In digital advertising, it can be confusing to distinguish where, exactly, the strategist sits in the organizational structure. One might not think this is a very big deal, but when we start talking about roles, responsibilities, accountability, and reporting it suddenly becomes important to clarify.
What we are not:
We are not account or project managers
We are not the client’s day-to-day contact. We do not put out fires, manage budgets, schedule meetings, or write project briefs or SOWs. We are not responsible for growing the accounts, determining and assigning resources, and tracking down involved parties for deliverables.
We are not designers/art directors/web developers/UEA-UX/copywriters
We love amazing Facebook applications and amazing web video experiences. But we do not necessarily have all the creative mojo to come up with said awesome ideas – and we definitely can’t make them pretty/work/move, etc. Just because a client mentions “Facebook” does not mean the social strategist can do everything. Social is bigger than that, and so is digital. Does your digital strategist actually build the the website? I bet your website developer does that.
Where we align:
We do not report to Account Management
We are aware that account management includes strategy in SOWs and briefs, but we do not report into these teams.
We do not report to Creative
But we do align with Creative in that we are on the same side of the aisle with them – account and project management being on the other side.
In the diagram below, I’m showing that strategy sits firmly on the same side with creative, UX, and development, and not with Client Services in the current structure of digital agencies (or that it should!).
Digital Agency Roles and Alignment
The main difference I’m trying to demonstrate is that Strategy, like creative, etc. needs to spend its time creating deliverables. These deliverables may not be as pretty as banner ads, as functional as wireframes, or as moving as catchy slogans. However, strategists are responsible for strategic thought, research, point-of-views, and recommendations to be presented in ways that map to clients’ business objectives.
Clients need strategy work to be completely fleshed out and cleanly presented in order to sell their ideas up the chain of command and win budgets. Strategic documents also set the foundation for a lot of the creative work through creative briefs (although we know it always changes by the time it’s actually launched).
Of course, Client Services also has to deliver briefs and scope-of-work documents, among other things. And, in a proper agency environment, Client Services will go to Strategy, Creative, Development, etc. to fill in the respective parts in order to develop an assessment, timeline, and budget for the client needs. We all must work together, no matter what. But Strategy sits on the same side of the “fence” as creative.
Thoughts? I’m sure plenty of you will have opinions and experiences to share. (I should also allude to my next post, which is going to focus on the positive and negative role Client Services can play with their internal team and how this affects the quality of the output, and overall moral. Stay tuned.)
I like what you’re saying however I don’t think it’s that close to reality. You have the assumption that the person responsible for Client Services has a thorough understanding of all sides of the business and that’s rarely the case.
Without that leadership strategy ends up taking a lot of different responsibilities from all areas (even PM).
Great management and great HR are necessary to have something like what your model proposes. Things that many times are out of an employees scope. While that happens, you have to cope with whatever is thrown at you.
Javier – thanks for your comment.
I think you’ll enjoy my next post – which I’m trying to finish up this week – where I delve into my experience with account services and the how their abilities (or inabilities) truly affect the work of the team and the success of the account. All of it is solely based on my experiences – I’ve had some horrible experiences with account services and some outstanding ones (which is what I currently have).
Since digital strategy as a discipline is still fairly new, and different from traditional account planning, I think the model I’ve presented still has value in shaping the role of the strategist in an agency. It also helps to more clearly define what the output should be (decks vs. client relationships, etc.) which in turns helps to set expectations within internal teams. A strategists capabilities are often wasted when their role is misunderstood – to your point about having to pick up responsibilities in other areas such as project management, etc.