In a brief mobile call this morning, one of my colleagues in the profession asked me if I was still working on developing digital marketing strategies or even in media buying strategies, because our first meeting ten years ago was to present the digital communication strategy for the organization he was working with. He reminded me of the closest projects to my heart and the most frustrating at the same time.

The Strategy.. 

Like many terms, the problem is not with the word, but with what we have done with it. It is a word born to lead a direction, it is now summoned to justify veto rights in meetings when we hear "Is this in line with the strategy?". It was the spark in the world of advertising, but it has become a PowerPoint or Keynote file (above the sale), and at best it is a file that proves the agency’s ability or the individual who worked on it to research and dazzle in presenting information.. only to become in the end a "neat file" and a decoration that earns the agency the trust of the entity, and then the management "digs" into it before it remains locked away in drawers, failing to answer the question of what we should do, or even in answering the less complicated question of what should not be done.

Why has the strategy lost its prestige and become locked away in drawers?

The Time Factor:

The strategy has been wronged for several reasons, the first of which is the time factor. It has become a quick task, a repetitive analysis in a polished language, not because the strategists have changed, but because the environment around them has stopped valuing them. Strategies are sometimes required in the days before the contract starts. This makes the stakeholders' goals regarding the strategy to complete it as soon as possible, so that the entity or client can start sending their daily requests which are not necessarily bound by a specific strategy and are considered given. The agency then begins to implement the framework and become capable of billing fueled by monthly, quarterly, and annual results.

Repetition and the Basics:

When trust in the importance of the strategy is lost on one hand, and it is not applied when it is good and built on from the other hand, then the element of time pressure comes fully equipped against it. It turns into copy-paste files, and sometimes into files (tromboning) slides from here and slides from there that can be applied to many without presenting a noticeable transformation or a strong opinion that drives the overall marketing direction or even lead the direction of a specific element within it. 
In better cases, strategies drown in basics and then narrow the horizon of the workers under its umbrella, thus creating a miraculous framework for creative teams.. 

"Most of the campaigns we ran that succeeded had a clear brief, but few of them came from a strategy. Most strategies were not suggested as a new direction that opened doors for us in thinking. However, the communication strategies that came to us opened a new door for the Communication platform in the case of Diriyah as a "historical future" for instance, because the direction of the strategy was (don’t talk about legacy only, because the future is equally important to the target audience of the campaign) " Faisal Al-Abra - Senior Creative Director at TTP.

Fear:

According to the WARC report "The Future of Strategy 2025"* regarding the future of strategies, half of the workers in the advertising sector see that fear is the biggest enemy of strategy,
Fear of making mistakes. Fear of taking risks. Fear of the client. Fear of time. And fear that no one will like the idea. Returning to the time factor here, sometimes speed and quantity are rewarded over accuracy, AdHoc here, reacting to a trend there..
Meaning that brands usually reward those who execute more, not those who think deeper, thus many strategy writers tend to take the safe path in thinking and modeling instead of
And if the strategy does not produce new thinking, this will not prompt noticeable change in how brands approach the promotion process, leading to increasing disbelief in the idea of the importance of the strategy.

What is the cost?

So, if the fast product is rewarded more than the slow one well-crafted, and most strategies that agencies and marketing consulting firms write are copy-pasting without detailing at times due to the aforementioned reasons, not to mention how the strategy is followed if it is good, what is the cost we pay when abandoning it.. or in the words of the Westerners.. Why bother?!
The cost of living in reaction.. the cost of not having a basic compass for marketing direction is living in reaction to others’ brands leading to a brand without a clear identity doing what everyone does because "its results are awesome" or turning into a war of reactive requests hostage to the desires of team members from stakeholders.

The Loss of Meaning

The promotion and publishing team wants to reach everyone, while the creative team wants to dazzle and win awards, and management wants sales figures with nothing to unite them. Because the absence of strategy leads to the absence of a reference point for judging success or failure between them, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, it may lead to the presence of the brand indeed with a large amount of investment, but with low impact or a momentary high impact..

The Cost of Courage Increases..

Let’s imagine two examples, a company follows a clear strategy, and one of its goals is to capture attention by adopting a courageous creative approach, while the other does not follow a clear strategy.. Both will participate in the same seasonal campaign because they are in the same sector, and both will adopt a brave creative approach.
Which of them is more likely to suffer a negative reaction to their campaign because of their courage which severely harms the brand and goes beyond that to injure revenues?
Definitely the first one, and the first reason is because it is consistent with that. What suits brand "S" which has paved its mental image over many years through experience and the extension of "creating" its audience's message does not suit brand "S" which is lost.
Thus, losing strategic direction, even if the strategy is not written on paper, raises the cost of a single mistake. The result gradually shifts the organizational culture towards safety from failure, instead of seeking the best or even improving the existing.
Then.. creative works become bland, and even if they are good in themselves, you find no trace of the entity, making them similar to one another, and the one who applauds the idea is not the owner of the idea, and the idea and the advertising joke are remembered, not the brand… and marketing tactics are imitated in such a way that does not create a difference in how the message is received between that brand and the same brand.

So.. What is the solution?

Linking Business

I believe that reconnecting strategy teams with real business instead of imprisoning them in shortcuts of frameworks might play a role in digitizing their goals and refining their orientations from the imagination of ideal worlds to the ground reality. 

The Strategist as a Crafter, Not a Maker

Perhaps the nature of the strategist as a maker of strategy is part of the problem, due to the immersion in the basics for those in the same industry, leading to a significant part of the strategy file getting lost in explaining basics that everyone knows and perhaps also agrees upon which causes boredom that pulls the reader away from the important context of the strategy as a roadmap, while the strategist as a crafter of it, not a sole creator, plays his role in linking all stakeholders and listening to them, aggregating their tactical plans within a larger framework he formulates the grand plan with to ensure smooth adherence.

Finding an Owner for the Project 

It is important for any project that responsibility and authority lie in the hands of the project leader, and the problem with strategy projects is that the strategist himself often hands over the file, then leaves for another file, and only supervises execution in rare events, and in the best case will return in quarterly reviews to see what happened. Therefore, there should be characteristics in this project owner, who should not only have a stake in completing it but also be an interested party in completing it correctly. This means that if the intention is for the strategy preparation team to oversee the implementation, then so be it, and different managements should refer back to him in approving projects and preparing tasks and precautions for each project. If the project manager is to be, then the goals of the project manager should be to carry out the right project on time, not to complete projects by number and deliver them. 

Maybe it is time to restore strategic thinking not as a neat volume or a "decoration", but as the spirit of marketing thinking itself. To be a journey of questions, not ready answers, as a methodology that links creativity to results, not as a miraculous file for creative teams filled with precautions. To restore strategy to decision-making, not to drawers.

Statistical Reference:  WARC "The Future of Strategy 2025