“STRATEGY is; A style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring FUTURE SUCCESS.”
Peter Johnson, Author & Historian
Most agencies implicitly acknowledge Johnson’s definition of “strategy”... because every agency feels the heavy need for an implementation system, a “Planning Process”, a “tool to call their own”... that they can wheel out in pitches, use to assert how they are different from the pitching field, use to internally train their planning staff... and use to demonstrate how they can both embrace best-practice AND remain permanently on the cusp of innovation.
Yes, betwixt the above lines you will have felt a needle of sarcasm, so for balance, let me add this.
Best practice is best and having a process is how you get there. But there are also caveats, otherwise (back to Johnson’s definition), all “style of thinking”... ends up losing all style.
Planning is only part process, and over-fixation with “The Process” is to the distraction and detriment of desired outcome. And a Desirable Outcome – smart thinking, great work – is the only reason for championing a process in the first place.
The Planning Process, or System, or Tool, may well be an acronym. Big organisations, agency and corporate alike, tend to really like acronyms.
TCP (Total Comms Planning)...
IBM (Integrated Brand Marketing)...
IBC (Integrated Brand Communications)...
ICP (Integrated Communications Planning)...
All are absolutely harmless, so long as no one goes confusing them with WMD’s.
WMD symbol variants. Not to be confused with ICP, TCP, IBM et al.
Cheap acronym gags aside, all four of the aforementioned are fine and decent planning processes as long as taken with a pinch of humanistic perspective. All are very systemic left-brain carefully-plotted and conveniently linear roadmaps to – and here’s the thing – a fundamentally more right brained, intuitive, zig-zaggy discipline.
Yes, you’ve got learn the rules in order to then start breaking them, but once you know the rules it’s wise to recognise that everyone has the same toolkit back at the ranch, and it’s the Human Dimension that makes or breaks a good piece of communications thinking. Because there ain’t much imagination born of mechanistic thinking.
Some agencies go a step further, dodge the acronym pratfall. Planning Systems have been known to be named after volcanoes (no copyrights on "Etna"), winning chess moves, or consciously treated with cheeky Post Modern irony – “The Big Tool” remains a personal favourite of mine.
Whatever the volcano, irony, or acronym, a tool is a tool is a tool. And while there’s nothing wrong with a good tool, there’s also a clear bottom line.
Use a tool, don’t be a tool.
SP.
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