Leaving Space in the Strategy

Creative that lets you fill in the gap is much more memorable.

The "Generation Effect" (shoutout Richard Shotton) shows that content that is designed to let you finish the story - by bringing your own context or by sussing cultural subtext that subverts the meaning - is much more likely to be remembered. It simultaneously creates the feeling of accomplishment ("I figured it out!") and belonging ("I'm in the know!").

More recently, Orlando Wood's research into right brain and left brain features reinforces that creative constructs that let people bring a part of the story in themselves drive much more effective growth. He in particular prioritizes concepts featuring characters who have agency, stories that are in lived time, and give people a chance at sensing the between-ness of characters and situations.

It takes a high degree of creative craft to develop this kind of work within the modern media landscape - it needs to be both obvious and a little ambiguous; take advantage of memes and coded references while adapting to an array of formats and environments.

It's highly fluid creative. Best-practice aware, but not constrained by them. It works very well because it respects the audience.

Strategy can be developed to do the same. Respect the people who have to use it - invite them in, let the fill in the gaps. One cohesive strategy that teams can adapt, apply, and carry forward in a way that reinforces the whole.

How do we get there?

We build architecture and ecosystems that are given advantages from proven marketing effectiveness insights, adapt to market-based pressures, and follow overarching organizational growth strategies. Each of these inputs provides guidance on intent & expectations - jobs that need to be done. Where we improve the strategy process is by stopping short of dictating exactly how each will be achieved - we create a cohesive set of choices with "freedom within the framework" for how to accomplish each.

Today's "Lots of Littles" media and cultural landscape demands a more flexible strategic construct. Centralized, top-down, dictated allocations will protect resources for big bets into certain tactics, but will stifle creative thinking in more effective, resource-savvy ways of delivering the same outcome in a novel way.

We leave a gap for creative & connected thinking.

There's a concept in early childhood education called the "appropriate challenge" - as you're helping build the stepping stones towards skills, knowledge and competence, creating a ramp up of unexpected gaps helps the learner reinforce what they already know by using it to fill in the new bit yourself. That's the gap we're trying to create - for new and novel ways to deliver on the "appropriate challenge" of the strategy.

The strategy skill, then, is finding the right "intent gap" that lets teams identify which component of the overall plan they are trying to deliver upon with a novel strategy. There needs to be clear expectations about why a Comms Task is necessary, and what else that task supports in the rest of the plan. That way, everything remains cohesive and complementary. People contributing to and then applying the strategy get that same feeling of "I figured it out!" opportunity to creatively problem solve, and the same "I'm in the know!" feeling as a co-author of the overall plan.

That belonging and sense of accomplishment pay dividends in effectiveness and cohesion.

Less HOW. More HOW ABOUT______?

Shifting from Optimization to Outcomes

Lastly, leaving space for creative thinking in strategy lets us move beyond finding a better way to do an expected thing, and focusing more time on true innovation in delivery.

Fluidity & Fuel is a concept proposed by Peter Buckley of Meta for adopting the two most common recommendations Meta provides to make the most of investments on their platform.

I think it's even more useful as framing device for shifting away from the decade-long stranglehold test & learn. But first, the concepts.

What he suggests is that with AI-Intermediated Media platforms, you no longer need to design campaign systems with artificial splits in the campaign (distinct audience segments, priority ad formats, or geographies) to enable clear performance and testing signals, as these inhibit the system's ability to learn what drives the selected outcome most efficiently and effectively. That's Fluidity within the system.

Fuel refers to the creative. Because these AI-intermediated systems benefit from variety, they work best with a high volume of creative assets - specifically requiring breadth (different styles), depth (versioning & message variation), and quality (fit for format execution). It's less about optimization between assets, and more about more (production costs, distinctive brand assets and wear-in be damned).

Fluidity & Fuel, beyond the original inspiration, gives us a good set of prompts for how to disentangle Comms Plans to allow them to flourish in a more complex ecosystem.

Give yourself and your teams the opportunity to think fluidly about different things that may accomplish the expected outcome; challenge the norm - why are we pushing people to the website? Why are we using social media in the same exact way as everyone else? What "turd on the table" (thanks Rishad Tobaccowala!) are we not acknowledging?

Leaving space in the strategy isn't less strategic. It's creating an opportunity for others to make it more impactful. Give people expectations and advantages that will help them deliver better, then the freedom to uncover more efficient and novel answers. And they may change as you get into the plan - but the overall structure around hierarchy of intent allows for you to adapt quickly.

Plus, it's more connected - people support what they create.