What does a strategy planner actually do?
Strategic planning isn’t a concrete job with a list of defined deliverables. It’s far more fluid than that. It’s a hybrid of planning in the traditional sense (finding the right consumer insights, right media channels and right timelines to reach a particular audience) and herding cats. Or creatives, specifically.
The job of a strategic planner starts at the briefing stage and should be intertwined throughout the process, right through to implementation planning and post campaign reporting. It begins with understanding what the real issue is buried within the brief, conducting all the research into audience, the category, brand health and competitor landscape and layering all this information with data and insights to carve a direction to inform great creative. And holding onto that direction throughout the process to keep everyone on track.
Strategic planning is the voice that keeps the project on course, that builds the business case for clients and creates the path of least resistance to getting our work noticed by an increasing fragmented audience.
How can strategy planners be your greatest foe and your biggest ally?
It all comes down to accepting the process really. The more engaged everyone in the agency is with strategy, the easier it becomes for everyone to do their jobs. Similarly, if your client buys into the process and understands the value of strategic planning, you get a hell of a lot more out of your agencies. Accountability, efficiency, impact. These are the things that strategic planning brings to the table.
If you accept that, planning is your greatest ally. If you fight the process, think its just a bunch of fluff and don’t stay true to the direction, strategy becomes your biggest foe. Because it reminds you that you are off course – no matter how epic the idea is. Strategic planning is the sober look in the mirror. The north star.
You refer to the forgotten art of making hard choices. Why do you say it’s a forgotten art? Aren’t there hard choices made in the industry every day?
Absolutely. But in the same vein, the easy choices are made far too regularly. Its human nature. It’s a lot easier for agencies and clients to roll out a television campaign than to really change culture with a logistically nightmarish and slightly risky experiential activation concept, for example. It’s the strat planners job to push the entire team towards the best possible solution, which involves making hard and sometimes unpopular decisions about media channels and creative concepts.
How do strategy planners shape the future of the industry?
Strategy planners push work forward to that positively uncomfortable place that forces everyone to rethink the way we work as an industry and what we produce as an industry. You see the type of work that is making huge waves overseas and it can get very intimidating to work out how the local industry moves towards that standard. Strategic planning is definitely not the only part of the puzzle, but it’s a damn important part in changing from making ads to creating conversation.
You can view the full Grey Trends 2016 report
here.