Amanda Feve Assembles the “Springiest of Strategic Springboards”
Amanda Feve is an eight-year Anomaly veteran who, after a recent stint as chief strategy officer at Media Arts Lab in LA, recently returned to the Stagwell agency. Taking on the role of partner and chief strategy officer of Anomaly LA, Amanda recently held the same position at the company's Amsterdam outpost, leading global businesses Johnnie Walker and LVMH across both London and Berlin offices.
So, LBB's Addison Capper thought it was high time that we tapped Amanda for our Planning for the Best series in which we chat to and celebrate strategists, the deep thinkers of the creative sphere.
LBB> We’re used to hearing about the best creative advertising campaigns, but what’s your favourite historic campaign from a strategic perspective? One that you feel demonstrates great strategy?
Amanda> We’re in the business of thinking creatively to create value. Five years into my career, I was fortunate enough to move to London, which turbocharged my professional development. While in the UK, the campaign that had the greatest impact on my appetite to surround a client’s business problem has to be Sainsbury’s ‘Try Something New Today.’
For those who don’t know it, Sainsbury’s is one of the UK’s largest grocery retailers, a fiercely competitive category. Over a decade ago, the brand’s new leadership outlined the ambition to grow the business by £2.5 billion in three years. The strategists did some quick math and worked out that reaching that target would require every shopper to spend an extra £1.14 a week. So, the first thing they did right was to get themselves incredibly clear on the business objective. From there, they did a series of accompanied shops, establishing a clear behavioural challenge: most shoppers fill their carts with the same things every week, cruising the aisles like zombies on autopilot. The second thing the team absolutely nailed? Establishing a clear enemy: ‘sleep-shopping.’ From there, ‘Try Something New Today’ was born. It offered shoppers simple food ideas to liven up their weeknight dinners, leading customers to try new things and spend more on their shopping while delivering the £2.5 billion in revenue Sainsbury’s needed to return to profitability.
LBB> When you’re turning a business brief into something that can inform an inspiring creative campaign, what do you find the most useful resource to draw on?
Amanda> The truth. Great work always starts with something that’s true, and the magic happens when you’re able to reframe that truth in a fresh, surprising way. It could be an audience truth you unearth through research, a brand truth that emerges through a phase I like to think of as ‘brand archaeology’, a category truth that helps identify a new white space, or a cultural truth that a client business can have a credible point of view on. When you find interesting truths and juxtapose them with a clear enemy or tension, that’s when you’re onto a strategic platform that can give a business brief real bounce.
LBB> What part of your job/the strategic process do you enjoy the most?
Amanda> The shortest answer to this question is that I am always learning.
The longer answer is that I’m a greedy omnivore, and I find so much to enjoy, which is why I am still at it after all of this time. I love working in an industry where we are all creative thinkers, regardless of our discipline, and we spend our days with people who are hungry and curious and flat-out fun. I love seeing our work in the world, and being able to make its cultural and commercial impact tangible. Having had the benefit of working with some of the best in the business at Anomaly over the years, I especially enjoy trying to instil future generations of strategists with the craft skills and sharpness of thinking that can catapult ‘good’ into ‘great’.
LBB> What strategic maxims, frameworks or principles do you find yourself going back to over and over again? Why are they so useful?
Amanda> Gosh, where to begin. Here are a few of my greatest hits. What I think makes them useful is creating shared beliefs and common language that guide us when we’re developing and evaluating work.
- Separate ‘could’ from ‘should’: In response to any brief, there are millions of things that we could do. There is no one right answer. But, the role of strategy is to have a clear point of view on what we should do. If it were our business, and our money, what would we invest it in? I’d rather be on the receiving end of a super tight and compelling recommendation than a 300-slide deck with loads of throwaway ideas. (See also: strategy is sacrifice).
- Go wide to get sharp: Great strategists understand that fresh answers are often found in unexpected places, so they look beyond the obvious for inspiration and insight. But great strategists also understand that their real value doesn’t lie in showing all of their workings and what they’ve uncovered, but in distilling them down into a pointed narrative that strikes the right balance between rigour and simplicity.
- Make friends with your enemies: So much of marketing is in shaping and defining what we are for. But sometimes it is just as helpful, if not more so, to define what we are against. What’s the real problem that we need to solve? What’s an interesting tension that we can lean into to reframe what we offer people? Don’t run away from the truth; lean into it.
- Test. Learn. Repeat. The best way to make our work work harder is to have an objective sense of what works, what doesn’t work, and to continuously apply those lessons to the work that’s yet to be done. By my own admission, I’m a raging nerd.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
LBB> What sort of creatives do you like to work with? As a strategist, what do you want them to do with the information you give them?
Amanda> You want to work with creatives that are audacious in their ambition and unreasonable in their optimism; the perfect combination of aptitude and attitude. If I’ve done my job right, I’ve reframed the truth for them in a surprising way. And I want them to return the favour, to use a brief as a springboard for work that feels unexpected and exciting.
LBB> There’s a negative stereotype about strategy being used to validate creative ideas, rather than as a resource to inform them and make sure they’re effective. How do you make sure the agency gets this the right way round?
Amanda> Good strategists turn information into direction; we should be giving our creative partners the springiest of strategic springboards. And while our strategies should be future-facing, they should also be informed by the past: what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, and what we can learn from that.
That said, one of the things that makes this discipline exciting is there is never a singular right or wrong answer in what we do. There are times when strategy gets used to post-rationalise creative ideas. And while it’s tempting to criticise ‘strategy as salesmanship’, I think there’s a degree of humility in recognising that there may be a sharper way into a brief. As long as we are looking at the work through the lens of what will make the biggest commercial and cultural impact, I think it’s okay to make some allowances for retroactive strategy. In fact, sometimes it’s a good way to hone your strategic narrative writing chops. But I would say that, having written an IPA Effectiveness entry for an account that I had never worked on, that the agency no longer had. (It won a Bronze).
LBB> What have you found to be the most important consideration in recruiting and nurturing strategic talent?
Amanda> A few years ago I distilled my key recruitment criteria down to three words (and as a lifelong strategist, of course they start with the same letter): hunger, humility, honesty.
Hunger: A voracious appetite to learn and grow, to push beyond conventions and deviate from the norm in order to maximise real-world impact
Humility: An understanding that ours is a team sport, there are no singular right answers, and that we should always be striving to do the right thing, not the easy thing
Honesty: The confidence and experience to speak the truth, and say what needs to be said, in the spirit of constructive candour
LBB> In recent years it seems like effectiveness awards have grown in prestige and agencies have paid more attention to them. How do you think this has impacted on how strategists work and the way they are perceived?
Amanda> To me this feels like an essential course correction. Our end game is not just to make great work. Our endgame is to make great work that works. And the more we can learn about how our work is (or isn’t) working, the more value strategists can add in terms of helping the work work harder. Shining a brighter spotlight on effectiveness only reminds us to do our jobs properly. And I don’t know that it should change the way strategists are perceived; ultimately, ours is a team sport, and getting to great work that works involves every discipline.
LBB> Do you have any frustrations with planning/strategy as a discipline?
Amanda> I loathe the word ‘adland’ and the willing embrace of the idea that we live inside a bubble, versus truly understanding and embracing the audiences we serve.
And I don’t have a lot of time for strategists who forget that our work is a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself. If you’re treating the end-to-end creative development process like a relay, you’re running the wrong race.
LBB> What advice would you give to anyone considering a career as a strategist/planner?
Amanda> Be hungry. Be humble. Be honest. And to borrow from my hero, Dolly Parton, “find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
