As someone who runs a strategic brand agency, this might sound strange. But I think our industry has become obsessed with strategy.
Not good strategy. Endless strategy.
I’ve lost count of the number of businesses I’ve seen buried under brand frameworks, positioning documents, audience personas, customer journeys, marketing roadmaps, and strategic plans that never actually get used.
Everyone is strategising. Very few are doing.
Part of the problem is that agencies have been taught that strategy is where the value is. It’s harder to sell a website than it is to sell a “digital transformation roadmap”. It’s harder to sell an ad campaign than it is to sell a “customer acquisition framework”.
Strategy commands higher fees. It’s positioned as more valuable. More sophisticated… and sometimes it is.
But too often, strategy becomes a substitute for action.
I’ve sat in workshops where we spent hours debating messaging nuances that would have been answered in a week by simply launching the campaign and seeing what happened.
I’ve seen businesses spend months refining positioning while their competitors were out winning customers.
I’ve read strategy documents so full of buzzwords, models and diagrams that nobody could explain what they actually meant.
The irony is that the more complicated the strategy, the less likely it is to be used.
I suspect a lot of strategists overcompensate. They want to prove their value. So the documents become longer. The frameworks become more complex. The language becomes more academic.
The result?
Clients get fatigued. Because what they really wanted wasn’t a 70-page document.
They wanted progress.
Don’t get me wrong. Strategy matters.
A clear direction matters.
Understanding your audience matters.
Knowing what you’re trying to achieve matters.
But strategy should exist to create action, not delay it.
Nobody needs a 12-month marketing strategy.
Three months is usually enough. Six months is about as far as I’d want to look.
Have a clear direction. Have a goal. Have some broad brushstrokes for where you’re heading. But don’t lock yourself into a plan written months ago and pretend it’s still relevant.
The world changes too quickly.
Markets shift. Competitors move. Technology evolves. Opportunities appear. Problems emerge.
The businesses that win aren’t the ones with the best plans. They’re the ones that can adapt the fastest.
Some of the best results we’ve delivered have come from doing the obvious thing sooner.
Launching the ads.
Rebuilding the website.
Testing the offer.
Talking to customers.
Getting something into the market and learning from reality instead of trying to predict it.
Because in my experience, the biggest risk isn’t getting it wrong. It’s spending so long trying to get it right that you never get started.
Sometimes you don’t need another workshop.
You don’t need another strategy session.
You don’t need another document.
You need to press go.
