Why does Party A ask Party B to focus on creativity and less on strategy?

Many advertising companies often run into problems when making proposals to Party A. Before they have even started talking about the proposal, Party A will emphasize:

"Just go over the strategy part, and focus on the creative gameplay and how to execute it later."

Is there such a phenomenon?

Of course there is, because I am the client and I have done this!

Then why would Party A ask Party B to focus on creativity and less on strategy? Does Party A not care about strategy? Does the client like to hear creative ideas?

At least I'm not.

Recently I saw an article on the public account “Xiaoquanli” titled “Why does Party A always say “focus on creativity and less on strategy” when Party B makes a proposal? ”, which contains three viewpoints on this:

1. Strategies are converging. Whether it is product strategy, pricing strategy, channel strategy, promotion strategy or brand strategy. These strategies are integrated into a chain of interests, which are mutually beneficial and mutually restrained. But this is also a challenge to the traditional organizational structure of Party A's company. Party A's product department, sales department, president's office, marketing department, brand department and other departments are clearly separated and each is responsible for its own affairs. It's hard to mobilize all departments with one strategy. It's too difficult.
2. The strategy is behind the scenes. Strategy is invisible and intangible, while creative gameplay is more practical. Some Party A leaders are concerned about whether the creativity will be explosive or not, but the boss cannot see what is happening behind the scenes.
3. The strategy is shrinking. Party A doesn't like to hear about strategies, so Party B also pays less and less attention to it. Reducing manpower and costs will, in the long run, lead to the Party B's strategic level shrinking.

I agree with most of Xiaoquanli's views. In particular, I deeply identify with Party A's difficulties in its corporate organizational structure.

As Party A, and someone who has done the job of asking Party B to talk less about strategy, I would like to share a few opinions on this.

First of all, what is strategy?

Strategy is to provide an effective solution to a key problem of the enterprise. In fact, formulating strategies is the process of identifying problems, finding entry points, and providing solutions to business problems.

Therefore, there must be a prerequisite when making a strategy.

It means having a very good understanding of the brand's market segments, target consumers, the product itself, sales channels, and potential competitors.

This requires a lot of data analysis and research before making a plan, such as upstream and downstream industry analysis, market competition analysis, product advantages and disadvantages analysis, consumer group analysis, terminal visits, consumer research, etc.

Some also require a comprehensive understanding of the company's organizational structure, 4P analysis of each product line, pricing system, sales channels, cost and profit, etc.

These things that do not belong to the execution level may seem metaphysical, but they are definitely practical and must be done. They are part of the top-level design.

In short, when formulating strategies, one must have a thorough understanding of the company itself, the target consumer group, and market competitors.

And that's the problem.

Lao Zei said 3 points.

01

The word strategy is overused nowadays. Everything is a strategy. Many so-called strategies in Party B’s proposals are becoming more and more superficial and template-based.

Find some data reports and apply some theoretical models, that’s the strategy, leave it to nonsense and word games. There is absolutely no large-scale data analysis and preliminary professional research mentioned above.

There are even some people who, at the beginning, all kinds of data and models are explained with logic and evidence, and they are listening quite seriously. Then, suddenly a conclusion comes out, and they are completely confused. How was this derived? Does this have anything to do with wool?

In fact, many parties nowadays can tell at a glance whether the other party has put in enough effort in the early stages and whether they have in-depth insights into the industry.

After all, you are doing this project temporarily, but he has been working in this industry for a long time.

02

Industry experience in terms of corporate market segments, target consumers, the product itself, sales channels, potential market competitors, company organizational structure, as well as pricing system, sales channels, cost-profits, etc.

Party B definitely does not have any advantages over Party A. Party A has a deeper understanding of the industry and accumulated experience.

When Party B is not well prepared or does not have a deep understanding of Party A's industry, it tends to talk about industry strategies too superficially and on the surface, and Party A naturally does not want to listen.

Therefore, if Party B wants to conquer Party A, it must first be more professional than Party A, understand the industry better than Party A, or have deeper insights and find what is under the iceberg, so that it can have more initiative.

Just like Xiaoliquan said: "Brand strategy and communication strategy are positions with relatively high employment costs, and the work is tedious and extremely brain-intensive. From down-to-earth user research and large amounts of data collection to insight and deduction from phenomena to the essence - these are all the work that strategies need to do."

Party B cannot ruin this position on their own.

03

Since Party A understands the industry and consumers better, it naturally has an innate advantage in formulating strategies.

Sometimes Party A does not want to see the strategies in a proposal. It is not necessarily because they are stupid and have a lot of money, nor is it necessarily because they just like to play with creativity and do some fancy things.

What I see is that many clients now actually have their own strategies, they plan ahead, and the strategies are already prepared.

The reason why we still look for Party B is because we want Party B to provide more creativity and resources in our weak links. To put it bluntly: you just need to provide me with creative gameplay and communication, and I will think about the rest.

It is true that Party A only listens to ideas and may just be superficially going through the motions, but it is also possible that they are thinking about how to combine this idea with their own strategy.

Don't break up when things are tough!

Well, these are my thoughts.

Whether it is Party A or Party B, the early stage of discussing and listening to strategies is that both parties attach importance to strategies.

Not stupid! On the contrary, they are all very smart.

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: Mumu Laozei