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Great strategists are just creatives that, instead of going on production and following work to the end, start at the beginning and do all the heavy lifting until they can sift out a great opportunity to be creative with.
Shit strategists bloviate the obvious and say I agree in check ins.
Every award I’ve ever won was because I worked with a great strategist.
There’s not a lot of practical explanation here so allow me to detail a typical 6 months working on a brand of toilet roll.
I get a brief from the client. It’s a collection of copy and pastes from various depts in the organization with no clear thinking about what they actually want to do. It’s just a list of stuff they’re thinking about. It says “GET people TO buy our toilet roll BY suggesting new occasions in which to use the toilet roll.
I suggest to client the issue they are having with declining sales isn’t that they’re not selling toilet roll in enough occasions. It’s that they’re constantly promoting the product which is undermining their price premium and what they need to do is invest in some equity driving brand advertising to justify a higher price point.
That line of thinking needs to go up through the bureaucracy to the CMO and maybe further so that’s a 2 month job just getting them to sign up to the client brief ive written for them.
Next I have to work out what the brand strategy justifying that price premium is. I can’t just write it myself. I have to have a workshop with “stakeholders”. That is about 15 people client side who need to be involved and have an all-day working session where we do various exercises to provide the illusion that they have contributed otherwise they will undermine the campaign later on.
From that workshop I will write 4 alternative brand strategies. 1 is what I actually want to do, 1 is based on something that might actually have been interesting in the workshop. 2 are duds deigned to be killed in the next stage so Simon from Legal can let his idea go.
*CEO WILDCARD ALERT*
CMO has just heard the CEO saw an advert for a major rival on TV last night and wants to know why we don’t have an ad out that combats it. I have to do a complete competitive analysis of all major competitors work over the last year and offer some “learnings”.
*CEO WILDCARD ALERT OVER*
Now we’ve got to take those 4 brand strategies I mentioned earlier into research. Sometimes I get to choose my own research agency and sometimes the client has a whole
Dept dedicates to doing that. Either way I have to make sure the researcher doesn’t fuck it all up by spending 4 hours asking irrelevant questions 4 nights running while I sit watching behind a mirror in Cincinnati. Some clients have come and are paying no attention and getting pissed on free wine. So I have to caution them not to freak out every time they here they slightest negative comment.
Ideally the research debrief says the 2 interesting strategies have come out on top but clients are split even ways about which one to progress with. There is rarely a clear hierarchy client side these days so I have to resolve a debate between the Brand team who control the creative output and the Customer Performance team who control the budget.
Assuming I’ve done that and settled on one strategy I am now in a position to brief creatives. A week later we have 4 routes. 1 is on strategy but boring. 1 has paid no attention to the strategy. 1 is great and 1 has potential but hasn’t been executed in any of the right channels. We need to present 2 so we pick the great one and the one with potential.
By this point the client has forgotten what they’re actually trying to do so I’m constantly reminding them why they’re seeing a brand TVC spot and not a shelf wobbler for their toilet roll in Walmart.
*MEDIA AGENCY WILDCARD*
The media agency want to spend all the budget on a partnership with GQ and some paid Snapchat stories. Client is really into it so I’ve got to spend a couple of weeks explaining why that is completely wrong for their brand of toilet roll.
*MEDIA AGENCY WILDCARD OVER*
We present our two favourite creative routes and the client can’t make a decision so we’re going to test them with MillwardBrown. MB Link testing is basically a hoax because it bares no relation to real world effectiveness but I have to get a green mark anyway. MB tells client we need to show the logo within the first 2 seconds and “8 toilet roll usage occasions” throughout our 30 sec otherwise it won’t be sufficiently branded. So I’ve got to persuade client that this is complete bollocks.
*CEO WILDCARD ALERT*
Someone emailed the CEO the animatics and he didn’t like one of the cast so we’ve got to re-edit the spot now.
*CEO WILDCARD ALERT OVER*
At some point the ad will go live but by this point I’m probably back to the start for next years campaign in a process called “2022 planning”
Rising Star
Founder: selection bias matters because most people don’t write reviews. Any study or research just based on reviews “selects” people who do that, and is biased by that versus people who don’t - they aren’t represented.
Now, maybe most strategists wouldn’t know that. But it’s a lot easier to be effective when you base your work on sound observations about the world. Methodology matters.
A good strategist will write a great brief that gives you an insight or idea that feels fresh and new. They’ll give your team a North Star to work towards and help nudge your idea along the way so that you’re creating something smart. When you’re presenting your work to clients, they should help sell it and prove to the client why this idea is going to work so well and all of the amazing things it will do for their brand. A good strategist is worth their weight in diamonds.
Rising Star
How are you a senior art director and not know this?
Ive been in a small shop all my career so never really had the opportunity to work with a strategist. Hopefully I do in the near future!
Decks. So many decks.
But seriously, a good strategist helps organize all of the client chaos you don’t see, hopefully add in some thought provoking insight and help build the framework that makes selling your ideas easier.
I'd say 1/10 strategists offer real value. Just in my experience. The biggest thing I need from them is an insight and I've always had to find it myself. They just adapt client briefs (which may give us less of an idea of what they want), and have big names for expensive, bloated processes (i.e. customer personas).
Its a really important position that I don't think is being filled properly
This is not how it is in England. Come here, we are well trained and add value. Sorry you’ve had a bad experience.
Research and distill information, saving everyone time. Their role on the team is giving logical support to your creative ideas as the answer to client's business problem.
Thank you guys for the insight!
1) DEALING WITH DATA: run with the data folks OR be the data folks, and bring back the short creative narrative of what REALLY matters from all of the data and present it as north stars / territories (aka briefs)
2) DEALING WITH CREATIVES: work with CD to get their unofficial approval on the briefs/territories. It’s a team effort. Then, kicko-offs. Then, check back in with creatives after ideas have been formed to make sure it aligns with brief and client expectations, before moving ahead with the details or other similar ideas.
3) DEALING WITH CLIENTS: sometimes clients have an internal marketing team that structures their branding and/or campaign. Other clients want agency strategists/planners to do that job and create the brand/digital playbook with the guidelines. When creatives are done getting approval of the campaign concept, a strategist will structure the go-to-market plan (social mdia strategy, comms planning, calendars,etc).
4) DEALING WITH AGENCY LEADERSHIP: help write out award submissions by reporting results. Finding proactive opportunities with client work to bring to the creatives.
It’s either some one who doesn’t deliver insights, just says stuff like ‘aligned’ in meetings, ruins brainstorms that they forced themselves into because they don’t understand the point of them, talks about ‘best practices’ for things where best practices don’t matter...or it’s one of the smartest people you’ve met, who makes you feel like you’ve got half as much to do as a creative, who is a good salesperson and had the clients ear when they ask ‘does this make sense for us?’, who has stats to back up any good idea you can come up with. I’ve found no middle ground while in advertising, it’s either been a complete hack that’s only there to charge the client more or it’s someone who can get me to Cannes if I can work well enough with them.