Advertising agencies have not been really good at naming themselves, but we have been quite creative in making up new job titles. We had interesting discussion with fellow Finnish planners about the difference between “planner” and “strategist”. This prompted me to explain the differences between different planning job titles:
Junior Planner: Coffeemaker.
Traditional planner: Hopefully unemployed.
Planner: Person who spends weeks (sometimes months) with creative brief and either comes with truism or something totally unhelpful for creative process.
Planning director: Planner, who uses fancier words.
Head of Planning: Planner, who drives fancier car than you.
Strategist: Wannabe consultant.
Creative strategist: Failed creative, who cannot write or draw.
Growth Hacker: Wannabe start-up guy.
Researcher: Planner, whose slides make even less sense.
Analyst: Person who lies by using numbers instead of words.
Innovation director: Person, who does not have any budget, responsibility or real projects.
Trend planner: Dude who just surfs web and posts random stuff identifying them as “weak signals”.
Digital strategist/planner: Person, who thinks that it is still impressive to put different digital channels in boxes on PowerPoint and call it a channel strategy.
Engagement planner: Same as digital strategist, but he uses arrows between the boxes.
Social media strategist/planner: Person who talks about engagement and conversation and no one is engaged.
Mobile strategist: Person, who says that mobile is the next big thing.
Content strategist: Person, who would not know good content if it would hit him in the face.
Thought leader: Planner, who has written a book (that no has read)
Keynote speaker: Planner, who spends majority of his time self-promoting himself at seminars.
If you have any additions, let me know at the comments.
Stand-Up Strategy 