Lingua Franca: The Strategist’s Role as a Client’s Translator
For more than 50 years – since strategy became a creative discipline in the ad industry – strategists have revolutionised the way brands communicate and connect with their audience. When agencies talk ‘creative-ese’ and marketers talk ‘growth’, strategists serve as translators, bridge builders and connectors of dots helping both sides arrive at a lingua franca.
The critical role of strategists as catalysts will be the focus at 4A’s StratFest 2024 on October 1st. StratFest will be preceded by the Jay Chiat Awards on September 30th, a celebration of strategic excellence across 12 categories including three new categories introduced this year – Emerging Trend - AI, B2B, and Gaming.
Leading up to these separate yet closely related events, we asked some of the JCA head jurors to weigh in on the evolving role of strategists and why it’s important to celebrate bold, innovative and effective strategy.
Up today is Christopher Owens, head juror, head of brand strategy at TRG and program lead for Strategy Boot Camp at Miami Ad School.
Save your spot for the 2024 Jay Chiat Awards and StratFest to network with fellow strategists, gain fresh insights from industry leaders and explore all things strategy.
LBB> Why do you believe strategists are so adept at the lingua franca between creativity and commerce?
Christopher> The truth is, we aren’t all there yet, and many of us need to catch up. That’s why this theme is so important this year. A unified theory of marketing effectiveness is emerging now after decades of research by several vital institutions. We know more now than ever about how creativity can make a real commercial impact in concert with the equally important levers that our clients have their hands on. The extent to which we continue strategising in opposite directions is at our peril. This year’s StratFest is all about encouraging shared fluency on the subject. There are now maps for these territories we are paid to navigate on behalf of our clients, but as we pull into the different ports (boardrooms, creatives, media, account teams, PR, etc.), we need a common language.
For better or worse, we as strategists/planners have always been thrown into the role of translator (recall that old chestnut, ‘voice of the consumer’). It’s just that our role as translators inevitably expands as we now have more to talk about. Admittedly, this puts us in a precarious situation of becoming a kind of eternal ‘stratsplainer’, forever falling into our cliched trap of trying to always sound like the smartest in the room. ‘You’re doing it wrong’ is sometimes the most urgent thing to know, but how you deliver it is what counts. Let’s face it: the original sin of account planning becoming its own ‘department’ was giving all other functions an excuse not to be ‘strategic’. But now, more than ever, strategy is a competency that clients expect everyone to practise – including themselves.
One way to describe it is that we are (in some cases) unknowingly being asked to become “full-stack strategists” in our approach. When you better understand how effective marketing works, you quickly appreciate all of what needs to be orchestrated across all strategic functions (brand, media, connections, data) in sync with the client’s business.
LBB> How has this element of a strategist's role evolved in recent years?
Christopher> Nowadays, we are expected to know more than ever. As the tip of the spear for helping to solve our clients' business problems, that burden often falls back on strategy to help begin the journey in the right direction. That starts with a proper diagnosis. When we skip over all that, we jump quickly to tactics that address the symptoms of problems instead of the root causes. Worse, we are left to hope that we can all ‘out-creative’ our way through it. Romantic, yes. But, without the proper growth-based audience definition and media support - we can very quickly become the air guitarists on a phantom stage wishing we had an audience. And let’s face it, that’s time in our collective lives that we will never get back.
One way to describe it is that we are (in some cases) unknowingly being asked to become ‘full-stack strategists’ in our approach. When you better understand how effective marketing works, you quickly appreciate all of what needs to be orchestrated across all strategic functions (brand, media, connections, data) in sync with the client’s business. Better yet, if you can access a collective of strategists with subject matter expertise that encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, either way, the shared fluency encourages us to move beyond fetishising just the ‘perfect’ creative brief to an overall communications system that will ensure victory in the minds of the markets we wish to move.
LBB> With this in mind, 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?
Christopher> I love a good sparring partner. Someone willing to unlearn as much as they learn over their entire career. Someone who checks themselves first whenever they say, ‘I strongly believe…’ when it’s just their ‘current understanding’. It doesn’t have to all be faith-based. We can have an understanding of how things work. Things change. We learn, grow, and then know some more. Every new project presents new ways to grow with the teams you are collaborating with. Keeping such an open dialogue will always be easier when you have a shared vocabulary and desire for fluency.
LBB> There’s a negative stereotype about strategy being used to validate creative ideas rather than as a resource to inform them and ensure they’re effective. How do you make sure the agency gets this the right way round?
Christopher> Think of it this way: the least effective advertising is the campaign that never gets a chance to be bought by a client and produced. This was the heart of a recent conversation with independent strategist Alex Morris, the mind behind STRAT_SCRAPS. Simply put, work never given a chance will never work. So, there is something to be said for helping clients see the potential in something that has yet to exist. The right way around should never be the misconception that there is a paint-by-numbers way to make effective creative concepts.
There can still be great value in being interestingly wrong — crafting the rare insights that inspire equally unhinged storytelling that demands more attention. Once you have that, however, being fit for format with the right mix, spend, and time in the market is what will provide the force multiplication necessary to work. That part of the equation is where we must be consistently vigilant to dramatically increase the chances of making an impact.
"The Jay Chiat Awards celebrate the imagination and rigor of strategists, transforming strategy from a support role to a critical co-conspirator of advertising success. Effectiveness is a team sport in advertising and shared fluency via a lingua franca fosters collaboration among all parties. Together, we can craft unforgettable campaigns for audiences."
LBB> Beyond growth, what are marketers looking for from their agencies?
Christopher> One word: foresight. Although our immediate clients might be overly focused on growth over the next quarter, the boardroom and shareholders worry about the next quarter century. Being prepared to succeed across multiple futures is another way for us to apply our same toolbox to setting up winning paths for our clients to journey down. It’s not about trying to predict the one perfect path – it’s about imagining multiple ways in which the brand can be ready for what’s coming next. It’s still about prediction but in the service of multitudes of ‘preparation’.
LBB> The Jay Chiat Awards are among the rare recognitions for the strategic thought behind projects. How significant is this celebration of strategy and strategists as the builders of a lingua franca?
Christopher> The Jay Chiat Awards celebrates the imagination and rigour of strategists, transforming strategy from a support role to a critical co-conspirator of advertising success. Effectiveness is a team sport in advertising and shared fluency via a lingua franca fosters collaboration among all parties. Together, we can craft unforgettable campaigns for audiences.
These awards ensure strategists receive the recognition, training, and resources needed to enhance advertising quality. They highlight the crucial role of strategy in turning creative ideas into powerful, results-driven campaigns, fostering lifelong learning, and inspiring industry-wide improvement. They underscore that the best campaigns arise from the synergy of strategic insight and creative execution.
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This feature is part of a series in which we speak to 2024 Jay Chiat Awards jurors. Check out others from the series here.
Save your spot for the 2024 Jay Chiat Awards and StratFest to network with fellow strategists, gain fresh insights from industry leaders and explore all things strategy.
