An old mentor of mine once talked about strategy as a carefully designed plan to destroy the competition. If you share that strategy with someone and they can’t say yes that’s me, or yes I want it, your strategy stinks.
Our account team is the creator of these diabolical plans. Strategy is simply the way you plan to sell a product or service. It’s not the copy or the images. Way before creative gets ahold of it, these folks make the first bit of magic. Strategic planning is the stage between fact finding and the big idea. The strategy is the road map for the creative team.
The Suits determine what we’re going to say in our marketing. I always say that good account people know how to think like the consumer and that they have to have big ones. You know, the kind of big ones that give you confidence. The kind of confidence to take the facts and drill them down into ONE unique strategy, one unique message that will make a brand successful. Bad account people lack this confidence and give you SEVERAL reasons why the brand is unique. Do one thing and be known for it, my Dad always said. He never said don’t be known for anything special, just do several things okay and blend into the woodwork. When I see a positioning statement with a string of adjectives and commas to represent what makes a brand unique, I know we’re headed for a diluted ad message.
To the facts they add their insight. They see connections that no one else may notice. All to create a strategy that makes a brand irresistible and get so little credit for it. So, here’s to you Account Service. Thanks for making creatives look so good for decades!
