Campaign

GOLD!

Thanks.

Dirt is good has gone the way of the great jingle in the sky though - certainly in this country. It's a (great) tagline, or ideal, that bears no relationship to any of the work. Maybe that's not true elsewhere, not sure. The danger is of course that you plump for something that's large enough to incorporate strategic and global idiosyncracies but then ends up actually meaning very little.

Savielly Tartakower (a turn of the century World Chess Championship contender and renowned chess teacher) used to say "Tactics are what you do when you have something to do; strategy is what you do when you have nothing to do." The 'nothing to do' part of the game that Tartakower only half-jokingly refers to is the part where there are no obvious moves, where the player has to act - not react. In a chess game, the problem arises because of the obligation of a player to make a move. Chess doesn't provide an option for the player to skip a move - for convenience or because he can't think of any. This, as Garri Kasparov points out, can be a burden on a player without strategic vision. On the other hand, in life and business one can often afford to skip moves and wait patiently. Or so the thinking goes. As I was reading your post, it occurred to me that this quarter-at-a-time thinking of public companies is nothing but the 'obligation to move' burden of a chess player. A company/brand no longer has the luxury of taking its time over things - even something as critical as deciding whether to stick with current strategy or consider a change in strategy (perhaps dictated by real changes in market). It has to make its moves with metronomic regularity. It cannot skip moves or take a time out. It's long-term strategy has to be crafted and recrafted on the go - while it's busy unfolding tactics to keep itself afloat. In such situations, its not the player whose tactics are perfectly in sync with his strategy (or even one with a long term strategy) that wins but the player whose tactics least compromise his unfolding strategy. (on the other hand, in a game with 'no obligation to move' the player with the better strategy and better strategy-tactics sync is likely to win.) This is demonstrated even better with the Chinese game 'Go' (referred to as 'Weiqi' in Chinese.) The game is considered by purists to be infinitely more difficult than chess (no computer version of Go can still routinely beat a world class player, unlike in chess.) Legend has it that the game was invented by an ancient Chinese emperor to teach military strategy to his sons. In Go, players take turns to place black or white stones on a 19 x 19 board. Once placed the stones cannot be removed. But stones can be captured if they are entirely surrounded by the opponent's stones. The objective, like chess, is to control territory but the inability to move the stones imposes the need for strategic vision. Stones (or structures of stones) that are weakly or thoughtlessly placed can end up as a nightmare later in the game. This is how Wikipedia describes the game and its nature "The game emphasizes the importance of balance on multiple levels, and has internal tensions. To secure an area of the board, it is good to play moves close together; but to cover the largest area one needs to spread out, perhaps leaving weaknesses that can be exploited. Playing too low (close to the edge) secures insufficient territory and influence; yet playing too high (far from the edge) allows the opponent to invade. Many people find Go attractive for its reflection of the conflicting demands of real life. It has been claimed that Go is the most complex game in the world because of its vast number of variation in individual games. Its large board and lack of restrictions allow great scope in strategy and expression of players' individuality. Decisions in one part of the board may be influenced by an apparently unrelated situation in a distant part of the board. Plays made early in the game can shape the nature of conflict a hundred moves later." Like in Go and in chess - the obligation to make moves, together with the need to react to the opponent's unknown but unfolding strategy - may seem to hinder the formation of long-term strategy. But it obviously doesn't. Both these games are deeply strategic - in fact, both are considered to be strategy classics. What's happening is that strategy is becoming recursive - a lower level strategy is embedded (or defers) to a higher level strategy ad infinitum. Making the lower level strategy the 'tactics' of the strategy one level above it. In the case of chess this means that the game itself is reduced to parts - the opening, the middle game and the ending (just to name a few) - each with its own overarching strategy and struggle. Surviving one takes you to the other - carrying over your disadvantages or advantages. World class chess players are able to craft mini-strategies for all these mini game-within-games and still hold an overarching strategy that's fluid enough to absorb and respond to the inevitable new developments on the board, no matter how unexpected. I see this resonating in the crises you have mentioned in your post - of brands changing strategies willy-nilly. What we then need are not strategies for the mini games-within-game(s) - those 18 month bursts of communication fixes - but also a simultaneous eye for the grand strategy. To do the latter you not only need planning with strategic vision (and a good memory :) but also a higher order brand strategy framework that can counter the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' while subsuming within itself what passed for strategy until now. That, of course, is the Big Ideal. As you mention "ideals can accommodate an immense amount of change and variation." But more importantly Big Ideals can also accommodate multiple lower level strategies within their ambit. I don't see them as options to what has passed until now as brand strategies - but as co-existing with them and rising above them. To coin a spur of the moment aphorism - the resolution of brand strategies has multiplied manifold.

Fascinating all round. Is it still the case that some larger, more traditionall agencies still see a slogan as strategy? And that it may be their failure to deliver winning multi-disciplinary, integrated planning in a changing media landscape (and their focus on disciplines that are familiar to their large factory floors) that drives clients to change tack every quarter?

yes James! exactly.