By Carey Finn. Four agencies weigh in on the scarcity of senior media planners — and their solutions.
“The current shortage of senior planners is a reminder that the industry often swings too far in one direction,” says Lerina Bierman, group managing director of Carat South Africa. “In chasing growth and innovation, we allowed a foundational capability to quietly erode. Now we are seeing the impact.”
The South African media industry is grappling with a lack of talent to fill the role of senior media planning. This is a specialised position that requires extensive experience not only in strategic buying, but also in research, data and analytics, and even business leadership and other fields as clients increasingly look to media agencies to solve multi-factorial problems.
Carat South Africa: Re-imagining the possibilities of ATL
“The roots of the shortage can largely be traced back to the industry’s shift towards digital over the past two decades,” explains Bierman. “As digital became the primary growth area, it naturally attracted most new entrants into the industry. Young talent gravitated towards digital planning, performance media, and strategy-led roles, where innovation, data, and perceived career acceleration were most visible. At the same time, many existing planners evolved their roles, either moving into more hybrid positions or shifting towards strategy, client leadership, or account management, rather than remaining specialised planners.”
The scarcity is most keenly felt in the ATL space, which lacks appeal for up-and-coming industry professionals, says Bierman. “It’s becoming increasingly problematic given that more than half of most clients’ media investment still sits in ATL channels such as TV, radio, OOH, and print,” she says. “These channels often come with complex planning requirements, including cost guarantees, audience delivery commitments, and intricate flighting and weighting parameters, all of which require deep experience and precision to manage effectively.”
At Carat South Africa, Bierman and her team are focused on building their own talent pipeline for the long term. “This starts with recruiting interns and junior staff directly into media-planning roles, rather than defaulting them into digital or generalist positions,” she says. “These individuals are paired with senior planning talent who can mentor them, transfer practical knowledge, and help them build the right habits early in their careers.”
They are also investing in upskilling. “Where the challenge used to be educating teams on digital, the reverse is now true,” says Bierman. “Digital-first planners often need foundational and advanced ATL training, and we are placing a strong focus on ensuring our teams become truly hybrid, fluent in both worlds and able to bring integrated thinking to clients.”
For the broader industry, says Bierman, it is necessary to improve the way media planning is portrayed. “Planning is the backbone of effective media strategy, yet it is often under-celebrated compared to strategy, creative, or innovation,” she says. “The industry needs to do more to showcase the value and importance of planning excellence, particularly in ATL.”
Park Advertising: The situation is global; focus on your staff
Chris Botha, group managing director at Park Advertising, notes that the South African industry is not unique in the challenges it is facing. “The creative industry and the marketing industry are in the same boat, for starters,” he says. “Globally, there is more competition for scarce talent, and this is causing what some describe as a talent drought. In the past your only competition for talent was the agency down the road. We now have people leaving the country, leaving the industry, or leaving to work for different agencies in different countries from the comfort of their living rooms.”
There are two main forces at play, says Botha: an increase in competition, and a shortage of young talent coming through the training pipeline. He also believes that the world of work is changing, with what he says is an increased interest in gig-economy style employment, and decreased long-term loyalty to any particular agency.
At Park Advertising, Botha and his team have been working to upskill talented staff, despite the financial and time costs involved. “We have also invested in AI development to smooth out job processes for our senior planning staff, giving them more time and capacity to focus on what is important to their clients,” he says. “And we have tried to be as flexible as possible when it comes to personal lives for [work-life balance].”
Botha echoes Bierman’s call to industry, urging peers to help improve the perception of media planning and related careers. He also emphasises the importance of the ways in which agencies approach staff. “The reality is that the competition will not go away,” he says. “So we need to open the taps and increase the supply. We need to work more aggressively to get young talent through the doors.”
Publicis Media: TLL for the win
Ashish Williams, senior vice president: media, at Publicis Groupe Africa, does not see a broad talent shortage, but rather a “very specific structural gap”; a lack of mid- to senior-level planners with 5-10 years of experience. “At the junior level, talent continues to enter the industry,” he explains. “At the senior level, leadership remains intact. But the middle layer — the engine room that translates strategy into execution — is under significant strain. This is being compounded by a step-change in complexity.”
Today’s planners, says Williams, are expected to operate seamlessly across brand, performance, commerce and data ecosystems, resulting in an “overstretched talent pool”, burnout, and inconsistency in planning quality. Like Botha, Williams points to similar issues in the global industry. And similarly to Bierman, Williams speaks to the problematic siloing of ATL and digital. “Overlaying all of this is continued margin pressure,” he adds. “Agencies are being asked to deliver greater complexity without a corresponding increase in investment into capability.”
Publicis Media’s response is to redefine the role of media planning itself, rather than to try and fill gaps through hiring. “A critical shift is addressing the long-standing divide between ATL and digital planning — this separation is no longer viable,” says Williams. “We are moving towards ecosystem planning, where every channel, from broadcast to social to retail media, is treated as part of a connected system, not as isolated disciplines.”
In practice, this requires planners to operate with a TLL mindset, where planning begins with the audience and business objective, instead of the specific channel, says Williams. “This also changes how we develop talent,” he explains. “The focus is on building planners who can think across the full funnel, supported by specialist capabilities where required, rather than creating narrow channel experts.”
Mediology: Building the talent we need
Ana Carrapichano, CEO of Mediology, calls the talent gap a complex issue that requires a broader, more holistic exploration of the root causes. A firm believer in the power of good mentorship and training, Carrapichano speaks to the role of media education in solving the talent shortage. “I have always believed that continuous upskilling is critical in this industry,” she says. “Success in this field requires a certain kind of individual: someone curious, driven, and committed to ongoing growth and development.”
To this end, April saw Carrapichano and her team launch Mediology Academy, which she describes as “an independent online learning platform designed to support the development of marketing and media professionals in an increasingly complex and fast-evolving industry”.
The first programme on offer is focused on the foundations of marketing, media planning and strategy. “At its core, the Mediology Academy is about contributing to the development of more capable, confident professionals,” says Carrapichano. “We believe that investing in people and building stronger capability benefits the entire industry.”
Michael Pearce, managing partner at Mediology, adds that that the talent drought is a signal that the industry is evolving faster than its talent systems. “The agencies that win will be those that stop chasing scarce talent and start building it, using media as the engine to drive both creativity and measurable business impact.”
Carey Finn is a contributing writer to MarkLives MEDIA and MarkLives.com.
