Strategic Planners: Making the Connection

by. Amanda Lowery

Last week we invited communication guru Jim Avery to lead us through a strategic planning workshop. It was a great opportunity to refine our skills, revisit some planning techniques we already use and gain some tips for becoming even more effective, so we’re sharing what we learned.

In the hustle and bustle of communicating, planning projects, and managing deadlines, it’s sometimes difficult to see the whole forest rather than just the individual trees. In the marketing world, the trees can be promotional campaigns or even specific tactics. Focusing on them individually is important if you want to achieve specific objectives, but in order to accomplish long-term goals it’s essential to be able to take a step back and also look at how all those different trees come together into a whole that’s larger than the sum of its parts.

Strategic planners help marketing managers see the big picture in addition to taking care of the individual tactics and campaign details.

Jim reminded us that a strategic planner is a friend to a brand. They’re the person who helps the brand take a step back in order to focus on how it touches lives and recognize the simple human truths that will help it break through the clutter.

People buy products or services for more than the basic or obvious benefit. They make purchase decisions based on a combination of functional, sensory, emotional and financial rewards. For instance, there are several different types of bar soap, and most of them do essentially the same thing: clean. Yet people build strong preferences and affiliations for one type of soap over another. Why? Because they feel like they are getting more of what matters to them personally in terms of smell, price, packaging, performance and other properties with one particular brand versus another.

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