OPEN PROCESS
Open Process is a newly developed communication planning and evaluation process between the brand and its agencies. Open process is designed to ensure the best ideas are found and used. The research team has developed a recommended template, with a significantly upgraded and faster planning process, including for example the issuing of an open brief to every agency at once. This should possibly include the research agency and certainly PR and any relevant internal functions. It might even include key partner media owners.
At the moment, budgets are typically allocated across different media at the beginning of a communications programme - before the message and most appropriate channels for communicating it are properly understood.
MNP's open planning contends that more money should be available for the thinking time at the start of the process; the time to be spent focusing on how best to communicate, and how the different components of the campaign should match up. The additional investment at the start is more than recovered by the execution process being swifter - and better targeted. Different departments work together (in a multi-disciplinary team) and then allocate how much money goes on each type of media. Open Planning thus enables a company to think more clearly about how it wants to communicate its message to the individual customer.