TBWA\Chiat\Day's Carisa Bianchi discusses the evolution of strategic planning.

Carisa Bianchi has served as chief strategy officer for TBWA\Chiat\Day since 2002.  From her post, she oversees all strategic initiatives, including account planning, disruption and connections, and new business as well as PlayStation, Energizer, Limited Too and Anheuser Busch accounts.

In her keynote at the upcoming iMedia Agency Summit, Bianchi will inspire with insight on strategic planning, new media, pop culture and the agency process.  Also, Bianchi will point us in the right direction to develop advertising formulas for success in tomorrow's marketplace.

Recently, iMedia asked Bianchi to enlighten us on major changes she's seeing in the advertising agency world.

iMedia: How has strategic planning evolved in the advertising process?

Carisa Bianchi: Strategic planning is no longer in a silo. Media, creative and planning teams all get together in the initial client meeting. We establish brand guidelines and identify all of the channels we want to be in, not necessarily starting with TV. We've become brand-centric, not ad-centric. We no longer focus on traditional media; we're not in a relay race starting with TV. We start every process with the brand and its target.

iMedia: A brand used to be known as a promise, but going forward you said it will be known as a relationship. How can marketers form this relationship?

Bianchi: A brand is not just a product on a shelf. A brand is constantly changing and communicating, so it needs to think of itself as a person, not an object. It has to continuously prove its worth to people and nurture the relationship. It's no coincidence that Pan Am Airlines went out of business – the brand never changed to meet the culture's needs, whereas you look at a brand like Apple, whose customers share their experiences and have made it a cultural phenomenon. Apple has kept its customers' interest over decades by maintaining the strategy to provide "creative tools for creative minds." This is opposite from Microsoft's product-focused strategy. Apple sells benefits, Microsoft sells technology.

iMedia: What is holding marketers back from truly leveraging new media?

Bianchi: I've found that experimentation, evaluation and measurement are the issues. If your company is not experimenting, you're way behind. Until the upfront model evolves, most advertising will continue to commit their dollars upfront. Most marketers are not evaluating their media plans often enough – it should be more organic and adjusted to marketplace changes. How we measure new media is key, not just what we do with it.

iMedia: The original PlayStation is the first console to surpass 100MM units worldwide and PS2 will soon break the record, selling over 71MM units sold in just four years. The new PSP is also poised to break sales records. You've taken gaming out of the basement and into the living room and people's pockets, positioning gaming as a legitimate form of entertainment and reinforcing the brand as part of pop culture. PlayStation has revolutionized not only gaming, but also the overall entertainment landscape. What role did strategic planning play in this success?

Bianchi: Strategic planning is not to be confused as the "voice of the consumer," since consumers don't know where brands should be or what they should say. Planners are more like cultural anthropologists. For the strategic planning process for the PSP, I decided that we needed to start from scratch and not use the research we conducted for previous PlayStation models. We had to identify a new target. The device's portability supported content in shorter time lengths (15-minute game versus a five-hour game), so we saw an opportunity for all types of media outlets to get involved. For the launch, we knew we wanted to put the device directly into culture, which is more influential than paid advertising, so we placed them in Los Angeles fashion shows. We commissioned designers like Marc Jacobs to design PSP covers.

More on Bianchi

Bianchi started in advertising with Benton & Bowles, Los Angeles, working on Continental Airlines and Home Savings of America. Two years later, she joined Doyle Dane Bernbach, working on GTE and The Southern California Gas Company. Bianchi joined Chiat\Day, Los Angeles in 1988, where she worked with such clients as Energizer Batteries, Sony PlayStation, Cherry Coke and Sparkletts Bottled Water. Under her guidance, the Energizer “Bunny” campaign became one of the most famous and effective campaigns in the United States, infiltrating popular culture.

Bianchi's continued leadership of Sony PlayStation has helped create the most successful platform launch in the history of the video game category. She has overseen the launch of PlayStation, PS2, PlayStation online and PSP. In 1998, she was named president/CEO of the TBWA\Chiat\Day office in San Francisco, growing the office from a start-up to over $250MM in billings. Clients included PlayStation, Levi’s, FOX Sports, silverTab, Starz!, Rio and Rock The Vote. In 2001, Bianchi was named one of “Advertising Age’s Women to Watch.”