Strategy for a Post-COVID World

Four ways to stay relevant as strategists and help build a better world

We’re about 100 days into this global pandemic very dramatically hitting our shores and changing our way of life. One of the most interesting things we saw, and are continuing to see, is that consumer trends that were once not widely adopted are being immediately adopted by the masses. We are now comfortable buying groceries and our essentials online. Our grandparents know how to use Zoom. Companies are supporting their employees while working from home. And suddenly the career coach and yoga instructor has a global customer-base.

Beyond these growth areas, we’ve also seen impossible-to-ignore evidence that our healthcare system doesn’t work. We live in two Americas — one for the privileged and for those being kept down by systematic oppression and racism. It can no longer be denied that rents are too damn high in most major cities (and unsustainable), and for those in agency-land, we’re seeing the acceleration of consolidation of agencies by holding companies. Both these positive trends and negative are revolutionizing our world, exposing problems that we need to fix and new behaviors that we — as strategists, citizens and consumers need to find solutions for.

It is not business as usual, and will not be for the foreseeable future.

As someone said at a recent STRTGST event, “strategy is about figuring out how to get back up when you’ve been punched in the face.” (Said by a dude, of course). This punch in the face is forcing us to snap out of a path that wasn’t serving both our greater humanity and the burned out, advertising and marketing communities.

So where’s the opportunity for us as marketers, strategists and creative thinkers to build this new world? For me, the world I want to build is a better, more equal, healthy and sustainable one. Just my life’s purpose (NBD). But I found myself knocked down these past few weeks, my optimism waning with news of hiring freezes, emails that went into blackholes and the general malaise that seemed to (rightly so) permeate our collective consciousness. Eventually a little energy kicked back in (coffeeiwillneverquityou) and I started probing my communities for inspiration, from Sweathead to LinkedIn and Twitter around what trends we’re seeing in advertising and how we can get back up.

Without further ado — how do we, as creative thinkers, strategists and marketers expand our toolkit, keep our jobs, find new ones and generally be part of the solution to this changing consumer, marketing landscape and world?

1. Become experts in digital marketing and digital experiences. It’s now or never. Every strategist should be a “digital strategist.” This means being able to have intelligent conversations with clients and teammates about UX or even adding UX strategy to your tool kit. Knowing what types of considerations go into AR, VR and / or Mixed Reality or even knowing what each of those mean. Finally understanding what Tik Tok is all about and getting familiar with both established and emerging social platforms. Understanding, in general how to translate what was once in person or a traditional campaign into digital experiences and content. This could even mean no longer seeing a line between digital and traditional but as one continuum of the customer experience.
2. Become a Renaissance Strategist. Learn the ethos of “lean planning,” “design thinking,” “move fast and break things,” and nimbly prototyping instead of spending weeks to birth the perfect strategy line. Don’t just be an account planner, a design strategist or brand strategist but become a creative problem solver that can tackle various challenges, regardless of tactics. It seems like it was only just yesterday that agencies boasted of having a specialist for every individual channel. Being a generalist was frowned upon. Strategists got used to the luxuries of, in some cases, not even having to conduct their own research in order to focus on the creative brief. Every task was an opportunity to bill out more business, whether to pad the bottom line of holding companies or maintain a business model that already seemed broken to begin with. To our detriment, we stopped learning how to do certain things, became divorced from media and even tactics. But this sentiment has shifted and with head counts being reduced and little idea as to when client budgets will come back, agencies will have to do more with less. This could mean breaking the traditional business model altogether, finding new revenue streams or hiring those who can wear many different hats. So us strategists need to learn how to get our hands dirty in every aspect of the strategic process again. Become the Renaissance Strategists that are helping to move the brief forward. And fast.
3. Prove measurable effectiveness. This has been a problem with our industry for a long time. In fact, before the days of Wunderman Thompson, CRM and direct to consumer, was looked down on as a less prestigious advertising craft. The greatest achievement one could get in the industry, a Cannes Lion, doesn’t even necessarily have to be effective and one even wonders who cares about the winning ads outside the industry. Awareness has been king. But while it’s hard to isolate the impact of a marketing effort, it’s something we need to learn how to do once and for all as an industry. We need to do this before Excel-chart loving consulting companies and programmatic advertising eat our lunch. Even as strategists, we’re often left struggling to articulate our impact on the work, not having the aid of smart copy, a piece of film or awe-inspiring design to showcase our value. So it’s time we all learn how to establish KPis for every project, learn the tools of “growth marketing” and generally understand how to create impactful strategies while keeping the tenants of branding in mind.
4. Keep Swimming Upstream. With ad free television continuing to grow, publishing struggling and entire generations raised on ad-free media, the state of our advertising industry is at risk. We see clients shift budgets from traditional forms of media to working directly with platforms themselves. Agencies who were once strategic partners are now being treated as vendors. Clients are taking work in house. Perhaps an ad is no longer where the real magic happens or even where strategists can or should make an impact. We as strategists need to continue collaborating with the C-Suite to not just create their marketing, but develop new products, services and initiatives. We need to continue proving out, as those who are most connected to the consumer and culture, that what companies do in this world is so much more important than what they say. We need to become agents of change in organizations, whether it’s pushing diversity initiatives and making sure that “on strategy” also means inclusive, to bringing in new perspectives that spark change. And we need to make a case to usher in those changes, while being empathetic coaches to our client partners as they go through their own transformations.

Our clients have quickly adapted their manufacturing capabilities and services towards helping our immediate needs — from perfume companies creating hand sanitizer to virtual collaboration tools supporting millions of new users. We, as people on this planet, have adapted. It’s up to strategists to quickly take on new roles as well.