Planning @50: What is its future?
This article is part of a series of articles marking the 50th birthday of planning. Read more.
Planning has always been a risky business, the best-laid plans often fail and, as Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, famously said, "No business plan ever survives first contact with the customer." When reality hits, the plan almost always needs to change. This is particularly true of advertising.
Yet, despite the inevitability of change and constant evolution around us, the annual planning cycle has, somehow, served legacy brands well over the past 50 years. The...