strategy provides a solution

Several years back, I was freelancing for a large ad agency.

All of their clients were bigger national brands.

I was working as a designer and rarely ever interfaced with the client at all.

At the beginning of the project they would go through a strategy phase, charging the client anywhere between $75k to $200k and up.

Then they'd give me and the other designers a big stack of documents.

These docs would sometimes have things like brand archetypes, surveys, links to random sources of inspiration, etc.

Much of the information we were given would often contradict itself.

It was completely different every single time.

Never any narrative.

No visual references.

No messaging.

No clarity of what direction we needed to go in.

No real decisions made.

Then I'd have a few days to spit out as many concepts as possible.

But because of this lack of direction, it always felt like we were shooting in the dark.

Always working towards some arbitrary or subjective measure of success.

What's the point in paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for "strategy" if it doesn't provide a clear solution?

Should the responsibility really boil down to the designers who are getting paid $75/hr?

Probably not.

"Strategy" without an obvious way to implement it is useless.

It was around this time that I personally committed to delivering real value as a strategist—guiding my clients to meaningful solutions for their problems, rather than just passing the responsibility on to someone else.

– Charles

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Song of the day​
​Head In the Sand by Seahaven​