Keep in mind that this book will be an almanac. Subject matters will be written under brief descriptions, usually a word or two. Subjects are in alphabetical order, so sometimes they may appear to be disconnected.

However, common themes—all built around the “supremacy of the idea”—will gradually emerge. These chapters are an example of the types of things I will write.

At the end of the sample chapters, I’ve listed other topics I will write on. In all, I expect the book will consist of 40 to 50 short chapter essays, most fewer than 1,000 words. Readers will be able to pick up the book and read it any way they like—straight through or freely moving about.

INTRODUCTION

This book is for people who work in creative professions and who need to develop effective strategies.

The idea for it came from an unlikely place. I had been reading The Mental ABC’s of Pitching by H. A. Dorfman, one of those great baseball books that really isn’t just about baseball. Dorfman was a clinical psychologist and baseball fan who had advised the pitching staffs of a number of Major League ball clubs. His book is an almanac of short essays on single subjects, all with relevance to pitchers at any level who are looking to perfect their craft and improve their techniques. It not about the mechanics of pitching or its physical side—it’s about its mental—and strategic—side.

When I read it, I felt that something like it was needed for the advertising and related creative professions.

I had wanted to write something clear and useful for people who work in all kinds of different organization—ad agencies, PR firms, media shops, digital companies, sales promotion firms, social media agencies, and—last but not least—in marketing and strategy-related departments on the client side.

Strategy is a huge and unwieldy topic, and that’s the reason I want to write about it. It needs to be simplified.  Strategic experts are everywhere. They’re on CNN, on Sunday morning talk shows, in every C-suite in America, and in very barroom, taproom, community center, and alongside every water cooler in every office park in America. We tend to have a warped view of the “strategist”—it’s a variation on Karl Rove or James Carville, or whoever is the latest and hottest CEO.

That’s the wrong way to think about strategists. Anyone who thinks about doing anything to get a specific result is a strategist. Most of the time, “strategist” won’t be in your job title. But understanding how it works might very well contribute to your career success. Inside agencies and marketing departments strategy is even more confusing. It’s a subject of critical importance, yet there is little or no guidance in how to devise it, evaluate it, or manage it—at least not in a practical way.

People who work in creative professions need a simple guide that will help them with all kinds of strategic problems and situations. That’s what Dorfman did in his book, and that’s what I want to do here.

There is no grand design here. It’s an almanac—the subjects are in alphabetical order. You can read it in order or jump from subject to subject at will. While my primary audience is the creative professional, I hope that what’s here might help anyone who is just interested in the idea of “strategy.” It’s not a self-help book, but if you are interested in setting out to accomplish something, it might help you. Because when you really think about it, that’s all that strategy really is.

ATTACK THE MARKET

When practiced at its best, planning is a strategic blueprint for attacking the market. 

Any serious marketer--either on the client or the agency side--knows that reaching people today is not just about advertising. Yet, we still tend to think about our work in the context of creating and distributing ads. We need to demolish that mindset, and adapt a mindset that asks, "What do I need to do to attack the market?"

People are surrounded by messages and message channels. They ignore many of them not just because they find them annoying, but because they need to limit chaos in their lives. The truth is that people are actually voracious consumers of messages.  They have learned--partly through modern experience but even more so by centuries of evolution--how to manage an onslaught of stimuli that enter the brain through the senses. 

Forget about clutter

We often hear that there is too much clutter in the ad world and that the challenge is stand out from it. That's a limited view of the real problem.. In fact, when you hear an ad professional prattle on about the need to "cut through the clutter," you should promptly stop listening to anything else that individual has to say. Essentially, that person is saying to you, "People ignore 98 percent of the ad messages they encounter, but we're so good at what we do that you should invest your hard earned marketing dollars in our highly creative and media strategies."

Nonsense. They're thinking too conventionally. Take your money to the casino--you'll do better. 

Here is the dirty little secret:  clutter is reality. Embrace it, then dominate it by making it irrelevant. 

The only way to dominate it is to attack. Now, this does not mean that you create messages and distribution strategies that scream at people, though rarely that may work. Instead, you should look at the market--and the people inside that market who you are trying to reach--and you should determine what the market is surrendering to you.  

This is a complex process, full of a vast range of variables and very few constants. That's where a good strategist provides remarkable value. An insightful strategist will know what to look for in a given situation. For example, suppose a client competes in a category dominated by one or two big players who have the trust of the consumer, but whose product appeals may reveal softness in any particular area. 

