Tell us a bit about yourself, what do you do?
Michael Lee, I’m Chief Strategy Officer at VCCP. Although the majority of what I do is still working on client business, I’m also responsible for the “strategy of the strategy”, how our strategic capabilities need to evolve as the consumer and commercial context changes.
What did you do before your current role and what led you to where you are now?
Actually I discovered planning through sheer chance. I’d already done 7 different careers before planning and was still trying to work out what I wanted to do, and what I was good at. It was only because a friend of mine was temping at VCCP, when they were a start-up of just 20 people, that I found out about this thing called planning. Thankfully, Charles Vallance, who generously agreed to interview this random career drifter, saw some vague potential in there, and the rest is history…
How would you define the role of a strategist in your agency?
I think planning is still very much a unique intersection of creativity, psychology and business. At VCCP it’s important to have an intuitive interest in all three elements. However what is distinctive at VCCP, and sometimes a bit of a culture shock for planners who come from more traditional agencies, is how far upstream into a clients’ business that our strategic thinking can stretch, but also our range of creative solutions goes well beyond advertising, and into service experience design and product innovation ideas.
How have you seen the role of a strategist evolve since you first began?
To dust off the much used strategy of the footballing analogy, it’s a bit like what the modern elite footballer has to do these days. In the old days, if you were a striker, you stayed in the opponent’s half, you waited for the ball to come to you and you could get away with not having to do much running. These days, your typical Man City or Liverpool striker is the first line of defence, and is expected to be creating as many goals as they’re scoring. I think that’s the same as planning. The nature of what we need to have an informed point of view on is so much broader than 20 years ago. It’s essential that we know what is technologically possible, both in platform capability, tech adoption and media innovation terms, and help gives creatives some focus on where they should be delivering output, and clients on where they should be investing. We are also doing a lot more work that’s closer to comms planning than ever, having to get our heads round new ROI methodologies, and all the while still having to remain masters of the classical skillsets such as behavioural insight, campaign evaluation and great creative brief writing. To really labour this football analogy, i.e. we still need to score lots of goals.
In your opinion, what are the greatest barriers an aspiring planner/strategist encounters when trying to start their career?
The biggest barrier that stopped me from becoming a planner earlier remains, which is that I had no idea it existed, despite being in careers that brought exposure to ad agencies on numerous occasions. Planning is a dumb, misnomer of a name in many respects, but for some reason I’m a lot more fond of it than strategist, which could mean you work for Accenture or some other management consultancy.
In your time, what have you noticed are the key skills and traits that separate great strategists from the mediocre?
Curiosity. It is the number one trait. If you’re not constantly and instinctively interested in human behaviour and popular culture, in constantly expanding knowledge of many different forms, and in enjoying the sheer variety of what you do and having to go from knowing nothing to knowing a lot and applying that knowledge, well then you’ll never make it in this job.
How do you avoid getting stuck in a cultural bubble and stay informed on the needs and desires of everyday consumers?
I have very little interest in the ad industry. It’s just a job, and I can’t abide the narcissism and self-adulation that we have for ourselves. The more time we spend amongst each other, giving each other awards and spending time networking amongst each other, the less time we have to just be normal individuals doing normal things. I also think there’s a nasty snobbery about popular culture, which we work hard at VCCP to resist. Many of us would call ourselves disciples of the John Webster school of creativity, trying to make stuff that your Mum would like, not trying to impress your peers. I think it keeps us honest and it makes our work successful.