I've really enjoyed reading Gareth Kay's three part series about how to achieve better brand and ad strategic planning. It's based on a presentation he delivered this summer at the VCU Adcenter in Richmond. Pretty versatile pointers, actually. They are:
#1 Do strategy and execution together
#2 Make lots of stuff that is a collection of strategic and executional ideas around a theme
#3 Great solutions require great problems
#4 Give your brand a point of view
#5 Use media and technology as a strategic weapon
#6 Stop focusing on 'what the advertising should say'
#7 Do lots of stuff, learn, do lots more stuff
Be sure to follow the links above and read his whole posts.
Unlike Kay, I don't believe that planning is broken - in no small part because there are curious, sharing, and clever planners like him out there. Planning, with its broad and integrative core, may very well be the healthiest and most needed part of the ad biz today. Case in point, here's a gem of a capsule for describing a planner's role within the agency ecosystem:
[Planning] was not to be simply 'the voice of the consumer'. Rather, it was to apply some controlled friction to the development of advertising. If the job of the creative is to make the work 'good' and the job of account management to make the work happen, the job of the planner is to make sure the work works. And we do this by providing informed inspiration. This inspiration can be informed from a far broader range of inputs than just the consumer. It can come from the company itself (what it believes, why it was formed), culture, media, technology, even tangential areas like learnings in the social sciences, etc. (highlight mine)