How the strategy profession is evolving

Last year I had coffee with fifty strategists working in design, public relations and advertising. My work last year focused on in-house marketing for technology startups and researching my book on B2B social media, so the coffees were a great way for me to keep my eye on agency land. All that caffeine also helped me to spot new services that I think clients will be asking their agencies for in 2014.

Clients will still want campaigns made, websites built and apps created, but these trational services are becoming increasingly commoditised. Some agencies will focus on making things faster and cheaper, but the best agencies will make money helping clients build their own in-house growth capabilities.

I hate seeing good products that aren’t succeeding because they aren’t being noticed. I have always loved working with people who have a great product but aren’t yet great at telling their story. I have done some of my best work with software developers, engineers, and scientists. These people are great at thinking (and building), but not so great at articulating their product to customers and investors.

Blending marketing and product development

Almost all the strategists who I had coffee with shared my interest in persuasion, influence and the psychology of human behaviour. Ultimately, everything that a client wants from a design and innovation agency comes back to influencing human behaviour in some way. This transcends the historic divide between marketing and product development.

Anyone that has ever tried to convince their significant other to fold their towels in a different way knows that changing human behaviour isn’t easy. Good strategists specialise in the psychology of human behaviour change. If you want someone to change their behaviour and buy your widget or to invest in your company, then a brand strategist can help figure out what your audience is thinking and how to make them think (and feel) what you want them to, so that they then take the actions that you want them to.

Return on Strategy

The advertising, public relations and design professions all employ strategists to do the early-stage client relationship building and clarifying the project scope. Strategists earn their crust by adding value to both the client and the agency.

• In my experience, clients are happy to pay for strategy work when there is a direct payoff in terms of clarity of product, brand and business strategy and the client’s own capability building and learning.
• The ROI of strategy work for agencies is that the clients are clearer about their brief when it comes time for the agency to build something. This clarity pays off with higher quality outputs, less re-work and more repeat business.

To work in the emerging overlap between product management and marketing, a modern strategist needs a mix of business strategy, brand strategy and digital strategy. The best strategists can also draw on a quirky melange of behavioural economics, consumer psychology and user interface design.

Everyone else in an agency has a specific part of the process that they are responsible for. By contrast, the strategist is a polymath who is responsible to the client for delivering the end result of the project no matter what.