Your Optimal Strategy Isn't

It’s Thursday. Are we feeling very demure? Mindful?

Yes I just did.

So strategy consultants and agencies (internal or external) often get a bad rap.

Sometimes we deserve it. But sometimes we don’t.

The cliché (and, yeah, some stereotypes exist for a reason) is that strategy consultants and agencies recommend strategies the business can’t implement. The proposed changes might be too complex, disruptive, expensive, or lengthy, making them impractical.

You’ve heard the jokes. One says marketing strategies are measured by how loud of a thump they make on a desk when dropped from a certain height. Another is that marketing leaders in companies line their bookshelves with strategies that never got implemented.

You know: shelfware.

Before I go on - speaking of marketing strategy…

<cue “and now a word from our sponsor”> Here at TCA we just worked on the most awesome content marketing project. So, one of our clients had a belief that they could expand their blog into driving a whole lot more value than simply providing high level leads to sales. But, they had no way of creating a measurement plan around that idea. So - we helped them come up with a new measurement framework, and the project plan to help them implement it. Now they have a business case, objectives and a long-term measurement framework to guide their progress.

If that or some other Content Marketing assistance is something you can use - we're looking to engage with a couple of new projects in September

Okay… Let’s get focused and talk about optimal marketing strategies!…. In this week’s edition.

• Optimal Marketing Strategies Often Aren’t
• Snoop Dogg Returns to Solo Stove
• Building Content For Moments

Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: OPTIMAL OFTEN ISN’T

So why do those cliches about Marketing Strategies being assessed by weight exist? Why do those plans so often end up not being deployed at all?

Well, the marketing teams often complain that the consultant (who again might be internal by the way) didn’t understand the realities of their situation (or even the assignment). On the other hand, the Consultants and agencies claim the client “doesn’t get it” or “wasn’t ready for an?optimal?marketing strategy.”

And there’s the words: optimal marketing strategy.

You see, in these situations, both sides are correct, and both are wrong.

The author of the optimal marketing strategy probably didn’t understand the realities of the marketing team’s situation or history. And the marketing team probably wasn’t ready or able to execute the optimal strategy as constructed.

But here’s the thing: No one in their right mind would ever develop a suboptimal marketing strategy to account for the team's current capabilities...

No client has ever Zoomed up a consultant or agency and said, “You know, forget optimal. We can't handle optimal. We need the just-good-enough for us plan.”?

That's not where the trap is. The trap is that we assume that the optimal marketing strategy - when it's done - is something we have to live up to, rather than changing it to something we can live with.

Does culture really eat strategy for breakfast?

I recently worked with a marketing team of 30 people at a technology company. Most team members have been at the company for years and have developed a specific way of working together.

Two marketing leaders left recently, and two new leaders came in.?

The new leaders wanted new processes, workflows, and measurement approaches to manage all the moving parts of their digital marketing. And they took a top-down approach to implement these changes.

Narrator: “It didn’t turn out well.”

When I reviewed their plan, I found it beautifully designed. It was right. The strategy was sound. It was the quintessential optimal marketing strategy.

But the team couldn’t seem to execute on it.

Why? Well, it was so much change and such a different way of working that it simply overwhelmed the team.?

Some people didn’t buy into the plan. Some bought in but didn’t feel empowered to make some of the required decisions. And some were so busy keeping things going that they couldn’t see themselves devoting time to learning an entirely new way of working.

It was a perfect example of the famous quote attributed to (but he never said) business guru Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”?

That saying is often misconstrued to paint culture as an impediment to deploying an optimal strategy. The suggestion is that we need to change the culture so that we "live up to" the new strategy.

Drucker actually wrote (in a?1991 Wall Street Journal column called Don’t Change Corporate Culture — Use It!) that “culture — no matter how defined — is singularly persistent.” So, if you need to change something, “don’t change culture. Change habits.”

He believed that?implementing strategy?depended on making sure that the people involved would change their habits to accommodate it. And, as he wrote, “Changing behavior works only if it can be based on the existing ‘culture.’”

Story map your better plan

Developing the optimal marketing strategy plan is important. It's good to start from what "optimal" looks like. And different people will have ideas about what “optimal” looks like. But, yes, shooting for the right plan — independent of limitations, current capabilities, or culture — is the best place to start. But it's just that: a start.

What comes next is the most important.

When you review the plan, map out what would work best. You might need to take it more slowly or remove elements to make it achievable. How do you change habits so that you leverage the existing culture to create a new strategy that the teams can live with.?

In my book?Content Marketing Strategy, I explain the story-mapping approach I’ve used to do this with my clients for years. It involves reviewing any optimal strategy and then working to find out what makes it realistic — and ultimately better — by reducing its optimization.

Now that you’ve defined priorities (and not priorities), you can use them to make the plan more realistic, achievable, or believable for the teams affected.

When I ran this process for my technology company client, they compromised on some top-down new processes. Was it necessary to have a new?fixed process?for this thing that wasn’t really broken? It seemed optimal on paper, but the disruption might outweigh the benefit.

In de-optimizing the strategy, the team made it better. And it works well today.Have a great week. Oh, and if you want a slightly longer, “optimal” version of this post. Well, it’s here.

WIDE ANGLE LENS: MARKETING SNAPS

Let’s get it all in frame. Shall we?

?? Snoop Lights Up Marketing With Blunt Strategy - Fresh off his Olympic hosting duties, Snoop Dogg has reunited with Solo Brands for a new campaign called Blunt Marketing. (See what they did there?). Is this campaign different than the #FAIL that influenced the CEO’s departure in 2024? Yes, it is.

Solo says it’s learned its lesson and is focused on the right thing — sales.

But has Solo really turned over a new leaf? I made a video about it if you want to - you know - take a puff….?

?? DNC Building A New Experience By Focusing On Moments - One of the marketing headlines to come out of last week’s Democratic National Convention is that they built the entire agenda around viral moments that could be played and replayed across social media, rather than building for the live and even recorded television format. While this confounded the TV analysts - it made for a better live event - and certainly reached A LOT more viewers than ever before. There are lessons to be learned here about how we must take our content to the edges and design them specifically for the experiences where our audiences now congregate. I wrote a little about this last week.

LENS CAP: Let’s Finish With A Flourish

People aren’t machines

Thinking of Marketing teams as machines that need to be tuned is a metaphorical trap. Organizations are collections of people who perform best when nurtured.?

Today’s marketing teams don’t thrive because they’ve been optimized with mechanical adjustments. They thrive when their success is cultivated through relationships and shared purpose.

Sometimes, you can (and should) opt out of optimization.

Stay Demure. Mindful. And Remember….

It’s your story. Tell it well

Have a great long weekend!