Let?s start with a basic premise: When we, as creatives, set out to make good advertising, what we?re really trying to do is understand and connect with people?our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our kids, our co-workers. This is what doing good creative work, and building brands, is based on; it?s about people. And planning is what can help you get to those people and understand and connect with them. If you don?t have somebody skilled at helping you do that, well, you probably don?t have much of anything to work with.

I think when creative people try to work without planning, they?re sometimes more prone to come up with the kind of rational strategy that?s based on a product attribute?something that comes out of sitting in a room, isolated, and just thinking about a product. The ideas become very product-based. But the good thing about planners is they tend to lead you away from that, because their focus is always on the people that use the product, not the product itself. And so they can lead you toward something less obvious, something that connects people to a brand on a deeper level.

Research is a science, but planning can be an art as well as a science. Planning is human intuition. We?ve all met people who simply ?get? other people?and conversely, there are lots of people in the world who never will ?get? another person in their entire lives. What you really hope to find with a planner is someone who excels at ?getting? people. Not just recording and tabulating what people say (any researcher can do that), but also understanding what they really mean when they?re saying something.

This is a key part of the art of planning, and it can make all the difference in terms of whether good work gets killed or made. There are countless focus groups where people, when presented with an unusual idea, will automatically say, ?You can?t say that.? And what comes back in the dry report is, ?You can?t say that.? And then the client agrees, ?We can?t say that.? But the art of planning is in understanding that in that room, people may be feeling something different than what they?re saying or writing down. A good planner can read people?their body language, their eye movement, the way they touch their nose when they say something, and whether they?re being sincere or just playing a role.

Can all planners do this? Absolutely not. And this is one of the first, and most important, things to be said about planning: It is only as good as the planner who?s doing it. And in that regard, it?s not unlike creative, which is only as good as the creative people involved.

This is a critical point, because we?ve all heard and seen the planning agencies that can?t produce good creative work off of their supposedly wonderful insights. And often, when that happens, you can trace it back to unworkable planning, which may be coming from planners who just aren?t that good.

There are a number of problems that can arise with poor planners. They will let good ideas die in focus groups because they?re not fully and accurately reading the reactions of the group. Bad planners also have a tendency to just throw information at the creatives?you end up with a deluge of data. But what?s missing is the one thing you need: A real insight into people, and specifically one that connects a brand to what people are feeling.

Or, they may provide an insight that doesn?t make sense, or that is somehow buried underneath the information. When you?re handed an insight from planning, you shouldn?t have to ask ?What do you mean?? If it?s a strong insight, it should be obvious. (Interestingly, critics of planning charge that it states the obvious, and that can sometimes be a problem, but it can also be a virtue: Often, the truest and most profound observations are the ones that, in hindsight, seem obvious).

So it?s a given that planning is only going to help creatives if you have good planners on board. But there?s more to it than that; I think to get the most out of it, you have to fully welcome planning into the team effort of trying to create the work. What?s great about having a planner as part of the creative team is that it keeps everyone honest?you don?t veer off into just being creative for creative?s sake. They can tell you, ?Yeah, that?s funny?but you know what, it?s not really the thing that will be most relevant to this audience.?

That?s why I tend to think that planners and creatives should work together?which doesn?t necessarily mean sitting down and concepting side-by-side. But they should be touching base with each other constantly (along with the client, who should be part of the creative process from start to finish). Because the truth is, even though there may be different skill sets involved, a lot of creatives are good at insights and reading people, while a lot of planners are very creative thinkers. Our business loves to separate people, and say, ?These people are creative, and these people aren?t.? My own feeling is that if somebody isn?t creative, they shouldn?t be in the agency, in any department.

Some creatives feel that there?s a conflict between planning and intuition; that if you rely too heavily on one, you?ll no longer be able to use the other. But I think sometimes that?s just a way for creatives to defend their turf, and to say, ?I don?t want this person meddling in my process.? It?s natural and understandable; I?ve worked with planners in the past that I definitely wouldn?t want anywhere near my creative process. But when you find a good planner, that conflict tends to disappear. A good planner understands and respects the intuitive skills of creative people. In fact, I would argue that good planners are pretty intuitive themselves: Any time you can take raw data and distill it down to an emotion or a sparkling insight, you?ve used intuition.

Rather than being a threat to creative intuition, good planning insights can spark intuition. But I do think you have to know how to use those insights in a way that never limits options. As creatives, we should always be working from a brief, not to a brief; that brief should open up possibilities, rather than closing them down. If you find a brief is shutting down possibilities, then it is a bad brief.

I also think it?s important to keep the process of working from a brief completely fluid and flexible. Often, we?ll start working from a strategy and come up with new insights of our own on the creative side; at that point, we go back to planning and say, ?Let?s talk about this.? And then, together, we re-craft the insight based on creative intuition. The brief can and should be evolving as you go along, and if you take that approach, you don?t have to worry about being ?straitjacketed? by planning. Likewise, if all parties involved are good at what they do and understand each other?s roles, you don?t have to get hung up on defending turf. In the end, the planner is just another smart person in the room?and you can always use another one of those.