What does an advertising account planner do?

Do you think the role of a Product manager could be also as a planner (account planning) in a software company? So if it is true, when you will be working with a creative agency the planner will be no longer useful and the PM will be working directly to the creative department?

• Planner = Research(insights) + Communication Strategy

• Answer:

  The primary job of a Product Manager is to establish and maintain constant communication with their internal stakeholders and customers in order to identify opportunities to improve their product and thereby increase the value of the product.  Anything other than this is side-work that distracts from this primary goal and should be avoided whenever reasonably possible. Is it "possible"?  Sure.  Is it "ideal"?  Absolutely not.  I've done this, as well as other side-projects that people think are "natural" fits for Product Management, and all it does is distract the PM from their core goal.  Working with a creative agency is fun and interesting, and has absolutely nothing to do with understanding your market.  Additionally, if they're the primary contact with the creative firm, they're also going to wind up project-managing the work, which winds up eating up even more time, until the PM is limited to sitting at their desks coordinating from a chair - not in the market they're supposed to be serving. Product Managers should do Product Management - not Sales, not Marketing, not Project Management, not QA, not Training, not anything other than what their job is supposed to be.  It's an ongoing issue with our profession that we wind up being a Jack of All Trades the vast majority of the time, because we often have the ability to fill in a lot of different "holes" - but, as the great Ian Malcolm once said, "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should."