Ideally, I will be involved as early on as possible on a project. Clients may have either very broad or very direct questions. For example, 'how do we compete as consumers move to mobile purchases?' Does it make sense for me to roll out iBeacon technology to my 250 retail stores?' These are strategy questions and should be answered with not only strategic recommendations but also products.
The reason it is important to answer these questions with products is because a product surfaces and strokes the outlines of what a change in strategic course will look like for a business:
If you take a product past prototype, how will people in your business arrange themselves around this new thing?
Do you have the right people to support and deliver this product?
What does that mean for your ambitions over the next few years?
How does the product align with your existing processes and workflows?
Does the product genuinely deliver competitive advantage?
When properly managed, clients not only love this approach, but come to recognise that behaving in this way will actually help fundamentally change the way their organisations work, which segues nicely into the next section...
They say that every business is a digital business these days. I think that every business is a data business. In the creative services industry we are experiencing a rapid move towards programmatic advertising and horizontally integrated businesses designed to provide a one-stop-advertising shop for clients. Navigating this transition is a series of questions not only of organisational structure, but of cultural shifts and balance:
How does an above the line agency best integrate with it's digital sister agency or business unit?
How does a digital creative agency work closely with it's programmatic planner cousin agency whilst maintaining high quality creative work?
How do you foster and encourage collaboration across linked businesses?
How can horizontally integrated businesses use data to better effect meaningful business and culture transformation?
These questions are decisions that need to be made not only quickly, but with a high degree of confidence and validation. Over the last 3 years I have been working across the Dentsu Aegis Network in the UK to find possible solutions to these questions through an approach that is hypothesis driven and validated through data-led experiments. In other words - strategic recommendations which I then explore through products ;)
Businesses today need people with the creative vision, willingness to experiment and experience in doing so to bring about real transformation. I am lucky to be one of those people.