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.

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In defense of “tangle”

I first learned about this name change on CatchThis, a blog produced by the excellent naming firm Catchword. According to the post, a family-friendly video sharing site called GodTube has renamed itself tangle. Laurel Sutton, a founder and owner at Catchword, outlines her case against the name by making two points:

1. A contradiction between a) a line in an article explaining the name change, which states that tangle supports “no specific theology” and b) quotes from the CEO that suggest the site is really for Christians.
2. The fact that “tangle” is “usually something you want to get out of, not in to. And then there’s the meaning of ‘mess with’ or ‘provoke’ – also negative, and kind of threatening too (do you want to tangle with god?)”

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Think you can write short copy?

Every year New Times of San Luis Obispo hosts a unique writing competition. The goal is to write an entire fictional story in 55 words. Submissions are not due until mid-June, but are accepted all year. As the website states, keeping a tale under 55 words—fewer than are in this paragraph—is “not as easy as it seems.” But it’s a pretty interesting experiment to see how much story you can squeeze into a few sentences, so I’m planning on giving it a go again this year.

In about 2002 I was working in insurance and desperately seeking some way of releasing creative energy in between performing financial analyses and filling out rate sheets in Excel. When I accompanied some friends to Cal Poly one weekend, I happened to pick up a New Times and read about the competition. I decided to write down a few ideas over the following year, and somehow managed to stay organized and submit them before the deadline. I think I entered about 16 stories, and the following story was chosen as one of many winners:

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Still failing to do anything original: Ford, GM

Much has been made of the challenges faced by US automakers as compared to more successful non-US brands like Toyota and Honda. Difficulty negotiating with union labor is often cited, for example. I’m not even close to being an expert on the subject, but I can’t help suspecting that what lies at the heart of the problem could be more accurately described as a complete and utter lack of originality. An NPR story the other day about Ford and GM’s plan to copy Hyundai’s recession incentive supported this view.

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How to get an idea

A few weeks back I wrote a post about how to build a brand for free, in which I (jokingly) suggested that in order to come up with an idea you could go to a website, choose a couple of words, and string them together. This technique might prove interesting or even fun, but of course it rarely produces more than a random phrase (examples I gave were “Sensible Passion” and “Solid Library”). If you really want some instruction on generating good ideas, I recommend looking into the work of James Webb Young.

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Microsoft’s still got it all wrong

A few weeks back I posted something I’d written about Microsoft’s recent ad campaign, which in my opinion continues to fail as an effort to win back market and mindshare from Apple.

Now they’ve launched a new ad, which can be viewed here, and again I think they’ve missed the mark. I read one interesting article that goes into detail on the ad as well as reactions from Apple employees and partners,. It quotes one Apple reseller as saying “It certainly looks like a lazy campaign in which the primary focus is on price instead of value.” Couldn’t have put it better myself. My question after watching the ad was “yeah, but did she get home and realize it was a piece of crap?” The ad ends with her happily showing off her new laptop, but it’s still in the box. I want to know how she feels about the purchase a few weeks or months later.

Here’s another interesting article on the campaign.

Let me know what you think of the ad…

—UPDATE (4/13/09)—

A coworker just pointed out this article to me. It’s by Dan Lyons at Newsweek, who argues in favor of Microsoft’s most recent ads. His point is that the ads, beyond highlighting the price gap, carry “a far more damaging subtext: that people who buy Macs aren’t necessarily cool, clued-in hipsters. In fact, they might just be poseurs who paid too much for a computer–slash–fashion accessory.”

I’m glad the article doesn’t conclude that the ads are good because they show that PCs are cheaper. Clinging to low price as a point of differentiation is a last resort that may help in the short term, but could severely damage the brand in the post-recession long term. In fact, these ads strike me as more of a death knell than a new beginning, as Lyons suggests. (Although it would be silly to predict Microsoft’s imminent failure.)

I don’t disagree with everything Lyons writes, but he’s far from convinced me that these ads will positively impact the brand in the long term.