With that insight, the strategist might see an opportunity for her client, who may have a product with some very specific, "hard" strengths. A few years ago, I represented a packaged goods client in the organic category who regularly competed against an industry giant. The giant owned "trust," but our research showed our client could stake a solid claim to owning "purity."  

The path was clear:  attack the market with a specific, consistent claim.  The purity strategy was the perfect attack.  The giant was Gerber, the baby food known by one and all. Our client was Earth’s Best, the first organic baby food and a pioneer that transformed an entire category.

The market always surrenders something to you. Find what it is, and attack it. Strategy points the way--and the creativity will follow.

DEPTH

Benjamin Wagner was an MTV News producer when he met Fred Rogers, who had recently retired as the longtime host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. On that first day they met, Wagner felt terribly inadequate compared to the man who had hosted the longest running show in PBS history.

The ever-gracious Mister Rogers had asked him about his work, and Wagner felt embarrassed. As he describes it, he saw himself as “a PBS mind in a jump cut, sound-bite MTV world.”

Mister Rogers was not so judgmental, but he said something to Wagner that day that stayed with him:  “I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.”  

Wagner eventually left his MTV job to make the PBS documentary, “Mister Rogers and Me,” where he searched for the meaning behind “depth and simplicity amidst a shallow and complex world.”

Mister Rogers taught life lessons to millions of kids, but his framing of “deep and simple” trumping “shallow and complex” is an adult lesson that deserves special consideration.

Think about some of the things in life that are “deep and simple”:

• The ultimate Big Idea, something so simple it needs no explanation:  “I have a dream.”
• The Gettysburg Address:  “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
• A movie like Casablanca:  “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  
• Or one of the great ads by DDB for Volkswagen:  “Think Small.”

Now think of things that are “shallow and complex”:

• Bureaucracy.
• Wireless calling plans.
• The typical PowerPoint presentation.
• Over-produced summer blockbusters.
• And, regrettably—most marketing and advertising strategy.

Strategy in the creative industry has become embarrassingly and unnecessarily complex, often filled with layers and layers of explanation, but varnished with glib, facile, and forgettable language. How often, for example, can you listen to a strategy and reduce it to a single word?  

When Shakespeare wrote his great plays, he wrote about subjects anyone could understand:  ambition, love, revenge, jealousy, pride. But he wrote them with depth and intrigue. Now, no one expects the mundane work of marketers to be great literature. But it doesn’t have to be shallow, pointless, and complicated either.

Mister Rogers’ life truth about depth and simplicity is a reminder that in the rush of our daily work, it’s really not that mysterious how we should evaluate what we do.

Make it simple enough that you can explain it to your mother—but make it important enough that she’ll know it matters. In other words, simple and deep.

THE ESSENCE OF GREAT ADVERTISING

I'm married to a great cook, so I won't even pretend that I'm a mediocre one. But my wife has taught me the essence of great cooking, and it's similar to the essence of great advertising. 

Great cooking combines simplicity with distinct layers of flavor. Great advertising does much the same thing. 

Let me explain. One of the reasons I'm not even a mediocre cook is because I have no idea how to control the flavor in the simplest of sauces. But when I watch my wife cook, I see someone who carefully--but with remarkable tacit fluency--injects wonderful flavorings into a dish with just a few well controlled ingredients. Whether it's veal ragu, pasta with fish, chicken roasted with lemon, the result is always the same:  a cascade of flavors seduces the diner with subtle, but simple taste. 

It's all about fresh ingredients, not too many of them, and careful executional control. The great Italian chef Marcella Hazan has a recipe in one of her cookbooks that came to our family table year after year, every time leaving everyone nourished and satisfied. The ingredients: chicken, lemon, salt, and pepper. That's it!

Think of any lousy restaurant you have been to where the food is just blasé.  What's the underlying flaw?  I'll bet nine times out of ten it's a lack of layering in the flavor and an over indulgence in the ingredients. 

In the fine art of creating great advertising, one of the secrets is to combine simplicity, originality (i.e. "freshness), and layers of meaning. Look at virtually any great ad you can think of, and that's what you'll find. 

The task of creating this sort of advertising is in large part the responsibility of writers and art directors who understand how to manipulate words and images with subtlety and power. But the underlying strategy to inspire this kind of work is important, as well. 

Planning's job is to isolate the simple message, the one that will not only stand out as unique but that will also have the depth and texture to allow "layers of meaning" to reach the audience. The planner is not the creator of the work, but the planner needs to understand the aesthetics of persuasive communications.  

