My opinion of what digital strategy entails, our responsibilities beyond the work and within the agency, and the skills we must equip ourselves with. A Solid Digital Strategist; A rare breed, so just grow your own.

1. Digital Strategy – WTF?
4 April 2012

2. Michael Lung
Assoc. Planning Director
JWT/XM-Asia Singapore
@mills301

3. Business Strategy title
Mission & Objectives
Environmental
Optimization
Scanning
Evaluation Strategy Formulation
Strategy
Implementation

4. Mission &
title
Objectives
• Asking the right questions
• with stakeholders and business leads
• Diagnose before you prescribe any solution
• Key Issue
• Underlying problems and impact (how do you know its an
issue? Evidence vs anecdotes)
• Desired benefits and impact (measurement)
• Economic consequences and implications
• Budget and Resources
• Understand the buying process
• Key decision makers
Understanding
Understanding Relationship Relationship
of Client’s Client Brief
of our business with Client with Suit
business

5. Environmental
title
Scanning
• Understanding the consumer and his/her world
• Digital Media consumption behaviour
• Natural usage
• Opportunities to disrupt
• Product/Service usage behaviour
• Digital Media usage during decision making and purchase
process in relation to Product or Service
• Brand perception/ opportunity within target audience
Grasp of Research Data Collection Identification of Application of
“insights”
Methods & Processing opportunities Findings

6. Grasp of Research Data Collection
Methods & Processing
Primary Research Psychology /
Business Data
Methods Anthropology
Research Brief
Secondary Real World
Social Listening
Research Experiences
Measurement Customer Intelligence

7. Strategy
title
Formulation
• What is desired change in behaviour/perception we are trying to
influence?
• Current vs desired mindset
• What is the one thing that we can leverage/say/do for us to
change behaviour/perception?
• Experience offering, value offering.
• What is the big creative idea that would be most appealing to
our audience?
• What is the very best way to deliver this offering?
• To ensure awareness, participation, loyalty, advocacy
• Across the most suitable touchpoints
• In an seamless experience?
• How does this benefit the business in the Long Term?
Understanding of Audience, Articulation of Presentation
Creative Brief
Business, Digital Solutions Strategies Skills

8. Understanding
of Audience
Consumer
Brand Technology
Understanding Understanding of
of Business Digital Solutions

9. Articulation of
Strategies
Mobile Strategy
Online Strategy
Business
Social Strategy
Strategy
Sales Strategy Digital Strategy Media Strategy
Marketing Communication
Brand Strategy CRM Strategy
Strategy Strategy

10. Strategy
title
Implementation
• Ensure that implementation meets strategic objectives
• Marketing objectives
• Business objectives
• Ensure optimal user experience
• Convenience and functional perspective
• Communications and psychological perspective
• Ensure everything important to meeting the objective is
measured
• Broad knowledge and ability to collaborate in order to discuss
and understand from each team’s POV the implementation
process.
Articulation of Understanding of Relationship Measurement
Strategies Digital Solutions with each team Frameworks

11. Key areas of
Planning
involvement

12. Development
Roadmap

13. Development
Roadmap

14. Evaluation
title
• Understanding what parts of the experience worked and what
didn’t
• With the focus on the original brief that outlined
• Business and marketing objectives
• How we aimed to measured success
• By evaluating the variables and the results
• Alternative user experiences
• Timing
• Content etc
• Developing clear outline of key lessons in each area of the initial
strategy, and actionable points to improve
• Archiving of benchmarks and best practices (case studies)
• Building Evaluation & Optimization as part of the Strategy
Measurement Understanding of Relationship
Analysis
Frameworks Consumer with each team

15. Campaign Measurement
Purchase
Process
Awareness Participation Community Action
User 1 2 3 4 5 6
Journey
Marketing
Assets
Metrics
Tools

16. Optimization
title
• Connecting the dots
• Making each of the pieces work better together
• To more effectively achieve your objectives
• Engagement (more stickiness)
• Conversion (less stickiness)
• Evaluating the need to:
• Refine specific components
• Targeted communications
• Kill certain components
• Exit strategy
• Experiment with new components
Measurement Understanding of Articulation of
Analysis
Frameworks Digital Solutions Strategies

17. Test & Learn
Variable testing Understand Factors
Measurement Benchmarking

18. title
Mission & Objectives
Environmental
Optimization
Scanning
Evaluation Strategy Formulation
Strategy
Implementation

19. Four Fatal Flaws of Strategic Planning
Managers continue to make fundamental mistakes that undermine
otherwise well-intentioned strategy-formulation effort

20. Skipping Rigorous Analysis
• Many managers believe their business experience and knowledge base alone equips
them with all the information they need to conduct effective strategic planning.
• This belief is almost always untrue and serves only to undermine the kind of critical
thinking from which truly creative strategies are born.
• A good strategic planning process takes full advantage of the numerous tools of
strategic analysis
– such as the five forces model, strategic group maps, or the value chain
– to gain key insights regarding how the industry is evolving, how competitors are
changing positions, and where an individual firm's sources of competitive
advantage lie.
Environmental
Mission & Objectives
Scanning

21. Believing Strategy Can Be Built in a Day
• Many executive teams earnestly believe that effective strategies can be identified,
explored, and agreed upon during abbreviated offsite meetings where the main driver
of the agenda is the timing of snack breaks.
• Take the time you need to sufficiently understand the underlying issues
• Take deliberate steps to share accurate info with decision makers
• Utilize problem solving tools to derive a variety of approaches and solutions
• Changing the minds of key managers and decision makers takes longer than one day.
Environmental Strategy
Mission & Objectives Strategy Formulation
Scanning Implementation

22. Failing to Link Strategic Planning with Strategic
Execution
• Executing strategy requires the work of the entire organization, whereas strategic planning only
requires the top team
• But part of a top team's challenge in execution often stems from the failure to link their work
with ongoing strategy execution
• "Strategic success demands a 'simultaneous' view of planning and doing. Managers must be
thinking about executing even as they are formulating plan.“
• Long Range Strategic Planning (LRSP) process. This integrated strategic planning and execution
system incorporates both strategy formulation activities, such as ongoing analysis of changes in
market conditions, with execution activities like management of integrated strategic programs.
– At the start of the planning year, they perform a "deep dive" on critical competitive issues facing the businesses; the
remainder of the year they focus on measuring and monitoring the progress they are making relative to the strategy. As
they encounter unforeseen issues — which they usually do — they then analyze them within the confines of the LRSP
process. They also maintain a running list of "must-do" integrated programs that they readjust as business conditions
change. "We've refined the LRSP process over the past several years to not only make it more flexible and responsive to
changes in market conditions, but to also make it more integrated,
Strategy
Strategy Formulation Evaluation Optimization
Implementation

23. Dodging Strategy Review Meetings
• Strategic plans quickly become obsolete when there is no activity in place to keep
them alive.
• Worse, managers sometimes feel freed from execution accountability when reviews
are continually rescheduled or dropped from the calendar altogether.
• At the end of the strategic plan formulation, managers should establish a strategic
governance process where strategy review meetings
– The strategy that was created at the beginning of the execution cycle should be the topic of conversation
at every meeting — no discussion of operational issues should be allowed.
– Consistent with avoiding fatal flaw number one, the necessary analysis should be prepared and the
findings circulated before the meeting so that the session can be dedicated to guiding decision-making as
opposed to conducting unbounded, unstructured discussion.
– the strategy management analyst responsible for facilitating the process. Running effective strategy
review meetings is a learned skill but one that starts with scheduling and sticking to the strategy in the
first place.
Evaluation Optimization Mission & Objectives