What is strategy?
Strategy is deciding. Before the film, the identity, the campaign or the channel plan, someone has to choose the goal, the audience, the position the brand will take and the things it will not do. That set of choices is the strategy. It is not the plan of activities, which comes after, and it is not the mission statement, which is usually too broad to decide anything. Strategy is the answer to a specific question: given what we know about the market, the audience and ourselves, what is the one thing we should do that competitors cannot or will not?
In a creative agency the word has a particular shape. Brand strategy sets what the brand stands for and how it is positioned. Campaign strategy sets what a specific effort has to achieve and the idea that will achieve it. Content and channel strategy set where the brand shows up and with what. All of them exist to give the creative work a direction and a reason, so that taste has something to aim at.
Why it matters
Why strategy matters
Creative without strategy is decoration. It can be beautiful and still fail, because nobody decided what it was for. Strategy is what makes the work accountable: it names the audience, so the casting and tone can be judged; it names the goal, so the result can be measured; it names the position, so a hundred small decisions in the edit have a reference. A strong strategy makes the creative team braver, because the risk has been reasoned through.
It also saves money. The most expensive mistakes in marketing are not bad executions; they are good executions of the wrong idea, aimed at the wrong people, in the wrong place. A week of strategy at the start of a project costs a fraction of a reshoot or a relaunch, and it is the week most likely to be skipped when a client is in a hurry.
In practice
How strategy works in practice
- 01
Strategy begins with research: the business goals, the category, the competitors, the audience as it actually behaves rather than as the brand imagines it, and the brand's own history and assets. From that comes an insight, a true thing about the audience or the market that the brand can act on, and a position, the space the brand will own in people's minds. The strategist writes it down in a short document, often a page, with a proposition, a target, a tone and a set of principles, and that document becomes the brief for the creative work.
- 02
In a creative agency and production studio the strategist and the creative director work together from the first day, so that the strategy is written to be made and the creative is made to the strategy. The strategy is then tested against the work at every review: does this film land the position, does this cut speak to the audience we named, does this channel plan reach them where they are? After launch, results are read back against the strategy's goals, and the next piece of work starts from what was learned.
At RIOT
Strategy at RIOT
Our longest relationships are strategic before they are creative. More than a decade with Coach has meant understanding where the brand was going each season before making the campaigns, sizzle reels and holiday films that took it there. The Washington Commanders rebrand film and new identity trailer had to carry a strategy for a franchise's whole future in a few minutes, and the luxury films we have made for Tiffany & Co. each answer a question about what the house stands for now. The creative is what people see; the strategy is why it looks like that.
Watch out
What people get wrong about strategy
Confusing it with a plan. A list of activities and dates is a plan; strategy is the choice that the plan serves, and a plan without one is a calendar of hope. The second mistake is making strategy long. A sixty-page deck is usually a sign that nobody decided; a real strategy fits on a page and can be repeated by everyone on the project. The third is writing it after the work, to justify the creative. That is a rationale, and audiences can feel the difference.
