“It should be mandatory reading for every marketer…”
I loved this book! It literally is a pocket guide that you can take around with you from client to client and project to project. It should be mandatory reading for every marketer or corporation or advertising agency in the business. It is full of valuable insights and helpful guidelines and disciplines to help you better hone your ability to position a brand, product or service, with better results, higher efficiencies and a more fluid work process. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to better understand the barrage of marketing messages that assault them every day. Whether you are in marketing or advertising or not.
— Terry Balagia, UT Austin
“This book is a must for any professor teaching communication strategy or research.”
As both an industry professional and now as an advertising professor, I whole-heartedly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about the real lives of Account Planners. Chris does a phenomenal job of breaking down the basics, getting into the nitty gritty, and creating a full picture of what Account Planning is all about. What is refreshing about this book is that it rings true across both spectrums of learning and educating: 1) it is absolutely accurate in the portrayal of agency life and day-to-day requirements of planners today - from client requests, to research methodologies, to real-world examples, and 2) it breaks down strategy essentials and expectations into bite-size pieces for the reader. This book is a wonderfully simple and refreshing cornerstone for anyone interested in learning about Planning - whether they have agency experience or not.
Further, I can attest that my college students loved reading it as part of the course assignments. It’s written in everyday language, gets right to the point, and arms them with a clear understanding of the fundamentals of Account Planning. My students said this book helped them gain a clearer picture of agency life and the Planner’s role in it. And their exam scores proved that they truly did understand it!
— Melissa Jane barnes, university of miami
“Great reference tips for new students and ad professionals….”
I teach an Account Planning class at a public university. I've struggled to find a book that both accurately portrays Account Planning in the post digital age and provides an interesting primer to the field. This book accomplished both of those things in buckets. The book is written in an easy to understand and interesting format. It's a breeze to run through and has a lot of great reference tips for new students and ad professionals looking to gain a better understanding of the world of planning.
— Michael D. Kuhl, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
“...Provides real world examples and practical ideas to improve planning skills.”
I'm always slow to require students to buy a book for class, as I understand how much school and books cost. After taking The Practical Pocket Guide to Account Planning for a test drive for a couple semesters, though, this is something I'm going to be requiring my students to buy in the future. This book is an excellent resource for teaching students about account planning, as I could see the difference it made for students who bought this as a recommended/optional reading. A one semester course doesn't give enough time to cover everything possible about account planning, so this book is a great tool for students - it reinforces things that get covered in the classroom, provides real world examples, and practical ideas to improve planning skills.
— Mike Mackert, UT Austin
“...Required reading for my creative strategy students.”
With over a decade of account planning experience I found this book to be a useful read. Planners are supposed to make the complicated simple and this book goes a long way towards accomplishing that when it comes to examining the day to day. As an adjunct professor at the Academy of Art's Advertising School, I have made this required reading for my creative strategy students. In some ways, this is the book that Jon Steele should have written!