#3: Strategists only focus on the brief.

Thing about advertising that I’m pretty sure is true number three:

If you are a strategist (of any kind) your role in the creative review is to say whether an idea is on- or off- brief. Especially in the first creative review. Every other thought you have—about whether something is funny, clever, cute or whatever—is secondary. Remembering this will make you massively useful to your creative team.

A lot of very smart people get into advertising and get the job title Strategist. It’s a good title. Feels important. The problem, though, is that very often these people are given no direction as to what is expected of them. Strategists are smart people, but “being smart” isn’t really a job. It’s a skill. But its not an occupation.

These people end up in both powerful positions and awkward meetings. There are meetings where large amounts of money have been spent, and the Strategist must stand up and deliver their work, which all too often ends up being “people like to save money”. Or an overly-used so-called insight that is some version of “despite being so connected, we feel more alone than ever”.

It’s a significant stress, not only on the Strategist themselves, but also on the agency. Strategy is supposed to be a plan, laid out clearly on paper and agreed to by the client, before the very expensive creative phase begins. Pithy insights are great, but not enough to spend massive amounts of money on.

If you are a strategist, focus on answering one simple question:

What message, clearly communicated, would increase the likelihood of reaching the goal?

It’s a simple question, but the answer requires a lot of work. To confidently answer this question you need the following things:

To know what the goal is

You need to know if this is about drive sales or awareness. Who the audience is and what they currently think or do, in relation to the brand. You have to know the competitive set and how far away the brand currently is from the goal. You have to know know if there is enough money in the budget to pursue this goal.

To choose the message

Strategy, it is said, is about making decisions, based on limited resources. You only have a certain number of players, with a certain set of skills. How you use those players to win a baseball game is strategy. Same with advertising. You are dealing with time, which is the scarcest resource there is. You only have a limited amount of time with the consumer, and (honestly) you only have a limited amount of time for the team to create something. You, as the strategist, need to decide what is the message that should be communicated in that limited time.

To be able to explain why this message has a chance of achieving the goal

This is where you have to show your work. You need to be able to pull something from your research that shows that a very specific message has a great chance of success, either because it speaks to an unmet need, aligns with a strong desire, or helps avoid a loss. This part allows you to not only pull in research, but also culture and some psychological triggers.

The primary responsibility of the Strategist is to write the Brief. The Brief captures the answer to that question and provides the support. It needs to be approved by the client before any creative work begins.

Once it is approved, the creative team gets briefed. It is their job to come up with the way the message is clearly communicated. Creative teams love having a simple message to communicate. It allows them to think big, while keeping them focused.

With that approved brief in hand, the Strategist can then look at every idea that comes by and either say it is or is not “on brief”. That is: it clearly communicates the idea that needs to be clearly communicated for value to be generated for the client.

Do this, and only this, and you will become absolutely indispensable to the creative team. They, generally speaking, do not need to hear your opinion about how cool/uncool something is. Or, I suppose, they do not need your aesthetic opinion nearly as much as they need your strategic one.