Creativity is everything. But that’s not all.

Dear Creative,

In advertising, creativity is everything. But that’s not all.

Recently I shared my desire of switching from creativity to strategy to a friend and former coworker. She was stoked about it. Caro Bruzzone, head of strategy at DAVID Buenos Aires, is one of the brightest minds in Argentina. She believes that the planner ‘is the new Rockstar’ because both, the client and the agency, appreciate and value the job. The planners are the link between two worlds that sometimes are very different. She talks about the importance of understanding the big picture, and the ability to speak the same language as the client and the marketers. You understand what the client is talking about and what they want. And when you understand what the clients want, you can deliver the perfect brief so the creatives can create work tailored to the client’s needs. ‘When you know exactly what the clients want’ she says, ‘you know exactly what direction to take’.

‘Planning is common sense plus point of view’, she believes that the expectation is for you, the planner, to be the smart guy in the room; to know how to use every tool and know every matrix. But at the end of the day, what will set you apart from the crowd is your point of view. Your background. Your story. The way you see things, understand the data, and what you’re bringing to the table — the table as the brand, the agency, and the team.

The strategist needs to communicate a different point of view:

• They need to study and connect the dots between the brand and the people — I feel that every time we say audience we make the distance between this two elements even larger.
• Study the context and find that place in the cultural agenda for the brand so in that way we can make our way into the client’s mind.
• Research and explore how the brand is seen by the world. Gather information that backs up every thought. The creative will make something unique with all that. Well, that’s what we hope.

In other words, the strategist needs to understand the brand from the point of view of the company, its clients, and the creative team. Plus, it needs to deliver a fresh and unique take on all of them. I picture it like Sauron, the all-seeing eye from LOTR.

One of my favorite sources, BBH Labs, give a pretty clear definition of what the strategy of the future needs to be: less complicated. The role of the strategist primarily needs to be:

• A guiding compass
• A translator
• Lift Morale

In today’s advertising, where everything is global, the competition for people’s attention is tougher than ever before, and content creators are everywhere; strategy is more important than it has ever been.

But, like with creativity, strategy it’s important. But that’s not all.

We’re in the time of crowdsourcing and now more than ever, an idea is not coming from one creative person but an effortless and sharp team that works towards the same goal — and all the wheels are aware of it.

When I was working in Grey Buenos Aires, a couple of years ago, I heard Diego Medvedocky — one of the most creative minds in the industry in my opinion — once said that a great ad is ‘50% the idea, 70% the execution’.

Well to that formula, I would add a 70% of strategy. In the advertising of today, a good idea is not enough. 100% is not enough. You’ve to go the extra mile, give something that the people weren’t expecting. A clever idea based on a powerful insight and crafted like a masterpiece is what it’s going to take to hit it out of the park. And in order to do that, you’ll need creativity (of course) as much as you’ll need a great strategy.