The Agile and Strategy Gloves are off….

19.03.2015 | Agile. Strategy.

  • Posted by Rachel PickenRachel Picken
  • mpad-marketing-agile-pr-stategy

    I spent part of yesterday dipping in and out of a debate on Facebook amongst some of my fellow marketing professionals, initially about Agile and latterly about “Strategy”.

    And in our haste of popping in and out of social media, going about our busy day jobs (which are to be Very Busy Making Strategic Decisions, if you didn’t know), we could be forgiven for getting a bit, well, argey bargey with each other. Because we’re all experts, yars?

    I’m now reviewing the debate and have come to the conclusion that, erm, that we all believe in the same thing…. There was some sort of vague suggestion (unless I misread this) that I get all too excited about tactics and forget about the strategy. Anyone who REALLY knows me – clients, staff and collaborators – know that I am completely OBSESSED with strategy.

    So that’s sort of taken the wind out of my sails…. I was all ready for a kind of blog battle, in the manner of The Voice. But anyway, here’s my take on Stradegee….

    1. It’s a must. It’s the cornerstone of our offering at MPAD. It’s very hard to produce anything of worth or impact without it.

    2. It’s got to meet a clearly defined set of objectives. For me, this should also be grounded in what an organisation is trying to achieve overall. We need to know WHERE you want to go – increase in sales, market share, more volunteers, supporters for a project, by when? Don’t set off on a journey if you don’t know where the hell you’re going.

    3. STRATEGY. It’s kind of a knobby word. Sorry, but it is. It seems like a word designed to confuse people, and possibly belittle them if they don’t know what you’re talking about. From now on, I might like to call this the “What the funk are we here for?” document.

    One way I think about this is ask two questions:

    –       What are we trying to do, in real terms? Make sales? Attract new staff? Gain more market share?

    –       What’s the story we want to tell?

    The rest is “just” tactics – we can pick and choose whatever we fancy –online or offline – dependent on taste, budget, and importantly what’s going to get us noticed by the right audiences.

    4. It’s a massive struggle for clients to get it, or even value it (strategy, that is). They want us to parachute in, wave a magical marketing wand and make it all better. But sometimes they won’t let us in to ask the right questions to make sure we design the activity to suit.

    5. Clients (often, not always) want to dive right in with tactics. Because that’s the fun part. “I need a website”, “I need a press release”, “That social media stuff, I need to be doing that” – the question is always WHY?

    6. It doesn’t need to be lengthy (and this is part of the ignition for the Facebook debate). It needs to be thought through, and I believe it needs to be a collaborative process with the organisation.  It could be on the back of an envelope, or it could be sheaves of paper. But it needs to be read, understood and relevant.

    7. It could be an infographic. In fact, from now on, I want to do this for our clients. Each one gets an awesome, visual representation of where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. Frame it, share it, stick it on a wall, tattoo it about your person – as long as it is visual and available.

    8. The information that leads you to the strategy could be extensive, but MUST be valued. Market research, profiling your target customer, examining your environment etc etc. All good stuff. As much as you can manage. In agile terms, Just Good Enough.

    9. PR and marketing plans can go up in smoke. Competing news agendas, diminishing budget, other priorities taking over, external forces can all scupper best laid plans. But just as a long journey can go arseways, you usually still get to the destination – possibly via different means. That’s why I love Agile because part of the manifesto is “working projects over plans” (actually it’s working software, but I don’t do software, so I’ve made it fit my work).

    Again, I’ve written a blog that’s far too long. But it’s heartening to know that a bunch of my fellow marketing/PR/Comms/Digital care as much as I do about all things strategy.

    If this really was a battle on the Voice, we probably would be all huggy and supportive of each other at the end. #teamwill

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