In the interest of helping future MAS AP Bootcampers, here are a few thoughts about the program. I’ve been at this for about 6 months @ BBDO Atlanta, so here’s what I see was MIA at MAS:

Orientation. Instructors do a great job talking about brands and branding, and getting us fired up, but the Bootcamp didn’t do a good job of providing an overall orientation of the Planning process at the beginning of the program. (personal note: having a creative background & plenty of project mngmnt experience, I wanted an overview of the Planning project life cycle—somehow, our program managed to skip this entirely.) Maybe it didn’t bother anyone else, but w/ some yrs of experience, I’m very familiar with timeframes, development stages & vendors associated with campaigns and other deliverables, but didn’t get a sense of that from the Bootcamp.) Not even at a high-level. The 30K view was MIA.

So here are a few big things I saw as 'misses' in the MAS AP Bootcamp program curriculum:

Overview of Project Lifecycles. i.e, where/when to apply tools of the trade. Unbelievably, APG’s ‘How to Plan Advertising’ book — was not used in the program! See pgs 6 & 7 there are examples of the Planning life cycle and Advertising development process. The down & dirty project management/project lifecycle perspective of Planning is MIA at MAS.

With some month's planning experience under my belt now, Bootcamp strikes me as too focused on creative briefings and insight-finding and; it could do a better job showing how all of the tools of the trade come together to provide a clear picture of a brand. Here're a few things that I think would help improve the curriculum and experience:

Big one: Day-to-day maintenance of an account is overlooked, from a Planning perspective. Briefing is important, but a very small part of how we spend our time. after seeing 4+ planners in action for 6 mos, we’re not briefing daily. Not even weekly. Especially in this dismal economy.

We needed more practice assessing/diagnosing a business situation, synthesizing data, making numbers tell us something. Suggestion:

Test us on our numeracy! Show us some old Econometrics reports and ask for a summary/rec’s...

An overview on Research (types, theory & practice) and analytics; i.e., what’s ideal (BBDO + our Research & Analytics Dept) vs. reality of other agencies w/ fewer resources. Use of research during normal campaigns and during new business pitches. More opportunities to practice/implement those tools/skillsets, whether it’s for a communications/listening audit or a competitive review... Suggestions

Provide access to a few tools, via a license on one MAS computer
List of tools on an MAS intranet or wiki
Invite more vendors and moderators as guest speakers - have us design research
Continuing on - Provide advisors and one-on-ones, weekly, utilize Survey Monkey, Zoomerang, mini groups, etc.

More emphasis/practice developing your hypothesis/strategy/creative; and then using some form of research to prove you have sound logic. i.e, selecting and designing it the correct form of research—to prove/inform/find an insight/creative idea.

I would like to have seen more on Research & on Planning’s role w/ new business pitches... i.e, test our mettle; ask us for a Plan of attack for a Pitch, utilizing the tools and processes we bring into the program; repeat, later so that we can both gauge the progress of our problem solving skills.

What I'm trying to say is: If you have no to little work experience, maybe this is the program for you. (You'll find nothing lacking. Like when your classmate shows up still-drunk and insults the instructor, it won't make your skin crawl.)

I was really disappointed in Pippa's classes–frankly, I found them to be a total waste of time. (Especially if you already are a working creative.) She's the official administrator, but doesn't do much in that capacity.

If you're thinking of attending MAS and keeping your day-job–it's entirely possible to keep that job and do your school work on the side. The beginning of the program is pretty slack–there are huge windows of empty time, which I found annoying. Yet I was able to do plenty of freelance, work out, lay out, and explore the funky cheese that is South Beach. Even though we were technically in class 6 days a week.

IMHO, you have any idea what you're doing already – and have several years work experience already under your belt – then save your money and get a real terminal degree from someplace like VCU.

Or, head down and go for it, like I did. At the very worst, you'll meet some very cool international folks and have the best Cuban food.

Account Planning Bootcamp @ Miami Ad School is a 12-week program available in 3 cities, 3 times per year. This spring (‘09), I graduated from Miami AP Bootcamp. It provided a "good" (aka, fair - or, say 5 out of 10) intro to Planning. Here is the 12-week course outline. Below are summaries of presenters and comments on the program.

Thoughts on the Account Planning Bootcamp:

What’s good about the program
- A condensed taste of what planning is like (versus a 2+ yr commitment @ VCU)
- Exposure to different types & styles of planners, who are also great contacts
- Helps to distinguish Account Planning from Account Management
- Lots of practice briefing creatives and presenting campaigns
- Cleared up confusion about the many names for Planners (strategic planner, brand planner, channel planner, digital planner, digital strategist, communications planner, communications strategist, idea planner, creative planner, etc.)
- Exposure and networking opportunities with a variety of agencies in New York; their perspectives on the role of Planning
- Exposure to different/additional business models within the agency
- Great food, proximity to the beach, and loads of culture

What I got out of the program:
1.) simplify. simplify. simplify.
2.) on presenting; tell people what you’re going to tell them (they’ll happily follow along!) then tell them. and then tell them again.
3.) life lessons in how to deal w/ challenging personalities
4.) how to frame a problem in a way that focuses how creatives will solve it
Check out the PDF of my book for a few more!