Another way to look at is like this:  the planner needs to cultivate good taste. Take every opportunity you can to learn the difference between quality and junk. Sometimes, you can start right in the kitchen.

INNOVATION

It’s one of Hemingway’s most famous lines. In The Sun Also Rises, one character asks another, “How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways,” was the reply. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

That's why innovation is a lot like bankruptcy—it happens those same two ways.

We like to think of innovation as a quick breakthrough, as a shift captured in a dramatic moment.

It’s certainly true that innovation sometimes happens quickly. It only took Brian Wilson 30 minutes to write “California Girls.” When doctors discovered the power of ether as an anesthetic, it was only a matter of weeks before it swept the field of medicine.  

But it also took the Beatles 129 days to complete Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—and that doesn't count years of Lennon/McCartney experimentation leading up to it. Another medical discovery, the use of antiseptic to protect against infection, took decades before wide acceptance.

In science and technology, innovation is usually slow. From the time the department of defense first conceived the idea of the Internet, it took 26 years before it became widely accessible and a major part of daily commerce.

And even though we tend to think of great scientific discoveries as sudden bursts of revelation, the opposite is usually the case. Einstein said it took him seven years to discover special relativity—and he was Einstein!

What about the great innovator of our era, Apple Computer? The company’s most iconic products—the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad all took a long time to develop. Steve Jobs himself was not a lightning fast innovator. On the contrary, as the New Yorker portrayed him shortly after his death, he was a “tweaker,” who painstakingly pushed and nudged his products to perfection.

In his book, Zig Zag: the Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, Keith Sawyer makes the point that innovators of all types rarely have “Eureka” moments.  “Successful creators engage in an ongoing dialogue with their work,” he writes. “They put what’s in their head on paper long before it’s fully formed, and they watch and listen to what they’ve recorded, zigging and zagging until the right idea emerges.”

They do a lot of thinking out loud. They record thoughts and speculations constantly and share them with peers and colleagues—especially colleagues who challenge and question them.

That calls attention to another myth about innovation:  that if we all happily collaborate, we’ll discover great ideas. No we won’t—and if we do it will likely be like the blind squirrel finding a nut. What we need to do instead is constantly challenge ourselves—and others—over clashing ideas.

We are living in an era obsessed with innovation. But don’t be misled by what you read, hear, or even see. Things are not moving as fast as you think they are. Just because there have been X billion downloads of new apps on iTunes does not mean the tech world is making one endless breakthrough after another.

Actually, it’s more likely that they are creating more failures. They’re thinking out loud, they are sharing, and they are trying to find what works. Gradual innovation means constantly doing things, trying things, and adjusting what didn’t work.

Every now and then, there will be a sudden breakthrough. But it really won’t be sudden. Maybe that’s why in Silicon Valley, going bankrupt is seen as a right of passage. After all, it’s a prototype for innovation.

LISTENING

If you want to be a good strategist, you should study politics. People in politics live and die on the basis of how well their strategies work. While a successful political campaign needs great tactical execution to go with sound strategy, if the strategy is wrong, defeat is almost certain. There’s a reason why Rove and Carville are on Fox and MSNBC, and not the guy who ran the get-out-the-vote drives for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

People in creative professions usually aren’t very interested in politics—just like most people in our country. Professionally, we look down on the “hacks” who make cheap, grainy looking negatives ads (while we bask in the glory of making spots for the latest erectile dysfunction drug). It’s too bad we tend to think that way, because these people can teach us a great deal. Of all the practitioners in the communications business, they are the ones with the least margin for error. After all, a market share of 49.9% does them no good.

I offer up as examples two giants of the craft—one from each side of the political aisle, as well as one who was a successful candidate and one who has been—and still is—a successful consultant.

First up, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States—the only person elected to the office four times, each time by landslide proportions. In his political career, he ran for election seven times, and won six times (his only loss when he was the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1920; his other two races were for governor of New York in 1928 and 1930).  So he has sound credentials.  

Roosevelt came from great wealth and privilege. He was, by all accounts, not a towering intellect and even had a bit of a dilettante streak about him. Raised in the easy comfort of Hyde Park society, he could easily have lived out his life surrounded by pampered wealth, attending Gatsby-like parties and gliding from one comfortable estate to the next. He had access to the finest education but rarely worked in anything close to a real job. He had little skill beyond politics—but he did have a burning ambition to be president of the United States.

