I remember the final round interview very well: a senior Executive on the board of a billion dollar Blue Chip Australian brand dryly commented, “You’re an agency person, you just don’t get what being a strategic marketer is about.” Clearly, the comment has stuck with me and naturally, made me question whether I had ‘it’ in me to be an effective client.

Yet, here I am, almost six months into a client-side role and, given I know many agency people are toying with the idea of a move to the ‘other side’, I thought I’d share my personal observations on my journey so far – and offer up a point of view on how I have made positive impact. 

As an agency person for so many years, upon moving client-side I felt an overriding need to prove my worth immediately; especially having been rewarded for high output in a short time frame for so many years before. Yet, I have discovered that the more effective route is one characterised by patience. In short, I’d wrap up my learnings under the title of “strategic pragmatism” which I’d define as the focus areas of education, ownership and execution, all of which I have drawn upon to make positive impact client side, in a more sustainable way than I’d have ever appreciated before.

Observation #1: No one is short of an opinion on the tactics we should execute. But confusion reigns when it comes to what a strategic conversation actually constitutes – and who needs to be in on the conversation.

Much has been written about the drug of short-termism in our industry, which fuels a myopia with tactics, ignoring the fact that “long term results are not short-term gains stacked on top of each other.”^[1] Which leads me to first observation on client-side: there is tremendous value in creating a delineation of structure and time for strategic planning versus tactical experimentation.

Many ex-clients of mine had a strong grasp of tactical experimentation, what constitutes a valid test etc., but there was no cohesion around what was ‘too much’ testing and what then subsequently becomes ‘BAU’ activity. As I’ve already learnt in my short tenure client-side: inviting a three-way, level playing field discussion with media partner-agency-client and asking brutally, “are we really making the use of your platforms to the best effect? If you were us, how would you plan this and why?” is a shortcut method of focussing experimentation on the tactics that matter. Try it. You may be surprised. I certainly was. I know that agencies and media partners enjoy workshopping the substantive tactics (‘what’) and the process (‘how’) of tactical execution, agreeing a roadmap and rhythm to check in. Why? Well, at the end of the day, the subject matter experts are the agencies and media partners, with rich insight on tactical execution from other categories and clients.

However, as an agency person, a self-confessed expert in tactics, I was fearful of moving client-side for this very reason: tactics/experimentation are much less risky – if something doesn’t work, we haven’t spent months, years even, labouring under an assumption of ‘what’s working.’

There is trove of resource about how to optimally plan tactics for long-term profit over short-term ROI – but we rarely seem to have this conversation outside of this tactical arena. Why? Owning the choice of strategic direction is scary! I have soon realised that to be an effective in-house marketer, educating stakeholders on the hallmarks and timeframes which define tactical versus strategic decisions is the critical first step, rather than assuming a baseline of knowledge.

Observation #2: When we have a strategic conversation, we are anxious about getting it ‘perfect,’ when in reality, we always have incomplete data.

Many marketers create time and space to plan strategically and interrogate objectives before getting into tactics: but that’s when the fun really begins… what is the best practice ‘strategy,’ ‘playbook,’ ‘go-to-market’ framework etc.? 

Overall, I observe that there is massive pressure to get the strategy ‘right’ given the increased scrutiny of marketing budgets as cost allocations, rather than investments to drive incremental profit. But this only heightens the focus on short time frames and ratchets up the pressure on getting the marketing strategy perfect.

We are understandably nervous about getting this wrong. I believe this is evident when we consider the brilliant research from the Better Briefs project^[2], which shows that agencies score clients poorly on the single-mindedness and clarity of objectives in briefs: i.e. a distinct lack of strategy, or as Professor Ritson calls it being ‘choiceful.’

Some of the best clients I have ever worked with were able to reconcile the rough edges and back themselves with the data available. There are some established principles of brand growth which remain true, despite the hype(!), and at the ned of the day strategy is an uncomfortably long game. If you don’t have longitudinal data on historical campaigns and a level of consistent codification (which many marketers simply don’t have), the strategic ‘what’ is an educated best-guess scenario given the data available.

As WARC puts it: “Complete answers come from methodologies which take more time; incomplete answers are available more quickly”^[3], which is why investment in measurement is mandatory. For example, at My Muscle Chef, one of the first things I got my hands dirty with was an econometric model so we would have an objective view of marketing effectiveness.

One of my CMO mentors often reminds me: when it comes to marketing strategy, ‘best practice’ is shorthand for ‘right at this moment in time’ and may, like all science, be disproved as new data is found. Thus, ‘good practice’ as a shorthand may better serve us as an industry when thinking about strategy, enabling an open conversations about the pros and cons, instead of a pursuit of perfection.

Observation #3: The operations required to execute a marketing strategy are often an afterthought, creating inefficiencies.

When marketers manage to get over the tricky hill of the strategic ‘what,’ they then find that there is much less material on the ‘how’ to execute the strategy. The industry loves a debate on the ‘what’ of strategy, but we seem to neglect the operations of a marketing function. Namely: what is the optimum operational / staffing / agency / technology structure required for execution of this strategy?

Of course, there are some pleasing exceptions out there – such as the wonderful WARC paper in 2020 on ‘Structuring for Effectiveness’ but largely, it remains up to the CMO to both take the reins of the strategic ‘what’ and navigate the executional ‘how’ in the shifting sands of data, privacy and broader cultural change.

There are so, so many executional models: In-sourced, out-sourced, hybrid, agency village, lead agency model… and let’s not forget about the rapid convergence of IT, legal, engineering (development) and marketing. I for one am trying to brush up on machine learning and martech so I can better recruit the skills my team will need in the next 12 months. It is quite the learning curve and one that needs focus and investment if the strategy is to be realised.

Conclusion: Strategic pragmatism has three focus areas

1. Education: Strategy should be explicable in a paragraph or on a page. Especially the marketing strategy given the scrutiny prevalent in our modern commercial landscape. The strategy does not need to be complex or require any marketing knowledge – as a litmus test: it should be explainable to a room full of accountants. An effective client educates simply.
2. Ownership: Own when you are iterating – even the best strategies in the world are based on incomplete data. Marketers need to communicate regularly on how the strategic ‘what’ is being pressure-tested versus the market and competitive forces. It is a long game – minimum six months-plus for any meaningful long-term initiatives to start to payback. Be kinder to yourself: let go of the need to get it perfect.
3. Execution: Allocate just as much thinking on the ‘how’ of bringing the strategy to life through execution, as you do on the ‘what’ of the strategy itself.  

As they say, hindsight is a beautiful thing, and my response to my interviewer would now likely be something along the lines of: “You’re right, I don’t get it, because ‘it’ is about iteration, especially of strategy; as the evidence base is changing and to accept ‘best practice’ as the answer is, lazy.”

Therein lies the fun of client-side: there is an excitement in applying theory, validating, failing fast (or slow!), and being surprised when human behaviour doesn’t conform to our current good practice.