Celebrating the role of strategic planning: Insights from the 2012 4A's Strategy Festival

This overview of the 2012 4A's Strategy Festival covers the keynote addresses on the role and future of planning and strategy, and concludes with summaries of four Gold winners at the Jay Chiat Awards, presented during the event.

Celebrating the role of strategic planning: Insights from the 2012 4A's Strategy Festival

Geoffrey Precourt Warc

In 2003, Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, took the stage at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' (4A's) Account Planning Conference to complain that planners had taken the "instinct out of advertising."

A few years ago, the conference was re-branded as the 4A's Strategy Festival. But when Goodby returned to the stage in 2012 as part of a conference-opening keynote, he still seemed grumpy about the planning/strategic function.

"It's different in every agency," he told the sell-out assembly, "How do...

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