But even coming from great wealth and privilege, and being the distant cousin of another president with the same surname, guaranteed him nothing.  Thousands of men and (finally a few) women have pursued the presidency and failed. Winning the job takes enormous work, considerable luck, and an uncanny sense of how to connect with people. Roosevelt lived in a time before television, before the Internet, before Facebook. But none of that really matters. Politics has been the same game since the time of Cicero and Caesar (if not before).^[1]

After Roosevelt lost the vice presidency in 1920, he thought it was only a matter of time before he would have a clear chance to win the top job for himself. Even though Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge soundly drubbed him and James Cox, FDR was a clear rising star of the Democratic Party. When Harding took the oath in 1921, Roosevelt was young (just 39), rich, and handsome.  He had nothing but future—he was a Kennedy before we knew Kennedy.

Then came polio.

The illness nearly killed him—but even worse, it nearly destroyed his will. But in an odd twist, it was also the best thing that ever happened to him. Roosevelt went to Warm Springs, Georgia to recuperate. He found the mineral waters that flowed there to be comforting therapy for him. During his long stretches of time there, he did something that unwittingly prepared him for a run for the presidency.  He had his car outfitted with special instruments so he could drive around the countryside by himself. During the course of those solitary trips, he stopped to talk to all kinds of people—white, black, farmers, workers, retirees, the old, the young…everyone he could meet. Most of them were poor or, if not, had to work desperately hard just to maintain a subsistence living. Roosevelt got to know them. He learned about their lives and about the things that mattered to him.

When Roosevelt became president, he made a connection with the American people like no president before. Conventional wisdom has it that he had a unique understanding of radio and its power—and he certainly showed that with his famed fireside chats. That’s a plausible explanation—but I also think there is a simpler one:  Roosevelt knew how to listen, and because he did, he also knew how to talk.

There’s another giant of this same craft from the opposite end of the political spectrum—and no, it’s not Ronald Reagan (though he was effective in his own way). It’s one of the best political consultants of our generation, Frank Luntz.

Luntz came to prominence with the work he did for Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party in the 1990s—notably the strategy he developed that helped the GOP take control full control of Congress in 1994—the first time the party had earned that distinction in 42 years. The “Contract with America” was the marquis item in that campaign—a document that spelled out in clear language what the Republicans would do to clean up a Congress that had become bloated and out of touch after one-party rule for decades.

Luntz’s special approach—both in 1994 and in many battles since then—emphasizes the right language to connect with the audience. It’s language not based first on talking but on listening. Luntz didn’t go on lonely drives in the countryside, though he does pride himself on listening to what cab drivers and antique dealers tell him about what they hear is going on in the country. He’s well known for employing “dial focus group” methodology—a high tech tool that lets respondents instantly turn a dial approving or disapproving of what they hear from speaker they are watching on video (such as a candidate in a presidential debate). Luntz tracks the hot phrases that respondents tune into, and over time he builds a lexicon that he know they will respond to. More than anything, he prides himself on being a good listener.

His listening skills helped him invent terms like “death tax” and “climate change” (as substitutes for “estate tax” and “global warming”). He believes—with some justification—that finding just the right phrase can turn the focus of a debate and get people to thinking along the lines that his side—the conservative side—wants them to think.

Roosevelt’s listening skills were the skills of a man who had an innate understanding of people. Luntz’s skills are more a product of behavioral science and modern linguistics. Though their political views were wildly different, each knew how to apply listening to a higher purpose—mapping out a communications approach that would successfully tell their stories.

There is nothing more fundamental to formulating strategy than knowing how to listen. Strategy is about finding a direction, and you cannot possibly succeed at it if you don’t listen patiently and carefully. But there is an important additional point here, as well. The art of listening is not simply a matter of finding out what people want and giving it to them.  Listening is a path towards thinking ahead and discovery something that no one else sees. Both Roosevelt and Luntz succeeded in this way.

Some renowned innovators—from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs—have been widely quoted or paraphrased for their dim views of “market research.”  Ford supposedly said, “If I had asked them what they wanted they would have said a faster horse. And Steve Jobs dismissed market research because he didn’t believe it was the consumer’s job to know what he or she wanted. But these innovators very much listened to people—they simply listened on a different plane.

For a strategist, listening in a sophisticated and thoughtful way is simply a means of understanding the context of the world you are trying to influence. You might say it’s a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for developing the strategy blueprint.

REPORTING

“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.”

--Marshall McLuhan

Think of some of the best reporters in the world. Now think of some of the best editors.I’m betting that your first list is longer than your second.

