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SO YOU WANNA DO SOME STRATEGY?

A STRAT_SCRAPS project from Alex Morris
This is a work in progress. The aspiration is to finish it, but as with most things in life, the more you think about it, the more there is to consider. I'm sharing this and working in public to continue building it out.
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Contents

  1. What is the role of strategy?
  2. What do you need to know to do it?
    How Advertising Works · How Business Works · How Organizations Work · How Media Works · How People Work
  3. What are the things you'll be doing?
  4. What are some best practices?
  5. Who are some people to follow?
  6. Parting advice
  7. Writing Briefs

Pressed for time? Read these:

  1. How creative and creativity can help drive advertising effectiveness Creative quality contributes to 47% of sales lift. Strong creative lessens the need for higher spend elsewhere.
  2. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy — Anna Shipman Good strategy involves diagnosis, vision, and a coherent plan of action. It requires making hard choices.
  3. The many voices of Planning — Phil Adams Six key voices planners must embody: consumer advocate, commercial purpose, operational understanding, precision, creative opportunity, and context.
  4. Russell Davies's strategy advice Define what to leave out. Make the strategy clear and catchy. Collaborate on strategy creation. Iterate.

1. What is the role of strategy?

Strategy exists to ensure effectiveness of the work. Full stop.

There is no ceiling. Something can always be more effective. The job is to improve the strategy.

Ways to ensure/improve effectiveness

Readings

2. What do you need to know to do it?

How Advertising Works mandatory

Marketing is often defined as the 4 P's: Product, Placement, Price, Promotion. Advertising is the "promotion" part.

If there is one thing to know about how advertising works — it is Excess Share of Voice.

Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) compares a brand's share of advertising spend in its category (SOV) to its market share. A brand has ESOV when its SOV is greater than its actual market share — an indicator of future growth.

Types of advertising

  1. Brand Advertising — communications meant to shape long-term perception of a brand.
  2. Product Advertising — brings a product to consumer attention, but doesn't necessarily spark immediate purchase.
  3. Direct Response — aimed at driving purchases or other immediate actions.

Each type can take place across TV, Digital, Print, OOH, Social, Content, In-store, etc. The bigger the audience an ad reaches, the more successful it generally is.

Readings

How Business Works mandatory

Business works by creating growth. Growth (for consumer products) can be created in four ways:

How Organizations Work nice to have

Organizations are made of people trying to get promoted, earn more money, keep their head down, or make a name for themselves. Think about your clients through the lens of loss aversion + ambition × the culture and context of the org.

What is a client looking for? Help making decisions that get them promoted, make their lives easier, and stick to budget. Sometimes the agency is the fall guy. Sometimes the therapist. Sometimes the extended team.

How Media Works mandatory

How People Work nice to have

3. What are the things you'll be doing?

Things you'll make

The Intangibles

The Strategy × Creative Relationship. See best practices.

4. What are some best practices?

5. Who are some people to follow?

6. Parting advice

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7. Writing Briefs

The brief is an assignment.

Strategy = What should the work do? (functionally)
Creative = How we'll do it (conceptually)

What's on the brief

Component Definition
Comms Objective What must the work achieve? The desired consumer takeaway.
Problem Where are we now & what prevents achieving the objective?
Opportunity A truth or observation that reframes a way to think about the problem. Format: _____, but, ______.
Guiding Policy What the brand is going to do and leave undone, based on the insight. This is the strategy.
Provocations A propelling question to guide creative thinking. Could be: Ideas to beat, How could we..., What rules to break.
Dossier Supporting information: deliverables, timing, mandatories, 4Cs framework, messaging matrix, existing brand comms.

Example: Cirque du Soleil

Component Example
Objective Cirque needs to evolve beyond in-person shows
Problem People see Cirque as a show, not a brand
Insight The circus is loved for the spectacle, but perceived as low brow because of the setting.
Solution Cirque is the bringer of spectacle... regardless of the context.
Provocations How might Cirque use spectacle to defy conformity? How will Cirque make the mundane spectacular?

Process checklist

Before the brief:

After the brief:

Full process walkthrough

1. Did your research yield the basics?

2. Synthesis — based on your findings:

3. Write the brief. A page. Not a presentation.

Life after the brief

In the room: Before letting the creative teams go, discuss how Strategy + Creative will work together in the next couple days.

In the following days: Be of value. Your job here is to help the team think through the responses the work should generate, group creative ideas into themes, and help with the concept write-up to ensure clarity that will serve the work down the line.