The Account Planning Bootcamp Schedule:
Bootcamp, indeed; we were in class 6 days a week for a total of 11 weeks. Each weekend brought a new Planning or Research instructor, a new assignment. Gestation period for projects was 10 days, from assignment to final presentation in front of a class of 30+.

Week 1: Christopher Owens, The Richards Group. Chris’s presentation was ‘Tools of the Planner’. A very inspiring, animated, accessible and engaging speaker. One weekend isn’t long enough for what he has to teach and share. Assignment: develop an advertising campaign for Red Mango.

Week 2: Eliza Esquivel, TBWA Chiat/Day. Emphasized proper ‘rigor’ & taught Disruption methodology. She provided fantastic feedback on both the content of our presentations as well as our presentation styles. Assignment: Help Mountain Dew to stay relevant with it’s core audience.

Week 3: Mick McCabe from Deutsch. Assignment: Develop a campaign for the Ad Council to prevent underage drinking. Fantastic assignment because it’s an issue.

Week 4: Michael Fanuele from EURO-RSCG. Great, charged, witty, brutally honest speaker. From him: two of the most important skills of a Planner: 1.) Clarity and 2.) Being able to separate strategy from executional ideas. According to him; the best Planners are the best students. He advises: when looking for our next job, we should find a mentor who will spend time with us and once there, we should try and work on as many pitches as possible. Assignment: Help Campbells’ Soup make more money. Loved the generality of this assignment —it forced us to make calculated decisions.

Week 5: Beth Knight, Tracey-Locke. Qualitative Research. Assignment: Develop a campaign that will drive more women to Vitamin Shoppe stores. This one was a toughie, and the first situation — several situations would follow; an advertising campaign wasn’t going to ‘fix’ what was ailing this brand. What this brand needed was a rebrand and a store redesign.

Week 6: No instructors. The following weekend was a 2-for-1...

Week 7: Shari Allison from NorthStar Partners and Scott Tegethoff with Universal McCann. Shari taught Quantitative Research but is versed in both Qualitative and Quantitative research. Scott’s presentation was titled “The Changing Media landscape.” He broke us into three ‘groupthinks’; we competed to come up with the best media plans to promote a television series & a promo show on the Discovery Channel. Again, a nice break from a CPG assignment.

Coming from the creative side, I really liked this exercise in media planning — first defining personas, then imagining places we would have opportunities to reach people— is usually the reverse of our brainstorming process, which is usually idea-driven. A terrific exercise to engage other members of the agency in media placement and planning— without a concept or a strategy in place.

Week 8: Another 2-for-1: Cliff Courtney from Zimmerman Advertising and Domenico Vitale from PI&C. Both terrifically engaging speakers. Domenico had us present and argue a politically charged point of view. Cliff was a hoot. It would have been interesting if he had us practice his ‘secret shopper’ type of research.

Week 9: Neal Arthur, Wieden + Kennedy. Key things that stood out:
New business pitches are grueling but also biggest learning opportunities for a Planner
Try to work with on as many new business pitches as possible
When you get a new business call, most of the time it means something’s broken with the client

Week 10: Liam Daley, from Hall & Partners, which is now primarily a brand and communications research agency. His wife, Jaime Klein Daley is a VP and Strategist at Publicis came along. Liam’s comprehensive presentation of the role of research should have been moved up in the program. He kicked things off with the famous David Ogilvy quote: “Clients often use research the same way a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support instead of illumination.” The type of research his firm focuses on wasn’t presented until the end, Liam was the best presenter of research and shared the most useful information—what it’s like on both sides of the glass, groupthink tendencies, etc. I think he should be moved up in the program.

Final Project: Develop an advertising campaign for The New York Times. Again, another example of a brand that needed far more than an advertising campaign. See my take on this in my book. It’s not an advertising solution. It's a UX approach.

Week 11: Victoria Kaulback, Y&R: student evaluations. Far and away, one of the most delightful, charming, insightful people I’ve ever met. I was on cloud nine with with nary a red pen and a glass of Prosecco after my evaluation. For a peek at my ‘Book’ and top three projects, click here.

Week 12/13: Agency tours in New York. We visited 12 agencies in three days, plus Deutsche on Friday. An exhausting pace, but even in the span of about 90 minutes you can get a sense of how planning is viewed within the agency. Y&R/JWT struck me as the most traditionally structured agencies, but they do get hired for projects. In my estimation, gamey- interactive shops like AKQA wouldn’t be good fits for me, mainly b/c of their channel-centric, digital only mindsets.

BUT, shops like R/GA and Anomaly who got their *start* in digital? Hellz yeahs. Other standouts? BBH Labs & Zag, and Naked —are the ones I would kill to work for. BBH is sexy as all get out, Naked looks fun, improvisational and perfect for me— their transparency and lack of pretense really struck me. They also man design firms, client sites and ad agencies with Planning staff on a per-project basis. BBH and Anomaly also stood out—because they both have separate entrepreneurial units set up within the agency to explore new product and business innovations...

All schtuff that’s not business as usual? I would LOVE to be a part of.