4 Ways Strategists Can Drive Growth For Their Clients And Agencies
The 4I's by Jamie Brownlee
**RSVP to our 5-year anniversary event The Sweathead Get-Ahead next week. It’s free and features 2 hours of talks, case studies and career planning.**
What Even Is A Deck Monkey?
I hear a lot of strategists complaining about being "deck monkeys".
It's an odd term because even monkeys wouldn't spend 60 hours each week moving words around slides and then slides around presentations just to please a timesheet.
Most monkeys I've met are post-modernists and don't even believe in time anyway. Well, they believe in feeding time but that's it.
In Sydney at Leo Burnett, I bought into the idea that account planning is about solving problems. In the US, it isn't really. It's about making ads.
In fact, many companies make ads without account planning because it gets in the way and real strategy is done by MBAs.*
But I maintain hope.
And that hope is for agencies and marketers to realize that the account planning brains inside them are capable of more.
The 4I’s: Milk Your Strategists More
So, as you get your year under way, here are the 4I's from senior agency mind and former Euronews CMO Jamie Brownlee.
Jamie has worked across multiple countries to assemble and manage agency and marketing teams so he should know something about how to milk a strategist. (Hint: Like a cow, not like a monkey either.)
Integration: Deliver joined-up thinking to help clients deliver joined-up ideas.
Benefit: Bigger client scopes and more effective marketing.
Invention: Help clients explore non-traditional solutions to problems.
Benefit: New revenue streams.Influence: Be an agent of change to keep clients at the cutting edge.
Benefit: Growth, not stagnation.Insights: Broaden client’s view of their market, brand, products, and customers.
Benefit: More effective marketing.
You can use Jamie's 4I's to diagnose how to get more out of your strategy brains because, between you and me, many of them are desperate for you to ask them to dance.
Just don't turn them into "dance monkeys" whatever that would be because I'll have to do a whole podcast therapy episode about it.
*No diss.
More things for your brain to digest:
Listen: Wieden+Kennedy and Leo Burnett Strategy Leaders Compare Their Gold IPA Effectiveness Papers For McDonald's
RSVP: Free online event for our 5th anniversary The Sweathead Get-Ahead - Jan 20.
Watch (and maybe laugh): My “Strategy In Threes” Instagram Reels series, including:
a. Three signs you might be a strategistb. Three mistakes new strategists make
c. Three reasons advertising is a beautiful career
Peace,
Mark
Read the first Substack here.
Find out about our upcoming strategy classes and conferences at the Sweathead website.
My book “Strategy Is Your Words” is available here and is about to enter its second print run.