Let's be honest, not everyone thinks there is a point to planners, strategists or whatever the job titles is these days.
Even in 'good' organisations, client or agency, there are suits, clients and creatives, media buyers and so on, all thinking they don't anyone else to so own the strategy bit.
Sometimes they have a point. The best creatives are brilliant planners, are the best suits and even clients.
Of course, in less good organisations, some don't see the point of strategy full stop but we'll agree to let that one go shall we.
Now some would say that strategy types are the ones who 'own the consumer' or 'target audience'. That was never true and still isn't, the research guys would claim this, the client head of insight would claim this.
Others would say it's about helping agencies doe their best work, which usually means post rationalising creative work or some sort of media plan, or content idea. It means helping the agency get award winning work through.
That isn't doing your job either. Of course, there is the data from the IPA that award winning work is more effective, but that's from a small base of case studies with the right econometrics, with a provable ROI effect that the client was happy to share. Agencies don't enter IPA awards unless it's effective work that is also coming with a story that will impress the judges.
Some might say it's keeping the client interested with new things to think about while making the agency output easy to buy. New things are unfamiliar, they're hard to sign off confidently, but this really harks back to the last point. And strategists can be trojan horses for novelty and fadism getting into client meetings if you're not careful.
So what's the point?
I think it's about cutting through the bullshit and provoking everyone to do the right thing for the client business, rather than what their biases tell them to do.
There is no one else with the scope, or the skill, to look at consumer research, cultural trends, the creative process, the client business culture, the agency culture, the actual task for communications, the dogma of best practise.........and chip away through all the extraneous rubbish to what the actual problem is, the best approach that solves is and then help shape the solution.
And no one else who can do it quicker....because you read and absorb more stuff than anyone else and constantly train yourself to be objective and practice challenging the subjectivity and bias of other while leaving them smiling.
No one else who doesn't get swept away by a brilliant creative idea that isn't actually relevant to the problem. In case you wonder what I mean, loads of folks use the Byron Sharpe assertion, that brands needs to be distinctive not differentiated, as an excuse for rampant shock and awe advertising, while conveniently forgetting that every piece of work needs to remove reasons not to buy and ensure that the brand is remembered in buying situations. They build awareness (maybe and usually prompted) rather than SALIENCE. That's why so many people talk about 'that great ad' but forget what brand it was for.
Or takes a tracking study seriously.
Or allows data to be the answer to everything.
The marriage if logic. emotion, common sense and humility you might say.
Everyone else has a specific job and to quote Mark Twain, give someone a hammer and all he sees is a nail. Your job is to help everyone see beyond what they do and make them all bigger than the sum of their parts.
Less a planner and more of a shaper, but shaper is a worse job title than planner I guess.
Anyway.
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