Octopus Digital Strategy

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies”. Jack Kerouac always had a way to capture a moment. And this is the moment, at the 2-year mark, to say goodbye.

Why do people buy? They believe that what you are selling is going to fulfill their need. And that's the key word...believe. For them to believe this fact, they have to trust. And in an industry based on artifice, to instil trust, nothing matters more than authenticity.

We have previously discussed the emerging opportunities and threats presented by automation and artificial intelligence. Make no mistake, they are going to have a profound effect on our industry and society. But all is not lost. As we have previously outlined, the digital strategist is poised to thrive in this age of upheaval, and one of the key roles they will fulfill is the role of the integrator.

You sit in the eye of the storm, pulled in a hundred different directions. How do you stay focused on the right outcomes? How do you turn the chaos and energy to your advantage? You do it by remembering who you work for. You do it by being the client advocate.

Being a strategist is about delivering outcomes predicated on understanding and driving human behaviours and actions. It is about understanding who your audience is, how they think, what they want, and delivering a message that motivates them to take the actions you want. Yes, in order to do so, you need to understand how to align and manipulate digital tools to deliver the right experience to the right person at the right time. But at the heart of this is an understanding of people in all our glorious messiness.

Consensus can be a dirty word. It implies compromise. Compromise invites committee thinking. And committee thinking is associated with safe and uninteresting solutions. But without consensus, we can't deliver a digital strategy. How do we achieve consensus while remaining daring and innovative?

Digital media is having a moment, one that if not aggressively addressed will turn into a full blown crisis of confidence. Procter & Gamble CMO Marc Pritchard caused a sensation when he called on digital media providers to become transparent in the face of "crappy advertising accompanied by even crappier viewing experiences". Major advertisers, including the UK government, the Guardian and Havas have frozen all Google and YouTube advertising in the UK. What on earth is happening, how did we get here, and what is a digital strategist to do in this environment?

The Ancient Greeks wrote that you should know thyself. But self awareness is a seemingly rare trait. We rush to talk, to get our opinion across without thinking about the impact on how we are perceived. Why is self awareness so important, why is it so rare, and how can we become more self aware?

Overlooked, sidelined and dismissed, soft skills are considered less important than hard technical skills and experience. But as you grow your career, they become ever more important. What are soft skills, why are they not considered important when you first start your career, and why do they become more important as you grow?

When you're in the middle of the scrum, with a thousand requests coming at you at the same time, how do you prioritize? How do you deliver to expectations? How do you maintain the quality of your thinking and output? How do you stay sane?

The strategist sits at the heart of the organization; is it any wonder your colleagues look to you for leadership? What are the traits that make a strategist a good leader, and how do you best provide that leadership as a strategist?

It's a nebulous and subjective thing. Who decides what great work looks like, and why? What's more, we aren't creative directors. We are digital strategists. Our work isn't designed to inspire, amuse or move. Our work is designed to perform. So before you launch, and until you have results that validate your strategy, how can you know if your work is great?

Bringing order to chaos. Simplicity to complexity. Vision to practicality. The strategist is there to align stakeholders, solve problems and achieve ambitious objectives. But doing so is not a straightforward task. Not unless you have a strategic framework to depend on.

The spoken word. It connects in ways that the written does not. Maybe that is why the podcast, an old delivery platform that many thought was past its prime, is enjoying such a revival. The podcast allows us to tell stories, provide context and connect on a human level, and it holds a very important place in the role of an integrated digital strategy.

You have an aggressive annual objective. You need an innovative strategy to achieve it. But each week you take on developing your strategy represents 2% of your year, and sets you that much further behind your goal. You now have a steeper hill to climb, and in less time. How do you square the requirement to spend an appropriate amount of time researching and planning, with the need for speed?

‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea’. Writer, poet and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s beautifully articulated perspective on motivating people gives us insight into the role of the visionary. But what does it mean to be one, why is it important to be a visionary and why is the strategist the right person to take on that role?

Strategy is not about immediate impact, but rather about long term achievement of ambitious objectives. It doesn't constantly change; if it did then it wouldn't be strategy. So once the strategy is set, and the implementation begins, is there a role for the strategist? I believe the strategist is critical for the successful execution of a strategy once it launches because they fulfill 3 key roles.

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think". This quote from Socrates, articulated over 2,000 years ago, sits at the heart of the teaching method he created, the Socratic Method. This debate driven approach to challenging ideas and finding common ground is as valid today in the context of the work of the strategist as it was in the classical age.

