Planning for the Best: Tailored Strategic Recommendations with Brogan Bowditch
With over five years of account management and planning experience, Brogan is an expert in the strategic development of client campaigns. Her role at Flourish as a strategic planner means that she works across a broad client portfolio enabling her to apply her commercial experience to the charity client projects that she has a personal passion for. Brogan has led award-winning campaign development for the likes of Crisis, PDSA, and St Mungo’s to name a few.
LBB> What do you think is the difference between a strategist and a planner? Is there one?
Brogan> I think they’re often interchangeable today, but are still technically separate. I like Damien Le Castrec’s (CSO at Droga5) summary, "A strategy without a plan of action is useless. A plan of action without a strategy is aimless." I think strategists look more holistically at the challenges a client is facing, considering the longer-term vision for the brand.
Planners then put this into action, whether this is through tactical activation or customer journeys, for example. Of course the two can fall into one role, but it’s good to see the distinction and address both needs.
LBB> And which description do you think suits the way you work best?
Brogan> Technically my title is 'strategic planner', and in line with my first question I'd say it's pretty tricky to separate the two. You wouldn't look at a customer journey without acknowledging the overall brand positioning. But if I had to pick, since Flourish is a specialist CRM agency, I would say that my day-to-day tends to align more closely to the role of planner.
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?
Brogan> I always refer back to the ‘This Girl Can’ , which I know Kate Bosomworth, co-founder of Platform (another agency in Harbour Collective), was strategic lead of the campaign while on the Board of Sport England. I like how it leveraged the barriers women faced to exercise, namely the fear of judgement, and flipped them to inspire a generation.
It was so refreshing to see an approach that wasn’t driven creatively by unrealistic standards, only achievable by individuals who weren’t being held back by logistical barriers, or years of conditioning that you must fit a certain mould. Just getting out there and giving it a go is enough, demonstrated by taglines such as “I’m slow but I’m lapping everyone on the couch.”
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?
Brogan> I think a solid creative brief template is such a useful resource to remove the jargon and turn business briefs into something directional. In particular, the question "What is the proposition" – the single-minded thought that will form the springboard for the creative work. 'What does the audience believe in and how will the organisation satisfy that demand or desire?."
I think the strategist’s/planner’s job in this situation is distilling tonnes of information, insight and even general, anecdotal thoughts into something super simple, providing a platform to explore creative opportunities. The importance of propositions is often debated but I think when you’re starting out in a strategy/planning role, it’s good to have something to keep coming back to as it’s quite easy to run away with ideas!
LBB> What part of your job/the strategic process do you enjoy the most?
Brogan> Asking a client ‘why’. There is a temptation from brands to say ‘I want to do this, because our competitors have’. But does it really add value to the business or marketing goals? Getting to the root of why a client feels there is a need for something like a new proposition, journey or product provides a solid first step to ensuring strategic recommendations are tailored to the overall objectives.
LBB> What strategic maxims, frameworks or principles do you find yourself going back to over and over again? Why are they so useful?
Brogan> Every client brief is different, so I try not to crowbar in my favourite tools just because they feel comfortable to me. Though in one way or another, I often use Stephen King’s Planning Cycle, asking myself the five primary, strategic questions to gain a better understanding of the client’s desired outcome, potential obstacles and opportunities. This usually gives me a pretty clear starting point.
But one framework I learnt recently, and really loved, was viewing a brand challenge through the lens of a famous figure. For example, if your brand was exploring repositioning and subsequent activation opportunities, what could those be from the perspective of David Attenborough? Kylie Jenner? Lewis Hamilton? It might feel a bit silly, but it really helped me to open a completely new set of ideas that I never would have arrived at myself!
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?
Brogan> We’re super lucky at Flourish to work with a creative team that don’t feel separate to the rest of us – I’ve read countless articles and ‘guides’ on how to work with creatives, that often feel redundant at Flourish due to the way we work seamlessly together.
There’s never a sense of rejection towards creative ideas just because they haven’t come from a member of the creative team specifically. Everyone has the capacity to think creatively, and working collaboratively in deriving the information we need from the client to inform both the strategy and creative together seems a no-brainer. I always want our creative team to challenge us to gather more insight if they don’t feel they have enough of a foundation to create inspiring work.
That’s the only way we can produce something that makes the client go ‘oooo!’, whilst ensuring it’s still grounded in what the consumer needs and wants.
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?
Brogan> I recently spoke with Thom Binding, the former planning director at OLIVER Agency, and I think he perfectly summarised that the best places to work are ones where conversations with the client aren’t just led by the client services team, but where the client has a relationship with the strategists AND creatives too.
To my previous point, it probably should be chicken and egg – an evolving conversation between both creatives and strategists to reach a common goal. I don’t think we should view the process as fixed. There will be occasions where someone has a brilliant, creative idea which shouldn’t be held back or not presented to a client just because it hasn’t been driven by insight from a strategist.
But this is where an effective review (or interrogation!) process can help to confirm whether the idea will stand up in front of the right audience.
LBB> What have you found to be the most important consideration in recruiting and nurturing strategic talent?
Brogan> I think that everyone has the capacity to think strategically – I moved from client services to planning but that isn’t to say I never addressed a brief through a strategic lens beforehand. I think Flourish spotting my ability to take a step back and look at the bigger picture is what helped me in my official transition to a defined strategic role.
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?
Brogan> I don’t think we should ever be writing briefs for the creative team with wanting to win an award as the main objective – though of course it’s great to get recognition, and I’ve definitely taken some taken some inspiration from winners of effectiveness awards in the past. What it does neglect to consider is that smaller agencies might have brilliantly effective campaigns, but less means to enter into awards due to the price tag often associated with entries.
Ultimately, we should always be striving to maximise our clients’ effectiveness and if that results in an award, it’s a win win (literally!).
LBB> Do you have any frustrations with planning/strategy as a discipline?
Brogan> We often see a tendency to move too quickly, launching products or campaigns just to get something out the door and tick a box, without any strategic thinking. We work with a wide range of clients from global to national to local, commercial to not-for-profit, meaning we need to adapt to resource and budget available – this often results in strategy being seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than essential to ensure effectiveness. Looking at the longer-term goals just means we won’t get burnt later down the line.
LBB> What advice would you give to anyone considering a career as a strategist/planner?
Brogan> Go for it, there’s nothing more satisfying than the ‘aha!’ moment when you’re given a tricky client brief, and being able to see the insight brought to life creatively is brilliant. When starting out in a strategy/planning role, the imposter syndrome is real – looking at people who have been in the industry for years and wondering “how the hell did they come up with that idea? I wouldn’t even know where to start!”.
My main piece of advice is that every planner/strategist does things differently, so don’t compare yourself to the way everyone else does things. There are tonnes of tools and frameworks out there, it’s just about finding a working style that suits you.
