Planning is the best form of integration

Bruce Haines might well be correct in his view that Leo Burnett’s decision to move its Arc creative department onto the same floor as its above-the-line creative department makes it: “different to every other agency in town” (MW April 6). Whether it makes it more integrated is another matter entirely.

At Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners and Dialogue DLKW, we believe the question of integration is perhaps the main issue facing both ourselves and the wider ad industry at large. As a group collective we came to the conclusion that simply sticking the same creative across different media would not dramatically enhance our offering or make us more integrated in anything other than a cosmetic sense.

While there are many different solutions to the problem of integration, the one constant in an era of media fragmentation and advertising channel proliferation is the need for effective planning. After all, real integration involves finding the best solutions to a client’s objectives, not what disciplines are used. Only planning can determine this and for that reason both Dialogue DLKW and DLKW share the same planning department within the same building.

The modern advertising landscape demands that planning sits above all the various agency functions as the strategic umbrella from which all other departments take their lead. This takes integration to an altogether different level.

Paul Biggins

CEO

Dialogue DLKW

London WC2