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe". Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States until his assassination in 1865. During his time as President, he led the nation through one of the most traumatic experiences in its history, the Civil War. A deeply astute politician, Lincoln was a frontiersman and self-trained lawyer, and is a man from whom we can draw three key lessons to make us better strategists.

Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Cognitive computing. The robots are coming, and they are going to have a profound impact on our industry. But don't despair. Don't give up. Don't rage against the machine. Prepare yourself for their arrival, because the age of automation needs the strategist more than ever.

Bill Clinton once famously said ‘I feel your pain’. Not ‘I understand‘ or ‘I see‘, but ‘I feel‘. Empathy. It’s the difference between being an observer and an active participant. And in our data first world, it is often overlooked. But without empathy, we can’t execute on our vision. Without empathy we can’t lead. Without empathy our campaigns won’t work. Without empathy, we can’t be strategists.

'If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?' Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a 13th Century poet, scholar and Sufi mystic whose writings continue to inspire across cultures and languages, making him the best selling poet in the United States. Rumi's teachings are guided by the concept of Tawhid, or the union with the Beloved, and that the path for achieving this was through music, poetry and dance. Within these teachings are universal truths that allow us, as strategists to transcend the mundane around us and achieve something truly meaningful and memorable.

In 1997, Apple unveiled its ‘Think Different’ campaign, marking its re-emergence as a powerhouse in the industry. The idea of being different is not only compelling, it’s important. In a crowded marketplace, you can do what everyone else is doing, or you can apply the concepts of the Blue Ocean Strategy and create your own market. These concepts matter today in the practice of digital strategy, and will matter ever more as the space becomes more crowded and competitive.

How do you figure out a path if you don't know the destination? What about if you have no idea about the resources at your disposal to get there? This is not a fanciful or hypothetical question, but a challenge that we are faced with often as strategists. When you have too little information, it can be tempting to walk away from the situation. Rather than do that, try seeing the challenge for what it really is, an opportunity, and apply a guiding approach to pierce the veil of ignorance and build a strategy.

Anxiety. Despair. Paralysis. Rapid and dramatic change can be dizzying and debilitating. But it need not be. If we prepare ourselves appropriately, and approached pragmatically, change can be empowering and transformative. Here's how to thrive in a changing environment.

It's a common problem in digital marketing. We jump straight to execution without first developing the strategy. For many that work in this space, strategy is nothing more than a collection of tactics. Why is this sentiment so prevalent, how does it impact our work, and what is the benefit of treating strategy as more than a collection of tactics?

Too often, when we think of our work in digital marketing, we consider it purely through the lens of the technology we are working with. In doing so, we forget the strategic frameworks that have been applied in planning for decades. How relevant are these frameworks to the work of the digital strategist, and how do they apply? To answer that question, let's look at one of the most interesting, Porter's 5 Forces.

Some weeks it feels like all we do is fight fires. This can be exhausting and demoralizing. But worse that that, it can serve to cause us to take our eyes off our goals, lose perspective, and make decisions that might alleviate the short term pain, but work to undermine the long term strategic objective. Here's how to win in difficult situations.

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was convicted of and imprisoned for heresy by the Roman Inquisition for arguing that the planets revolve around the Sun, rather than around the Earth. Astronomer, physicist, philosopher and mathematician, Galileo, along with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and other polymaths came to characterize an era of discovery, creativity and progress, often in the face of intense resistance. They were men of the Renaissance, and as digital strategists, we should look to them as our inspiration.

To be called Machiavellian is to be considered unscrupulous, immoral and deceitful. This is a man that wrote that 'since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved', and 'if an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared'. Machiavelli did not see people as inherently good, but wrote that 'of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain'. But in spite of this jaundiced worldview, or maybe because of it, Machiavelli has been called the founder of modern political science and realpolitik, and I believe teaches 5 lessons that can benefit the strategist.

Independent. Contrarian. Brilliant. Difficult. Nimble. Aloof. The digital strategist may be a multi-disciplinary octopus, but in our everyday skins, we can also resemble our feline friends. We like to work alone and on our own schedule. We don't like to follow the direction of others. We can come off as arrogant. We sometimes chase shiny objects. So how do you keep a team of strategists focused on working together, working within a broader team and delivering the best work that they can?

