• Advertising Age, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 9:58 PM

Cathy Collier, president at X, an affiliate of MDC Partners' Zig, presents her argument for "connection planning," a specialty of her agency. She calls it a marketing process, not a media-planning process, in which the idea is the media. It is an alternative to the more conventional 360-degree approach, which typically ends up with multiple small, disparate marketing tactics "that look like a stew and create little impact."

A parallel to the connection-planning approach is how account services evolved with the introduction of account planning in the late 1980s. Briefs and research were already being done by account services and research people. "But the account planner was a different role with a specific and specialized skill set -- one that combined strategy, research and creative insights."

Like account planning, connection planning will ensure that "we break conventions and focus on the consumer to lead us to relevant connection ideas. These ideas will power the way we go to market and necessitate innovative [media] solutions," she says.

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