I often get asked by friends, prospective clients and even colleagues “what is strategy?” While it can be surprising to hear this question from those who work in my field or adjacent areas, I can also appreciate the need for clarity. In today’s environment, much has changed for the strategist, or planner, working in marketing and advertising.
Historically, planners and strategists have had clear areas of ownership and a specific set of narrow, but important tasks assigned to their purview. Things like generating creative briefs, interpreting research and data, developing insights and framing arguments to support creative work. While these skill sets continue to underlie the role, the ability to prove value to partners is becoming more challenging. With an ever-changing communication landscape and the democratization of access to research and insights, it can be difficult for strategists to find a foothold for adding value as we are expected to be a jack-of-all-trades providing deep expertise on any and every topic that may be relevant to the work.
It’s important to recognize that, in its simplest form, the practice of strategy is coming up with a plan to solve a problem. In the current digital and connected domain, brands and companies face challenges that take many forms and there won’t be one set of tools or approaches that works to get to a solution. Instead of fretting about bringing “new” insights, mounting a costly research exercise, or becoming an expert at the newest social media channel, I believe it is important to take a step back and think of the work from an outcome perspective.
A strategist's role is, and always has been, to serve as an advisor for a business. You are responsible for finding cogent solutions to their challenges and problems, but also re-articulating and framing their questions to provide them a better and more holistic viewpoint. Your ongoing dialogue with clients about their challenges, ability to pull in unique material outside their consideration, and overall guidance throughout their decision-making is the work of strategy today.
So, what outcomes do businesses and clients need to achieve? Creative work and specific executions are typically part of the ultimate deliverable, but along the way I have found they are seeking more nuanced assistance. These areas are where strategists can thrive.
Providing An (Imperfect) Answer
Clients, partners, bosses, and anyone else involved in a project will often ask those in strategy functions to provide a clear answer to a question. These requests can include competitive intelligence ("How are we doing compared to top competitors?"), marketing analytics ("Did our latest campaign perform well?"), research design ("How should we structure our testing to generate valuable learnings about our creative?”), digital planning (“Should we launch a new social channel presence?”) and many other variants. To be impactful and useful, these require clear and defined replies.
Too often strategy teams are prone to building out a complex assessment full of caveats and considerations due to fear of presenting an imperfect answer. The result is that project stakeholders are left where they started— with a heap of information, seeking the way forward. Whether your answer is perfect or not, be sure to provide a recommendation with rationale for your decision. This takes the heavy lifting off the project team and moves the work forward. Trust your instincts and share your perspective.
Building Confidence and Defensibility
Much of strategy work in marketing and advertising requires developing hypotheses and encouraging clients to pursue them. This can range from encouraging the production of a campaign to simply pulling together a variety of data sources to justify a change in direction for a brand’s positioning strategy. While the goal of any collaboration is to get the team on the same page and seeing the problem from the same vantage point, this isn’t always how it goes. If you are expecting a client or business partner to make a decision based on your insight, they are not just going to do so based solely on a presentation or your recommendation alone.
Your job is to not only provide information and perspective, but create confidence and defensibility for the team. In order to do this, look to ensure your research includes key proof points that back up your recommendations. This can include sharing analogous examples of work from other organizations, incorporating thought leadership from credible industry leaders, or even creating a rough model of ROI for the work you’re recommending. In a best case scenario, where everything works out perfectly, everyone will be able to clearly explain the approach and point to a set of resources to help others around the organization understand their thinking. In a worst case scenario, where things go poorly, at least the team will be armed with a strong explanation for why a decision was made and be able to learn from the experience.
Sharing a Unique Opportunity
Sometimes clients will become interested in something new or unproven. In these cases they are ready to assume more risk, but require a great idea and want to clearly understand the opportunity at hand. This can take the shape of an innovation or pilot project where goals may be more learning oriented. Despite the tolerance for experimentation, this does not release a strategist from the obligation to provide reassurance and clear recommendations.
In these situations, strategists will need to get up to speed quickly on the proposed area of exploration and come back with a considered approach. When evaluating how to do something new creatively or engage with a nascent technology, strategists may wrestle with finding comparable activations or case studies to share with clients for reference. Instead of seeking analogous examples which likely don’t exist, strategists should seek out relevant precedents that were developed in similar contexts. Even if the mediums change, historical approaches are often still applicable. A lot can be learned from how the same marketing problems of today were solved in earlier eras.
These are just a few types of guidance and outcomes to consider that I have intuited from working in marketing. There are certainly other variations and likely many more to surface in the coming years, but I have found the principles and approaches to building consensus and trust to be evergreen tools for strategists to work with. The next time you question how best to add value as a strategist, consider these areas of assistance and see how you can deploy them to achieve positive outcomes for your team.
Comments