Ignore all the waffle

and set time aside for

strategic thinking

Instead of reading articles about the

latest technological trends, marketers
should spend that time on strategic
thinking about their brand’s goals.

By Mark Ritson 9 Jan 2018

Over the Christmas holidays there was a fabulous 20th century. He would leave specific instructions
article about George Shultz. The name might not that only the President or his wife were allowed to
be familiar to you, but if you are old enough you will disturb him. And with the door closed behind him
recall Shultz as President Ronald Reagan’s he would engage in that most unusual of activities
avuncular secretary of state. If you were a child of – he would think.
the 1980s you can probably just recall a balding,
besuited man stepping off planes into China or the Without this precious hour of strategic thinking,
Soviet Union – that was him. Shultz would have been constantly pulled into the
tactical immediacy of everyday life at the White
He is still alive. Now 97, he continues to lobby for House, missing the bigger picture and the
recreational drugs, for action on climate change organising principles that should pre-empt the
and for the UK to remain within the European more immediate challenges that he was expected
Union. He is that rarest of beasts in this time of to successfully and instantly respond to.
Trump and terror, a liberal Republican. The article
about him in The New York Times, by David It’s an approach that Leonhardt, himself a noted
Leonhardt, could have focused on a hundred writer and columnist, has tried to introduce into his
different episodes in this great man’s life – from own working week. Taking a ‘Shultz hour’ out from
serving in the Marines to helping Mikhail Gorbachev his busy life has not proven easy. The fact that he
set up a new Russia. Instead it was all about found it so hard was taken as further evidence of
something that Shultz did not do. the importance of its introduction.

Shultz told Leonhardt that each week he would “I have confused the availability of new information
scrupulously seek out solitude for one hour, and sit with the importance of it,” Leonhardt admits. “If you
with a pad and paper and nothing else. It was, he spend all your time collecting new information, you
explained, the only way he could find time during won’t leave enough time to make any sense of it.”
some of the busiest and most frenetic weeks of the
Agility is useless without I remain entirely and utterly amazed at the growing
number of big brands who talk a very good game
strategic thinking when it comes to tactical application and the latest
By now you probably know where I am going with bang-whizz approach, and yet when you challenge
all this. We marketers are a frenetic bunch. We them on their brand strategy, meet you with the
confuse business with success, and hours worked empty gaze of a child.
with impact. More importantly, we mix up the
concepts of strategy (which is what Shultz was
doing behind that closed door) and tactics (which is Strategy in three simple steps
what he subsequently managed when he opened it
again). Brand strategy is not rocket science. It’s not even
the bigger, more complex stuff of corporate
And when I say we “mix up” what I really mean is strategy. It simply requires that a brand can start the
that we spend our days obsessing with tactical year with the answers to three simple questions.
diaspora without first working out exactly what we First, who are we targeting and – unless you are
are trying to achieve. The now obligatory new-year wearing the Byron Sharp commemorative
marketing predictions were brimming with the underwear – who you are not.
need to be more agile, to use artificial intelligence
(AI) and big data to employ whatever Second, what is our position for the brand? Not the
techno-gimmickery is flavour of the week. usual ‘Innovating with integrity for the people of the
world’ brand-purpose balls, but rather what we
actually want to stand for to that target customer
we identified a question ago.
We marketers are a frenetic bunch.
We confuse business with success, Finally, what is the objective for the brand this year?
Ideally there will be just one but certainly not more
and hours worked with impact. than two or three of these objectives. Nothing
spells doom better than a marketer with a
PowerPoint deck of eight, 10 or even 12 ‘strategic
I am mightily suspicious of all of the above. priorities’ for the year ahead. None will get done.
Whenever I hear a client cry out for greater agility I
And sound objectives won’t be based on simply
wince, because invariably they are intent on
profit or sales or all that other macro-stuff. They
jettisoning even their vaguest strategic principles for a
will be based on a proper path to purchase and
roll-with-the-punches approach to planning. And of
expressed in a SMART fashion (specific,
all the manifest attractions of AI, surely the most
measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound).
entrancing one for marketers is the idea you start with
a random approach and let the machine winnow out If you have that, you have a brand strategy. And
the possibilities to reach the optimum approach suddenly you know which tactics are and are not
through infinite testing and learning protocols. Who relevant, and life gets immeasurably more focused,
needs a strategy when you have the machine down in deliberate and successful.
the basement learning as we speak?
But to get that strategy sorted out you have to
Only the most inane marketer values big data over close the Shultzian door on all the articles about
small data. Of course big data sounds good and fits VR, blogs from nutters about how marketing has
with the current tactical zeitgeist, but it pales into totally changed and LinkedIn posts from morons
quantitative insignificance against spending time in about what a superstar they are. You have to close
the places and spaces where your consumers exist, all that down and, well, think. Switch off your
watching and talking with them and then – the phone, open up your Moleskine. Take a long,
tricky bit – thinking about what you have just seen. deliberate breath and think.

Mark Ritson is a former Marketing Professor, brand consultant and three time winner of
the PPA Business Columnist of the Year Award.
He now runs the Mini MBA in Marketing and Mini MBA in Brand Management courses:
https://mba.marketingweek.com/