Matteo is the Senior Officer of Digital Communications and Audience Engagement at the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere region. In this role, he is responsible for uniting the Communications and Development departments in order to create a comprehensive digital strategy that both ensures IPPF/WHR's enhanced presence in social media and strengthens the organization's online fundraising efforts. Prior to joining IPPF/WHR, Matteo spent more than eight years building strategic communications and marketing initiatives in both the private and public sectors, including at the United Nations, Council of the Americas, and his own digital consulting agency, MCS Global Media. Matteo is proficient in nine languages and has regional expertise in developing digital strategies throughout Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. Matteo graduated summa cum laude from Pace University with a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies and a double minor in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies. In his free time, Matteo teaches foreign languages at Fluent City and guest lectures on topics pertaining to Latin American political and economic development. His writing has appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, literary magazines, and political blogs. He joins us from New York to discuss the role of the Multicultural Strategist.

Finding the right digital strategist to join your team is hard. Not only are you hiring in a competitive marketplace, it is incredibly difficult to evaluate the skills of individuals in this space. The word ‘strategist’ is overused to the point that it is almost meaningless. In any given interview for this role, I could find myself speaking with a salesperson or a technologist. And the interview itself is an odd kabuki dance where it often feels like the participants are masking their true selves. So how do you truly evaluate a strategist? How do you determine their skill set? And how do you convince the true strategists to join your team?

You've had a bad day. Your project isn't delivering. Your colleagues are grumpy. The client is being unreasonable. Your manager is disinterested. And when the phone rings, there's a recruiter on the other end of the line, painting a vision of opportunity elsewhere. How do you know when to ignore the call of greener pastures and when to move on?

It's the most common complaint about digital strategists. We swoop in, ask some questions, dictate direction and then leave it to others to implement. All too often, it's a fair description of how many choose to conduct themselves. But without collective ownership of the strategy, it is unlikely to ever get implemented correctly, if at all. Without implementation, we can never prove the value of our ideas. And the way to get things implemented is through the mental sleight of hand called Inception.

You're halfway through your presentation and you feel good. Your audience is receptive, their body language positive and engaged. All except one person. He's sitting with his arms crossed, defensive and with a troubled expression on his face. Suddenly, his expression changes, he leaps out of his chair and pointing at you, calls out 'wait a second...he's a fraud!'. Maybe this hasn't happened to you. It has yet to happen to me. And yet, it amazes me how often I feel like this is going to happen. And I'm not alone. This sense of feeling like a fraud, of always being on the verge of exposure is a common trait among strategists. This is imposter syndrome, and I believe on balance that it is a good thing for a strategist to experience.

Our parents graduated, entered the workforce in their twenties, and stayed with the same organization, often in a similar field for the entirety of their careers. They were also often able to comfortably afford their own homes in their early twenties, but hey, it was a different time. Everything has since changed. The security that previous generations experienced in their work no longer exists. We live in a time of anxiety and change like we have never seen before. Technology has disrupted countless industries, eliminating certainties and making a mockery of the idea of tenure. It has levelled the international playing field, meaning that there is as much opportunity for someone on the other side of the planet to compete for your job in a way that was once impossible. The World really has become flat. Periodic recessions are met with immediate layoffs regardless of the ability or contributions of the employee. And in our industry, skills and experience that were once highly regarded are today irrelevant. But it's not all doom and gloom. All this disruption has opened up previously unheard of opportunities and mobility for those that welcome new challenges. Today, we are not expected to work for the same employer for the entirety of our careers. Indeed, today we are likely to have multiple careers within our working lives. Given that, why would someone want to become a digital strategist mid-career? Let's start with the premise that it is an attractive role. Not only is it in high demand, with a lot of organizations actively hunting for a relatively small pool of talent, it is also a role that is closely associated with organizational revenue and profitability. As such, it is also a high profile role, which to many people is quite appealing.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Preparation. It's at the heart of the Art of War. The idea that knowledge is power, that careful and cold-eyed examination of your relative strengths and weaknesses and those of your competitors are what have made this a critical source of wisdom for military and corporate strategists for centuries. But how well does it hold up in the digital age? What lessons can the digital strategist glean from it? And has the disruptive power of digital change rendered the teachings of Sun Tzu meaningless today?

General Douglas MacArthur once famously said that ‘old soldiers never die; they just fade away’. Is it time for the digital strategist to just fade away? Have we reached the point of maturity and integration in our industry that there is no longer a need for our role? Should we now simply be considered as marketing strategists?

"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on". Ulysses S. Grant was an uncomplicated, plain-speaking man who had an exceptional career. The most acclaimed Union general of the American Civil War who went on to win election twice as the President of the United States, Grant's early career was one characterized by failure that could have led to a lifetime of historical obscurity had it happened to someone else.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” If you need to be in control at all times, don’t choose this career. If you think all decisions should be based solely on logic, don’t choose this career. If you fear change, don’t choose this career.