It’s easy to think of reporters. Bob Woodward, Malcolm Gladwell, Anderson Cooper. On the other hand, it’s not easy to think of editors. Who’s the editor-in-chief of the New York Times? Of the Wall Street Journal? Of Real Simple?

Why do we know reporters better than we know editors? They both provide an important service, so why do the editors fade into the woodwork? Because it’s the reporters who give us original material, and that’s what we pay attention to.  Editors are curators—and curators are common. This is especially true in the online world, where anyone can be a curator—it’s why Pinterest was invented. That’s not to disparage curators or curating. We need it.

Today, curating is widely used to discover strategic insight. There’s a huge amount of information available and curating sorts out what is worthy of our time (well, maybe).  Curating by itself tends to discover things that are interesting—but not necessarily things that are important. Because curating is now so simple, it’s easy to push a button and share items of interest that are also mostly useless when it comes to strategic insight.

That’s why the reporter is so important. The reporter specializes in first-hand discovery. A good one knows how to use secondary sources, but is even better at going to the primary source to find real truth. That’s what reporters like Woodward and Gladwell do, and why we trust them so much.

Now, think about pundits. They pop up everywhere, from sports pundits like Tim McCarver to news pundits like David Brooks. A lot of pundits are former reporters who got an easy gig on TV or a syndicated column (or both). Some of them—Thomas Friedman is a good example—have become brands in their own right.

When it comes to strategic insight and planning, whether we behave as reporters, curators, or pundits has a lot to do with determining the value we can bring to a brand.

I would argue that while each has their role, it's the reporter who brings the most value, for one simple reason: good reporting is rare. It deals in originality. Just like an artist is more valuable than an art historian, a reporter is more valuable than a curator. Curators aggregate and assemble. Reporters discover news and connect a story.

As for pundits? Any good pundit is a reporter first. The worst kind of pundits are the ones who report very little, curate a lot, and then posture about what they think they know. Why are the "talking heads" on the Sunday news programs of so little value? Because they recycle the same old bromides again and again--deriving them from stuff they’ve curated or read about, bringing nothing new or original to the discussion.

In the marketing world, they are like the trend watchers who keep telling us that Millennials are more technologically connected than Boomers—and acting like that is some kind of enlightening discovery.

Reporters are much more valuable. Consider this comparison:

Nate Silver, founder of the FiveThirtyEight blog that is now part of the New York Times, gained enormous credibility as a strategic analyst in the last two elections because he provided original and detailed reporting that was eerily predictive.

Meanwhile, pundit/curators like Peggy Noonan and David Brooks--though they still have jobs and big paychecks--offered up little insight along with predictions that proved to be dead wrong.

Four years from now, who you will listen to—Silver, Noonan, or Brooks?

There's a lesson here for brands. If you’re a brand manager, you need strategic insight in order to plan your future moves. To do that, original, detailed, and accurate reporting matters more than curating or punditry. Yes, you need to curate—there is a lot of bad information out there that needs to be vetted. And you need to think like a pundit and have a clear point of view.

But to gain competitive advantage, it all starts with original reporting. Study your customers, your prospects, and the culture that surrounds them. Look at things differently from your competitors, and do so in a way that is more original and penetrating.

Don't just recycle the noise that surrounds you.

Here are other chapters I plan on including in the book:

BRAND EQUITY

BRAND ESSENCE

BRAND IDEAS

BRAND VOCABULARY

CENTRAL IDEAS

CLARITY

COMMUNICATION THEORY

CONTEXT

CREATING MEANING

CREATING VALUE

CULTURAL STRATEGY

DESIGN SUPREMACY

EINSTEIN

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

ENGAGEMENT

ETHNOGRAPHY

FAMILIARITY AND STRANGENESS

FORESIGHT

FRIENDS AND FAMILY RESEARCH

AN IDEA BEHIND EVERY PITCH

INFORMATION DESIGN

INSIGHT

JUDGMENT AND LIMITED INFORMATION

“LUCK IS THE RESIDUE OF DESIGN”

MARKETING AS WAR

MYTHS AND MYTHMAKING

NARRATIVE

PLANNING

PLEASURE AND PAIN
STRATEGY AS ART

STRATEGY AS SCIENCE

POSITIONING

POWERPOINT

QUADRANT MAPPING

RELEVANCE

RESOLUTION
TRAJECTORY

RITUAL THEORY

SACRIFICE

SEGMENTATION

SEMIOTICS

SOCIAL TRENDS

TARGETING

TESTING

THE FOG OF WAR

THREE RUN HOMERS

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

Next Chapter: index