Planning for the Best: Using the 'Why 5 Times' Trick to Get to Better Thoughts with Lyndsey Fox
A third generation 'Ad Man' (whose father begged her to do anything but go into advertising), Lyndsey Fox is the head of brand strategy at Pereira O’Dell from her home office in her beloved hometown of Philadelphia. In her time at Pereira O’Dell, she has worked with iconic brands including Yellow Tail, AdCouncil, Stella Artois, Pillsbury, Chex, and Betty Crocker (just to name a few) to solve complex communications challenges. Before Pereira O’Dell, Lyndsey worked in-house at Francis Ford Coppola Winery and also as an agency strategist on numerous brands across Spirits, CPG, Healthcare, Financial Services, Entertainment and Non-profits. Apart from her professional achievements, Lyndsey is an avid writer, doodler and dinner party hostess.
LBB> What is the difference between a strategist and a planner? Is there one?
Lyndsey> General industry wisdom says that a planner is there for a good time, not a long time. Planners are more consumer-centric; getting to an insight driven by a consumer, and then developing a brief that delivers a strategy to solve a particular problem.
A strategist, on the other hand, is more of a long-term partner who is responsible for having a wider perspective on the client’s behalf, and providing checks and balances as they go. The loose definition of strategy is a plan that achieves a goal or solves a problem. Our job, as strategists, is to craft these strategic plans.
Perhaps more important than the planner vs. strategist debate, are the qualifiers that we use to decide what we are strategically planning. The muscle of a brand planner vs. a communications planner vs. a social planner vs. a media planner are wildly different and are the things that actually add meaning to the madness.
LBB> And which description do you think suits the way you work best?
Lyndsey> Using the definitions I outlined above, I would say I am a strategist, but most days I think of myself as a brand therapist. It’s my job to understand, distil, and come up with solutions for brands, organisations, and their relationships with consumers.
To me, the problem with both words – strategy and planning– is that they both infer a linear path and rarely is our business linear. One solution begets the next, one goal begets the next, it’s a ripple, a never ending cycle— it requires high touch engagement, knowing that something that was right today might be wrong tomorrow, and understanding how to go about reconciling that.
This job is not about getting from point A to point B, it’s about making sure you’re forging a path from point A that enables you to pivot as necessary. Rarely is there one target today, the goal post is constantly moving. This comes from the ability to hold multiple truths and figure out how to use them to your advantage – finding the big secrets that other people don’t see even if they are hidden in plain sight.
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?
Lyndsey> The audience. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t believe there is a better resource than people in their natural habitat. Quantitative data is useful to get to more questions and of course, for validation, but I’m a big believer that good conversations are almost always the source of the best answers.
LBB> What part of your job/the strategic process do you enjoy the most?
Lyndsey> I love talking to strangers – I do it everywhere I go. The varying experiences and perspectives of humans are not only the most valuable sources of information, they are also the most interesting.
LBB> What strategic maxims, frameworks or principles do you find yourself going back to over and over again? Why are they so useful?
Lyndsey> It sounds so silly to say out loud, but I almost always use the “Why Five Times” trick to get to better thoughts. Admittedly, sometimes you get past the right thought and have to go backwards, but it pushes you to dig into the information as opposed to leaving it at face value. I was a precocious child (show me a planner / strategist who wasn’t) so this comes fairly natural to me.
I also really like using the simplest of maps “Where are we, where do we want to be, how do we get there” to guide my thinking. A client turned friend of mine uses the term “Clarity is kindness” and I find that when I can definitively map my thoughts like this, I’m able to understand if the thought is objectively clear or just clear to my strange brain.
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?
Lyndsey> The best creatives are generous with their time, their opinions and their vulnerabilities. There’s that old adage that goes, “The best account people are good strategists and the best strategists are good account people.” I think that goes for creatives and strategists, too. The disciplines become less and less siloed as the years go by and I want creatives to kindly interrogate any information I share with them in a way that I am unable to because of how close I am to it – and I’d hope they’d want the same from me.
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?
Lyndsey> First of all, we can hold two things to be true: A large part of our job is validating work, and there’s nothing negative about that. The real issue is that I don’t think this a problem based in strategy, I think the problem is that we’ve become an industry dependent solely on deliverables, and thought becomes an afterthought sometimes.
Thoughtful strategy that informs great creative requires both active brain work AND passive thinking. Rarely is there time for both. In fact, rarely is there enough time to go around, period, and the majority of time is given to the creative team - this is not a dig, it’s an observation. We value deliverables. We value getting to market quickly. So, maybe instead of a negative stereotype, we can frame this behaviour as a pivot, a way to make the work the best it can possibly be under ever changing conditions.
LBB> What have you found to be the most important consideration in recruiting and nurturing strategic talent?
Lyndsey> Strategy attracts those whose brains are a little strange — I include myself in this statement. While it’s important to teach the basics of research and data analysis, I think most of all, it’s important to encourage finding and building your own voice. In order to do this, we must proactively push the importance of taking the time to care for and advocate for your own mind.
Unfortunately the narrative of agency life is largely still about the optics of productivity. We need timesheets that include catnaps and walks and overall rest, which is just as critical to doing the work as actively doing the work. Good strategists think differently and protecting the source of that differentiation is critical to each strategist and to the industry at large.
LBB> What advice would you give to anyone considering a career as a strategist/planner?
Lyndsey> Become a psychologist instead. Kidding. Kind of. When I give little planning / strategy sessions at universities, my advice to the students interested in becoming strategists / planners reads like a Trainspotting poster: Stop and Smell the roses. Take the side streets. Listen to your dad’s favourite album and try to get to the bottom of why it’s his favourite. Drink the local beer. Pick up a new hobby just for fun. Go to the movies by yourself. Watch the LOCAL, 6 o’clock news. Get involved in a cause you believe in. Make dinner with whatever is in the fridge. Go somewhere new even if it’s just around the corner. Talk to strangers. Read the back of the shampoo bottle. Spend the afternoon at a grocery store. The best of the best are comfortable being curious and even more comfortable being uncomfortable.
