which can benefit the consumer as well as the supply side.

The study aims to explore the role of media in enhancing financial knowledge, financial self-efficacy, and financial planning propensity among working adults in India.

Primary survey-based data (n = 542) were analyzed using covariance based-structural equation modeling.

Media has a positive impact on financial knowledge. Financial knowledge positively mediates the relationship between media usage and financial self-efficacy and financial planning propensity. Also, financial knowledge and financial self-efficacy positively mediate the relationship between media usage and financial planning propensity.

The role of media as a significant agent of consumer socialization is an under-researched area. The authors contribute to the existing literature by demonstrating the role of media in improving financial knowledge and financial self-efficacy to promote financial planning propensity among working adults.

Considers media budgets and how their allocation is managed. Proposes a media plan that selects media that work harder by building on the three‐way relationship between the reader, the publication, and the advertiser, as a superior alternative to computer‐led plans centred around buying efficiency. Concludes that all parties should benefit – the advertising agency justifies its claim on media planning, the publications have the opportunity to actively sell, and the advertiser gains from the best thinking of a team of professionals.

More people share their tourism experiences on social media today than in the past, and as a result, more people follow these posts in their trip planning. However, studies into tourists' intention to follow such posts are scarce. Therefore, this study investigates the antecedents influencing social media users' intentions to follow tourism-related posts (TRPs) when planning their trips.

Questionnaires were collected from 402 social media users who had followed TRPs for their trip planning. Data were then analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and artificial neural networks.

The authors found that blogger–user fit and users' involvement with TRPs influenced behavior components (attitudes toward TRPs and intention to follow TRPs) via assessment components (bloggers' credibility and content quality), and the authors developed a framework to explain this relationship.

The findings advance prior studies by investigating (1) the antecedents of intention to follow TRPs when trip planning, (2) the two main social media elements – bloggers and posts – to understanding the role of social media on travel behavior and (3) involvement with TRPs and their impacts on travel behavior. This study contributes to the research on social media and tourism marketing and proposes practical indications for bloggers, social media platforms and destination marketing organizations.

The aim of this paper is to explore the tensions and basis for conflict within relationships that embed and connect networked companies involved in the planning of advertising, with broader relevance for professional service organizations.

Framed within a social network perspective, this interpretive study draws on 22 in‐depth interviews to discuss the emergence and consequences of conflict within relationships shared by advertising creatives, account managers, researchers and media planners located in Scotland.

The paper identifies four dominant themes which contribute toward relational conflict: the intensity of involvement in advertising planning, the emergence of role ambiguity, cultural stereotyping, and conflicts of interest.

The paper provides a valuable antidote to studies reliant on dyadic client‐agency perspectives. Adopting a network perspective, it recognizes the importance of the multiple, simultaneous relationships involved in advertising planning. It offers a critical perspective on advertising relationships, considering the emergence, characteristics and consequences of tension and conflict inherent. The discussion reveals ongoing struggles for control over the process of advertising planning, and considers the implications of overt and covert actions on perceptions of network trust. The paper provides a spectrum of outcomes, ranging from collaborative tension to intra‐organisational conflict. This study is most relevant to academics and managers involved in professional services.

The aim of this study is to analyze over time the evolution of associated costs of direct marketing in Spain and offer operational conclusions for the optimization of marketing budgets intended for the establishment of contact and/a relationship with the customer.

This study analyses and compares the relationship between advertising messages sent through direct mail, electronic mail, telemarketing and short cell‐phone messages (SMS), over five years. In the context of a loyalty program, and by means of a historical analysis, an alternating media marketing test is presented: a total of 10,000 contacts per medium studied per year were made.

The relationship that exists between the cost per contact and the cost per effective response for each one of the above mentioned direct and interactive media.

A series of operational conclusions can be extracted for direct media planning and its marketing budget optimization with regard to choice of medium according to expected response and choice of medium according to cost per response.

The relevance of this work is based on the relative lack of information in Spain over the cost of communications channelled through direct media. Besides, the inclusion of advertising by SMS in this work is particularly relevant due to the fact that the novelty of this media channel means that it has only been analyzed independently by very few existing studies.