In his book, Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,  Malcolm Gladwell argues that spontaneous decisions are as good as, or even better than, carefully planned and considered ones. Does this fly in the face of the role of the strategist?

Ours is a competitive and complex industry. To stay ahead of the pace, indeed, to set the pace, we need to constantly learn, constantly think, constantly be challenged. We need to integrate our work and lives. But sometimes, it all comes to a crashing halt if we don't stop, rest and recharge.

Whether moving into a strategic role, or to the next role as a strategist, you will have to navigate a number of interviews. In any given month, I am lucky enough to interview a lot of people for a wide variety of roles within our organization. I always look for the same traits and am consistently baffled when people don't exhibit them. What do you need to know, to prepare, and to articulate in order to ace the interview?

Closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Buying fire insurance while your house is burning. Googling 'how to move to Canada' after your compatriots have voted poorly. After a calamity has happened is the worst time to prepare for it. So what is the best way to fireproof your digital strategy career?

The idea of being the lone wolf is an attractive one for the strategist. As generalists whose skills are in high demand, it is easy to feel like a singular talent whose best path would be as a sole contributor. This idea is a mistake. We have actively explored the fact that the skill set we bring and cultivate as strategists is an unusual combination of digital expertise and business acumen. In an industry of specialists, we are the generalists that pull the various elements together. We combine media, creativity, design, content and data with an understanding of business requirements, human dynamics and client politics. This combination of skills means that we are highly sought after, and this often breeds arrogance. The arrogance that you are better than your peers. The arrogance that you don't need your colleagues. And the arrogance that you can do it all alone.

'You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength'. Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his masterpiece, Meditations, 'a literary monument to a philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration'. I believe that the philosophy he espoused, stoicism, is one that is perfectly in tune with the role of the strategist. Stoicism is not a superficially attractive or romantic quality. The stoic outwardly appears to be cold and dispassionate, lacking the enthusiasm and exuberance that draws people in. The stoic can come off as a bit of a cold fish. But consider that Marcus Aurelius also wrote to 'accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart'.

'I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead'. Mark Twain would have been writing about digital practitioners had he written that today. How many times have we sat through interminable presentations with 140 slides of data, minutely dissecting every point, speculating endlessly on the causes of fluctuations in performance? For people who work in communications, we sometimes find it hard to communicate. Why is that? Why can't we be direct? Why can't we get to the point? And what do we lose by not doing so?

‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”’. Contrast that quote by Jack Kerouac with the direction we are given in our everyday work lives to comply. Comply with process. Comply with systems. Comply with approach. Make decisions through committees. Don’t rock the boat. But ours is a creative industry. It is one that is constantly being disrupted by technology, by the need for innovation, by competition, and the need to cut through the sometimes deafening noise. And there can be no creation without destruction. I don’t believe you can be a great digital strategist without being one of the mad ones, the ones that push the boundaries, that ask the difficult questions, that aren’t satisfied with the status quo, and that would rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity.

Writing in Quartz, Kevin Delaney recently stated that he doesn’t “think anyone should have the word strategy in their job title”. Needless to say, I beg to differ. But what is the basis of the argument he articulates? What is the case for the prosecution?

Many years ago, while scuba diving in Dahab in the Sinai I watched as an octopus fought for its life. Perched on the side of an underwater cliff, this octopus was being attacked by half a dozen fish. These fish were working together to pull it off the wall and out into the open water where presumably they were going to tear it apart. Every time it looked like the fish were close to achieving their objective, the octopus would twist and reach out a tentacle to grab on to the coral. It kept moving, dodging and twisting, defying and frustrating the predators. And then it did something extraordinary; it went very still, changed colour, texture and shape until it not only resembled the surrounding coral, it became the coral. In this way, it managed to escape with its life as the fish lost track of it and moved on. The octopus is an extraordinary animal. Sure, it's smart, but so are many other creatures. What I think makes it exceptional is the way it is able to adapt to its surroundings, expanding and contracting, shifting in form to support the function demanded by the moment. It is the great chameleon, at once powerful and practically formless. It brings to mind a timeless quote from Bruce Lee: "Be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Put it into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash: Be water, my friend." The ability to be water is the defining skill for the digital strategist. Our industry is characterized by constant and rapid change. To succeed, indeed, to lead in this environment needs a remarkable level of adaptability. Our path is not the rigid one of our more doctrinaire colleagues. We are not the ones that say 'that's how we have always done it'. We need to be able to understand our surroundings, the circumstances we find ourselves in and adapt rapidly, moulding our message and delivery as necessary.