When we say “Strategy”... just what do we mean?
And more crucially, what should we mean? Because I hear it way too often, that word “strategy”, and it happens far too often, how everyone needs a strategy, a separate strategy for everything.
You have one campaign, one brief, and before anyone has conceived the first half-baked first draft and most likely wildly-off beam idea... there are half-a-dozen different “strategies” being needed and coveted and banded about the place.
There’ll be an express-and-urgent-and-heart-felt need for... a brand strategy; a creative strategy; a communications strategy; a media strategy; a digital strategy; a PR strategy; a below-the-line strategy...
And some of the aforementioned may be blended or replaced (depending on the in-vogue parlance or a given agency’s “world view”) with an “engagement strategy”, a “disruption strategy”, a “dissonance strategy”, an “activation strategy”... and the list I assure you doesn’t end there.
How can these “strategies” all help?
How do they all align?
How are they all different but Wholly Vital to the cause, while still being... crucially... complimentary?
They cannot be.
Ego-feasting, posturing and land-grabbing, unilateral authorships and cluttered thinking; all get in the way of purpose and of developing Great Strategic Thinking. Let’s take a moment, a breath, a pause, apply some clear thinking.
And breathe in.
And out.
OK.
I love language and I love words, but “strategy” is a real front-runner for chronic abuse through over-use. In so many hands, “strategy” has assumed so many meanings as to become potentially meaningless.
When it comes to definitions, dictionaries are a pretty good place to start, and while a bit of a mash-up, I’d suggest the following two definitions are rock-solid:
strategy – noun
1. Long-range planning and development to ensure victory.
2. A Plan-of-Action intended to accomplish a specific goal or result, using all disposable resources to execute as effectively as possible.
So, where does this clear and defined start-point then take us?
Ideally, there should be a business strategy. That’s the best place to start. And then... that’s where brands come in – because brands, done right, build business; they grow the bottom line. To build a brand, you need a plan, which involves a whole host of people, of professional specialists, all pulling together, in the same direction, behind a common purpose, setting out and holding hands along a common path... and that’s “The Strategy”. (As well as a little slice of wishful Adland Nirvana.)
There is, therefore, Only One Strategy.
Just replace Ring with Strategy, and we’re there. Creative, Digital, PR, DM, Experiential, Ambient etc etc and whatever, it’s all about linking into that one given strategy and expressing it through any given specialist, contributing strand. One Strategy, One Collective Intent.
I’ve too often sat around a conference table where everyone starts talking a strategy for this and a strategy for that. It may be a touch gothic to suggest my blood has boiled and my urge to decapitate swelled, but trust me the restraint needed has at moments been quite herculean.
One strategy, multiple and many expressions, activations and amplifications, with all moving parts always and completely aligned. Simple, uncomplicated, how it should be.
Of course, square away the definitions, stop sitting round abstractly debating what a strategy “is & isn’t”, and then the Real Tough Thinking starts. The real trick is ensuring that any plan is a good one, and then in finest A-Team style, making sure it comes together. Benjamin Disraeli warned of flawed, broken thinking in the planning process...
“The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in TWO leaps.”
No arguments there; all the more reason to get it right up-front. Realising the strategy sucks only when you come to execute it can lead to some rather nasty falls.
But the last and better word on this can go to the English comedy writer, Frank Muir, who clearly knew the score...
“Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.”
SP.
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