In terms of the skills and kind of mindset you need, Comms strategists have most in common with:
A) brand strategists
B) creatives
C) media planners

Vote now! And add why...

likesmart
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Gah this is a hard one bc the perfect comms planner sits at the intersection of all three. But if I had to choose I’d say brand strat.

Sure, a lot of comms planners come from media planning backgrounds and it’s our jobs to figure out how and when to reach people, but I’ve found true media planners/thinkers have a hard time doing creative comms strategy. They don’t know how to interpret and translate media in a way that’s useful and inspiring for creatives.

We’re closer to the skills and mindset of a brand strat (doing a bunch of research, figuring out the problems that need to be solved for, connecting dots, and translating it in a way that is useful and inspiring for creative teams). The only difference is the types of things we research and the dots we connect may slightly differ

likesmart

I agree with this. I think increasingly we’re going to see fusion brand and comms strategists being trained to master both crafts. This is basically what Naked did. Yet still, too often I see comms strategists just being glorified media planners but missing the bigger picture on brand storytelling and how that should impact comms.

I think a big part of that depends on when you’re brought into the process.

Ideally you are in the briefing (usually led by a brand strategist) that inspires the creative platforms. When creatives share the platforms/territories you pressure test the creative ideas to make sure it can extend beyond the manifesto or the anthem film (because unless you’re Nike those will never be produced and if they are will only live on as :06s, :15s, or on organic social). Then once the creative platform is chosen you can partner with media teams to ensure the media plan is executed in a way that does the creative justice - finding the right placements, media/content partnerships, influencers. In that role you are the protector of keeping the integrity of the creative vision in tact. Then once the media plan is locked you dissect what each piece of creative needs to do in order to be successful (against the media KPIs) and how we can tell the most powerful story at each touchpoint. Then distill that down into mini briefs that connects all the dots in a way that makes it easy for creative teams to digest and execute against.

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I say creative. At our core we should be taking the creative idea and stretching it, exploring it's possibilities and potential in interesting ways based on our understanding of channel usage, effectiveness, human behavior and psychology. If you aren't rolling up your sleeves, submitting ideas and in the war rooms with creatives, you're only doing half the job. And the frameworks and tasks and mindsets aren't really the fun part, anyway.

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I think anyone who is smart enough to be effective at a and b can easily learn c.

Comms planning is not hard in itself. It’s just often skipped by the creative agency or they can’t do it because it’s owned by the media agencies (who pretty much all suck).

I run the strategy department at my agency and all junior strategists have to do comms planning post-brief on our campaigns. It’s a great way to teach them how the sausage is made and get them exposed to creative development without being a useless person in the room.

But yeah. It’s not hard. Takes the smart ones 1-2 times to get the gist.

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What does "hard" mean in advertising? Is writing a line of copy "hard"? Or are some people great at it and some not so much? Are you saying that comms plans are all equal and it's more akin to screwing in a light bulb - one way to do it? It's fun to belittle people's roles - pretentious strategists are often fond of it - but your argument makes no sense.

Also your comms plans sound like trash.

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In my mind it's most similar to Connections Planner and Experience Strategist.

Yeah agreed, D5. That’s cheating! 😉

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