Strategic Thinking Skills
“If strategy is the roadmap to achieving your business objective, then what are you going to do when the maps don’t work anymore because the business landscape changes overnight, every night?”
Strategic Thinking Skills
Advertising agencies are expected to design campaigns that change the way consumers behave in order to further the business goals of their clients. Agencies must speak the language of the client’s business, develop new ideas within a strategic framework, and plan for the long-range impact of their recommendations. Most agencies need a deeper understanding of these areas to be credible with their clients.
The Strategic Thinking Workshop teaches a methodology for developing and evaluating ideas that deliver specific business goals. It defines a process for how to think strategically about the client’s objectives, devise and evaluate alternatives, make hard choices, and align tactics. Without such a process, new campaigns run the risk of being good advertising ideas but not necessarily good business strategy. It’s also an update on some of the latest ideas in strategy.
The one-day workshop is designed for people who are expected to be strategic thinkers for their clients — people in account management, public relations, media and interactive, and others. It is also excellent for those in the creative department who need to gain strategic skills. The workshop can accommodate 50 people.
Workshop Content
People learn strategic thinking skills best not by listening to someone talk about strategy, but when they can practice new skills right on the spot. So participants are encouraged to reflect on how these ideas work with the clients they represent. Participants listen to each other’s ideas and refine the quality of their thinking through dialogue with each other at each level of thinking. The day concludes with advice for agency people in how to effectively persuade clients to engage new ideas.
The Strategic Thinking Workshop includes these topics:
Elements of strategic thinking
Process for strategic planning
How business goals determine marketing strategy
Using strategic frameworks (models) to refine ideas, including:
• Strategic Inflection Point (Andrew Grove)
• Sources of Future Business (Gary Hamel)
• Aligning Brand Experience with Corporate Culture
• Social Relationships with Brands
• Strategic Business Design
• Perceived Importance in Consumer Decision-Making
• Strategic Positioning for differentiation (Michael Porter)
• The Hedgehog Concept (Jim Collins)
• Understanding the client’s business
• Marketing communications goals
• Brand and creative briefs
• Strategies for entering markets
• Strategies for challenger brands (Adam Morgan)
• Generating big ideas
• Tests of a good plan
