Tell us a bit about yourself, what do you do?
Something of an agency veteran – 20+ years plus experience of working in the US as a strategist. The majority of my time has been spent as the CSO of BSSP and in that role helping to grow and build the agency over the past two decades.
What did you do before your current role and what led you to where you are now?
Before joining BSSP, I was at McCann Seattle and before that McCann-Erickson in London and Europe. I got the chance to pursue something breakthrough and very interesting at McCann when I got to help establish a global youth marketing unit, which ultimately led me to the US.
Overall, my journey into Strategy certainly wasn’t direct – I started in media, moved to marketing consulting and then ended up in Strategy.
How would you define the role of a strategist in your agency?
BSSP was founded by people with backgrounds at both Chiat-Day and Goodby Silverstein and Partners. They had been surrounded by some great planners in their careers and had a pretty good understanding of how planners could help make the work better.
So, at an agency where the culture is driven by work produced, I have always felt that the creative department is client no1. Strategists are expected to be active contributors and participants in the creative process.
How have you seen the role of a strategist been evolving since you first began?
The role has morphed, twisted, bifurcated and fragmented into multiple new forms and has given rise to a myriad of new titles and specialisms. There is no doubt that the communication business has expanded beyond all recognition in the past 20 years and that there is an important role expert strategists can play in bringing discipline and process to new areas and domains. However, as the discipline has fragmented it has added a certain level of complexity and this has certainly led to territorial fights over who gets to define strategy and how it gets interpreted across the disciplines. Some of this is about resources (tools, budgets, time)- strategists usually need all of these to function effectively, but these are not evenly distributed, which means some strategists end up working in disciplines where there may be high expectations, but limited available resources.
In your opinion, what are the greatest barriers an aspiring planner/strategist encounters when trying to start their career?
When you start you have no direct evidence to support the fact that you can be a great contributor. My beef with the schools that teach Strategy is they want their graduates to present case study work that always follows a predictable linear path. First of all, strategy doesn’t work that way and secondly, these types of cases tend to remove the personality of the Strategist from the equation. I once interviewed someone looking to break into the business, she told me about some work she had done in communication strategy, but because her experience was limited, it wasn’t that great. However, buried at the bottom of her resume was a note that said she had been a member of the women’s Olympic snowboarding team. For me, I want to hear real stories that demonstrate tenacity and understanding and sometimes they are more likely to come from life than a case study.
In your time, what have you noticed are the key skills and traits that separate great strategists from the mediocre?
Strategy is not an easy discipline- it demands the ability to analyze complex problems, identify new avenues and to be able to convince others to pursue something new. Plus, you have got to do all this and let the light shine on others, who might not credit you and want the glory for themselves, so you have to be humble. To summarize, curiosity, passion, ability to think creatively, tenacity and humility are the core traits that separate the great from the good.
How do you avoid getting stuck in a cultural bubble and stay informed on the needs and desires of everyday consumers?
It is very easy to get caught in a trap where you get most of your learning from reading and talking about the same things that your peers are talking about and ignoring the realities of people who don’t tend to think as deeply about brands and categories as you do. The challenge, and we see especially right now where there is a belief that peer to peer is a powerful way to build brands, is that you have to blend reality with aspiration. Lean towards reality too heavily and you end up in the bland and push the other way and you end up going over people’s heads and even worse, alienating. We are at a juncture right now where everything we know is being challenged when it comes to established systems and norm. There are no specific answers as this is all evolutionary, but the Strategist should not be burying their heads in the sand right now, they need to be looking under rocks and stones to uncover the new, interesting and emergent pathways that people and culture are going to take.