Strategy snips
In Truth, Lies, and Advertising, published over 25 years ago but still as fresh and juicy as a summer peach, Jon Steel describes, almost as an anthropologist might, how people in other departments came to understand strategists. He recalls an interaction in which a creative director introduced him to another member of the team:
The next day, he introduced me to someone else as “a pain in the ass,” and I suppose that if anyone is to successfully play the role of conscience, then they have to be a pain in the ass at times. A person’s conscience doesn’t always tell them what they want to hear, no matter how right they know it to be.
Though I was born with the skills required to be a pain in the ass, I wasn’t born a strategist and luckily have had plenty of people show me the ropes. I also continue to be humbled by little I know and how much I have to learn. (Not enough, apparently, to stop me from being a pain in the ass).
There are a few things that have helped me keep getting added to Zoom meetings, despite my clear disagreeableness.
Mark Pollard describes strategy as an informed opinion on how to win. Being informed includes before you get into the research, and after. Both give you important tools to solve the problem: the first gives you perspective, the second gives you context.
Pre-research knowledge helps you develop a hunch, and to get there, in Steel’s words again, you have to be a bit of a weirdo. That hunch helps you develop questions that go wide, looking for confirmation of and dissent toward your hunch. (Baiba Matisone’s strategy link bank is as good a source as any for anyone stuck on where to go next.)
Now that you know way too much about something you’ve never thought about, like I did last year with paper towels, you need to forget a lot of it. Legendary screenwriter William Goldman, in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, writes about how a writer decides what to show their audience:
It’s possible to conceive narrative as endless piece of string. The writer makes two snips, one for the beginning, one at the end, and the placement of those snips may be as important as anything a writer does.
The research that’s led by and feeds our hunches is an endless string; in a 4 C’s, the stories that feed Consumer alone could fill a whole library wall. A strategic narrative cuts those down to about six facts that tell best tell the story of how the hunch will lead to a win.
Then you need a travel-size version, like a mini tube of toothpaste. The goal is to get to something succinct enough that people repeat it enough that it’s no longer yours. You hunch has become their hunch. You likely won’t get a thank you note, but you will get to smart strategic work that you wouldn’t get to on your own.
A couple years ago, a client for Bomb Pop, a Popsicle competitor aimed at tweens, asked us to “make the brand iconic.” I dug through a ton of research into the truths around the brand — from the trite to the stereotypical to the revelatory. All of that led to the comms idea: How do we make Bomb Pop grab attention like a pop culture media brand or a creator?
The brief helped lead to activations (like this one with an actor beloved by the audience) and helped “deliver a 26% year-over-year increase in sales and a 10.5% increase in brand awareness.”
The campaign wasn’t exactly as I’d envisioned it, as none has ever been. The last (and least prickly) part of being a professional pain in the ass is being open to what kind of “right” the creative, media, and client teams conceive of and approve. Planting the seed of an idea means being ok with when and how the plant blooms and bears fruits.
To summarize:
Have a hunch
Go wide, looking for confirmation and dissent
Find your six facts and forget the rest
Say it until you hear other people repeating it as their own
Stay open to different kinds of “right”
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I write these posts, 3-MINUTE MONDAYS, every other week. My goal with them is to share a snippet of insight into how to do strategy, build teams, and grow. Comment here or message me on LinkedIn if you want to chat. — Ben
