WARC Talks: How to bring bravery back to strategy

This week, WARC talks bravery in strategy: doing breakthrough work, the power of creativity and advising clients on how to tackle thorny issues.

• WARC’s Ann Marie Kerwin is joined by Elizabeth Paul, Chief Strategy Officer at The Martin Agency and Tomas Gonsorcik, Chief Strategy Officer at DDB North America.
• As strategists face a strategic bravery gap, with agencies showing more openness to bravery than the brands that hire them, this episode tackles wisdom vs. short-term validation, bringing non-traditional KPIs into strategic planning and embedding bravery into the day-to-day work of the strategist.

Listen to the episode in full here

Timestamps

02:12 – Why are we talking about strategic bravery?

07:22 – The strategic bravery gap.

12:35 – What can strategy teams do to get buy-in for risky campaign ideas?

18:51 – Examples of campaigns showing strategic bravery.

21:05 – Addressing a lack of DEI and sustainability KPIs.

26:42 – How do you get strategists in the room to solve for upstream problems?

30:40 – Is culture one of the biggest opportunities to strategists?

32:17 – How do we find time to do qual research?

38:26 – Advice to strategists to embed strategic bravery into their day-to-day work.

Further reading

WARC’s Future of Strategy

If strategy is ‘an informed opinion on how to win,’ why are we playing to lose?