Finding a way to help

My first agency job was at Conill, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Hispanic agency. I’ve come to realize over time how lucky that was. I was lucky that a recruiter, Nerrissa, saw something in me that I hadn’t quite identified yet — and definitely that no agencies were interested in yet.

I was lucky to work alongside some of the best creative talent from the Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, and more, where advertising is so much more entertaining and less over-rational than what we’re used to on the U.S.. I was extra lucky that I started in the Hispanic market as a non-Hispanic person.

We all enter a project with biases and they’re really hard to shed. Working in markets and on brands where you aren’t the target makes you more aware of them. It teaches you to step outside of what you came in thinking is right and ask questions that are less likely to occur to you when the target is you.

But not being an a priori expert, as strategists are sometimes expected (or self-positioned) to be, offers another advantage: it forces you to be a better teammate.

I think on the short list of what makes a great strategist is the ability to find a way to help. If we’re NBA players, we should lead the league in assists.

Part of this might come from a self-consciousness, a cousin of impostor syndrome, that comes from not actually… making anything.

This is even more true on the client side. We have so many kinds of strategy: business, media, communications, brand, marketing, digital. They’re all essential parts of the blueprint layering process that ensures plans can support common goals and scale in complex organizations.

If implicit in making plans is later action, a strategist’s plans should include favors that show we understand the job that person needs to do next. They should offer a friendly baton-pass to whoever is executing or refining or adjusting them for their needs.

In agencies those are creative, UX, design, and technology people who have specialized talents. On the brand side they’re vertical and market specialists with deep expertise. A rigid, opaque plan stunts their talent; a clear, friendly plan pours gasoline on it.

What does it look like?

• Doing research and including only the handful of tidbits that are relevant to solving the problem you’ve outlined, as opposed to attaching four reports in different formats for them to sort through
• Using rich, active language and avoiding cliches or marketing yodababble
• Offering real-world parallels that offer additional clarity (e.g., if you’re proposing a program that features personalization, share a campaign like “Share a Coke”)
• Creating clear expectations for how you’ll evaluate their output and on what timeline
• Telling a story rather than listing a bunch of… um… bullet points

So, yes, the job is to craft strategies that ladder up to corporate goals and create specific outcomes to deliver on objectives. We all regurgitate this jargon more than enough. Really, the job is to help the next person who picks up your project.