Why do we need strategists*, anyway?
[Originally published on B2B Brand Debate. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so here.]
* While differences surely exist from agency to agency, “strategist” and “planner” will be used interchangeably throughout this post. The author’s opinion is that the responsibilities implied by these titles involve considerable overlap, but this too is open for debate.
Has anyone else noticed that strategists and account planners are getting a bad rap lately? To see what I mean, check out the show Trust Me, and you’ll see that planners are consistently portrayed as vacuous time-wasters who do little more than provide eye-roll-inducing creative briefs. For a little insight into the source of the show’s point of view, look no further than a recent blog post by Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian, entitled “I’m Tired Of Strategists,” and a second by Simon Veksner, on his blog Scamp, about “Nightmare Propositions.” These two posts popped up almost simultaneously, and underscore doubts—at least among the industry’s “creatives”—as to the importance of strategists and planners.
The confusion is not a new phenomenon, however. Jeremy Bullmore, in 1978, entitled his address to the newly formed Account Planning Group “What are account planners for, Daddy?” In the speech, which is available in his book Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Bullmore points out that “account planners have themselves failed to define what they are for and what they do. Which, when you consider what account planners are supposed to do, must rank as one of life’s richer ironies.” The implication in Bullmore’s title and in the aforementioned blog posts (and comments) is that people with “strategist” or “planner” in their titles seem to get paid to sit around and think a lot, talk about things, and occasionally string some words together. Furthermore, the complaint goes, what little they do produce is often ignored and rarely plays a role in the creative output—whether it’s an advertisement, a logo, or a website.
So, why do we need strategists, anyway?
Of course, to prevent bias, the answer to this question should really come from people without “strategist” or “planner” in their titles. God knows we’re good at talking our way out of a tight spot. So while I’m disqualifying myself from laying out an entire defense in this post, I would like to offer a few suggested areas for discussion, and let you be the judge. After all, this is The B2B Brand *Debate*.
The increased complexity of client businesses
While most of us have a general understanding of beer or running shoes—what the product does, what matters to the customer, and even what the competitive landscape looks like—the same cannot be said of, say, wireless routers or mass spectrometers. Note that this is especially true in B2B markets. As increasingly complex products, companies, and industries adopt sophisticated identity and communications practices, do strategists have a role to play in understanding, explaining, and simplifying?
A desire to more deeply understand the customer
Account planning was invented in the 1960s to deal with the fact that the members of traditional advertising account teams seemed to be increasingly focused on their discrete roles, possibly failing to pay due attention the consumer’s point of view. Again, this may be even more important in B2B markets, as few of us can claim to understand the precise mentality of a regional power utility hoping to procure goods and services from a solar startup. Is this what strategists do?
The need for a translator between researchers and practitioners
Market research techniques continue to evolve in their complexity. One valid response to seeing a multidimensional scatter plot is “Yes, but what does it mean?” Is the role of the strategist to translate histograms and factor analyses into plain speak?
Preventing a natural tendency for work to become self-referential
As Bullmore puts it in his article, an account planner should “represent and illuminate [the] world outside to the myopic specialists with whom he works.” As logo designers and ad copywriters look to their peers for ideas, there is a risk that creative work will cease to do what it’s intended to do: resonate with people who don’t necessarily work in our industry. Do strategists help here, or have they too become overly concerned with their “craft,” in and of itself? Bullmore again: “Your entire value resides in continuing to be members of working account groups—uncontaminated by too much knowledge of each other.”
A need for creative work to become more integrated with overarching business strategy
“Strategist” suggests one who sees the forest for the trees. Who can connect the dots between a company’s long-view business goals and more immediate creative needs. Is the role of the strategist to gain a deep understanding of the client leadership’s business plans and ensure that the agency’s work will support these goals?
Facilitating or coming up with the “big ideas”
While it may displease those with “creative” in their title, planners are in a prime position—either unearthing or collecting marketplace, competitive, and client knowledge—to generate the kinds of “big ideas” upon which creative work can be based. Do planners have a real role to play in coming up with these ideas, or at least inspiring others to do so? To quote Bullmore one last time, planners should “illuminate and inspire…simplify the complicated…provide insights and intuitive hypotheses…clarify and crystallize.”
So, based on your experience, how do you respond to the questions and points above? In short, why do you (or don’t you) need strategists?
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Didn’t you hear? Strategists are obsolete. Just listen to this guy:
http://www.cahanassociates.com/