Eaon Pritchard Says Young Planners Should "Study Napoleon"

Eaon is an acknowledged strategy leader and recognised industry authority on consumer psychology with over 25 years of experience gained in advertising, media, and marketing in the UK, USA, and Australia.

His pedigree includes multi-award-winning spells at Weapon7 in London, and in Melbourne with Clemenger BBDO and currently cummins&partners. He writes and speaks regularly on the challenges facing marketing, communications and customer experience through the lens of applied behavioural sciences. He has written three books, published a couple of academic papers and currently writes regular columns for industry press.

LBB> What do you think is the difference between a strategist and a planner? Is there one?

​Eaon> It’s semantics. In the past, ‘planner’ was sufficient to describe all the work that we do, but now what we call planners tend to focus more on campaign execution, while strategists should take into account broader business challenges. There’s a bit of job title inflation and grandiosity that has crept in, and people can be called strategy directors with only a few years of experience, which is sometimes a bit silly. I tend to view strategy through the Rumelt lens – any effective strategy requires three elements: a precise challenge diagnosis, a guiding policy, and a set of coherent actions. 

In agencies, we do get titles serving as strategic fluff rather than functional differentiators. Digital strategy, social strategy, and the like are more tactical, and so resemble the planning part of Rumelt’s kernel. So, it's a bit of a misnomer. Maybe we need to just call ourselves problem solvers, but that won’t be grand enough for some. It's not just adland, a lot of organisations (consulting firms are a classic) prioritise symbolic over substantive value, using inflated titles to signal the illusion of expertise.

LBB> And which description do you think suits the way you work best?

Eaon> I’m confident enough to call myself a strategist, without it being grandiose. I’ve been around long enough to have made just about all the mistakes, not be overconfident, and know what I don’t know.

Strategy is a zero-sum game; to be a winner, there has to be a loser. You have to think wide enough to out-smart the competition, not just be clever about advertising. The more experience you have, the humbler you tend to become.

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?

Eaon> Beanz Meanz Heinz is the advertising equivalent of the Beatles—simple, sticky, timeless, and so obvious but surprising at the same time. To be fair, there were no planner/strategists involved. A copywriter, Maurice Drake and his creative group distilled the entire baked bean experience into three words, down the pub in 1967, and it’s still around(ish). That’s proper advertising alchemy. The line didn’t just sell beans -- it became beans.

Sadly, when you get the dim-wit corners of the plannersphere involved, they probably said something like ‘we need to update the line for Wellness Gen-Z TikTokers’ and you end up with that recent ‘Beanz Meanz More’ guff. I nearly choked on my toast.

LBB> When you’re turning a business brief into something that can inform an inspiring creative campaign, do you find the most useful resource to draw on?

Eaon> The JWT Planning Guide from 1974 is still, in my opinion, the most important advertising resource for strategists because it lays out the foundational principles of brand planning in a way that is both rigorous and timeless.

A clear, systematic approach to understanding brands, consumers, and the market. This structure forces planners/strategists to think holistically, starting with diagnosis and insight before jumping to tactics -- a discipline that’s often missing in the era of fads and noise.

The guide’s brilliance is in its recognition that advertising is just one lever in building a brand’s total impression, and that successful brands are built by influencing what people notice, believe, and feel, and balancing direct and indirect effects of advertising. Despite massive changes in media, technology, and culture, the core truths about how brands are built haven’t changed.

LBB> What part of your job/the strategic process do you enjoy the most?

Eaon> I’ve been head of strategy, then CSO in agencies of all flavours, and even a spell on the brand side as CMO, but I came back into agency work because I wanted to do the part I loved: solving problems and informing creative work. I got fed up of spending so much time with ‘management’ (which I wasn’t great at, to be honest).

I love coming into work and getting my brain in gear to create excellent communications.

LBB> What strategic maxims, frameworks or principles do you find yourself going back to over and over again? Why are they so useful?

Eaon> As far as models are concerned, I follow the adage that all are wrong but some are useful. I've a number of mental shortcuts that I’ve collected over the years. I use applied evolutionary psychology most -- I’ve been studying it for the last 15 years or so, because it gives me a powerful framework for understanding why people behave the way they do.

Our preferences, motivations, and decision-making processes are rooted in adaptations that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce for thousands of generations and still drive our behaviour.

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?

Eaon> The best creatives are intuitive planners, and vice versa. Creatives, like planners and strategists, tend to get better with a bit of age -- they just have a bigger ‘data-set’ to draw on, like music, movies, books, and culture. If you're lucky, you get a "telepathic" understanding with each other.

When I’m with our ECD Heath at a client briefing or something, quite often I know where my strategic thoughts are going before the end of the meeting and I can see the cogs and wheels going round in his head, too.

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?

Eaon> With mutual respect and understanding, great work finds a way. However, you must be able to have frank conversations and occasionally experience sparks flying, a bit of friction.

We are all pushing each other to be as good as we can be. Think of strategy-creative continuum in terms of The KLF’s ‘Liberation Loophole’. The loophole is a creative mindset that turns constraints into opportunities by deliberately bending or reinterpreting ‘rules’.

We are identifying gaps in systems — whether in creative briefs, artistic norms, or self-imposed limits — to overcome creative blocks. The goal isn’t to break rules for the sake of it, but to treat ambiguity as a tool to redefine the work on our terms, a strategic subversion.

LBB> What advice would you give to anyone considering a career as a strategist/planner?

Eaon> There are three things, and I wish someone had hit me over the head with this at the start of my career.

In life, as in a job, avoid the reactive cycle of responding to others’ demands by cultivating your own grand strategic vision. Prioritise long-term objectives over short-term ones. Theoretical knowledge alone is insufficient; you also need daily practice in real-world scenarios, ranging from workplace dynamics to personal relationships.

Understand that all human behaviour -- including your own -- is governed by primal emotions rooted in evolutionary survival mechanisms, not logic.

Learn from the best. Study Napoleon, for example, and ignore thinkfluencers on LinkedIn. Napoleon’s strategies are timeless principles for mastering complexity, adapting to chaos, and outthinking opponents. Learning from his campaigns and decisions, modern strategists (who are willing to read) will figure out concepts such as decentralised command, speed as a weapon, resource prioritisation, psychological warfare, and learning from failure. All essentials to survive in this business.