MediaChat: 'Strategy is overcommercialised and undertaught'

Lucy Verby spent 16 years climbing the corporate ladder within media agencies, reaching chief strategy officer at PHD, before she left that world to starting her own training consultancy. At We Are Masterplan, Verby now teaches people how to think strategically.

She remains close to the ad industry, though. Verby’s on the steering committee of the newly created Media Planning Group, and she’s the founder and chair of the Un//Scene festival, which aims to provide a stage for new voices in the industry.

Earlier this week, MediaCat spoke to Verby about the state of strategy in marketing and what we can all learn from Only Connect contestants.

What keeps you interested in media and marketing?

I’m deeply optimistic about the future of our industry because the mission — being able to shape the choices of society — hasn’t changed. In the wrong hands, that could be a really Machiavellian thing, and I think we see that all the time. But we have such an opportunity to be able to offer consumers choice, improve understanding and awareness of things that will help them in their day-to-day life, whilst also consistently representing society at large.

What made you lose interest in agencies?

I don’t think I lost interest, I just couldn’t see my future there anymore. I loved my 16 years in agencies, just up until the point where I didn’t. I looked upwards, at the increasingly managerially-led roles, and I just couldn’t see my future represented there. I’d always been hierarchically driven and fiercely ambitious, and I wore it on my sleeve, and suddenly I got the job I’d been fighting my whole career for, and it just didn’t suit me.

But if I’m being really honest, it was also that the whisper of ‘you should have your own business’ had become a shout.

What is the state of strategy within the profession, in your opinion?

I think it’s been overcommercialised and undertaught. There is a reason that I teach strategy. We pretend there’s a subset of special people who were born strategic, and that suits our narrative because it means that we can charge a premium for those people’s time, and bring them in as a salve when the client has a problem that can’t easily be fixed. Ironically, I think that’s denigrated the title of strategist because, if you create a role [for which] you can charge a premium, that role will become more prevalent. People will go, ‘Okay, you’re not just a researcher, you’re a cultural strategist. You’re not just a social media manager, you’re a creative strategist.’ It’s become a suffix that’s attached to all sorts of roles that were perfectly good as they were.

So my job is to teach people strategy — not just strategists but everyone — so that we smash this myth of strategy being something for the few and not the many, and give loads of people the ability to work more strategically, to produce better work all round.

Would that make actual strategists redundant?

I don’t think so. It’s reasonable, as with any specialism, to have somebody lead on the project or the work. But what I think we should explode is this concept that strategy is somehow more complicated, valid, credible, and rare than anything else that we do.

What makes good strategy?

I could talk about all the fundamentals and stuff, but I think the bit that gets missed, and which I’m always curious about, is why people don’t necessarily agree about what they’re actually trying to do. It’s so interesting to me because often you’ll get a brief and you’ll start running at, ‘Well, of course, the problem with insurance is this or, of course the reason that people are buying more own-brands is because of X.’ But are we all sure we know where we’re going? And I don’t just mean laddering up to business objectives. I mean, do we feel like this wording all means the same to us? It’s an exercise I teach in the course that we do.

Is there a particular text or person that has influenced your approach to strategy?

I’m less interested in what’s informing my strategy and much more interested in what continues to inform my learning, which is a really critical part of what makes you good at strategy. You get people who navel-gaze and talk about going out in the world and observing people. But that feels really broad to me.

In the last couple of years, the people whom I found most interesting are the people who are really practising the skills that it seems like they’re born with.

I think a lot about pattern recognition as a fundamental skill of the strategist. Where do you see pattern recognition most sharply represented in modern life? I think it’s on quiz shows — Only Connect in particular. And so when I was building this course, I went and spoke to a load of people who appeared on Only Connect, and I found out that everyone practises. They’re not just doing quizzes at the pub. They’re actually practicing the techniques that would make them specifically good at pattern recognition. Most interestingly, what they said to me was they practiced and practiced in the lead-up to the show, but when they stopped practicing, they became worse again. This is why I’m so fascinated by this notion of aptitude.

Is there a particular brand that you think has got its strategic ducks in a row?

Currys. I talk about them all the time, and I’ve never worked on them so this isn’t self-aggrandising. Currys should have gone the way of Toys ‘R’ Us but they’re growing and their profits are up.

The whole product proposition in store has become about service and helping people use technology. When I bought my new laptop, I took it to the bloke at the service desk and he went, ‘Which applications do you want me to put on this?’ That’s an upsell opportunity for them, and I’ve got a really warm, glowy feeling because I can go home and my laptop just works. I don’t have to spend four hours sweating and crying that I can’t install Office.

And that’s been matched by a really comprehensive and super-clear brand personality. Not just a tone of voice, but a proper personality that is super engaging and eye-catching and feels fun and credible. They’re one of the tiny sliver of brands who have given themselves the chance to play with things like memes in a way that actually works. My favorite example of this is when they went to the Pitbull concert last year in a bald cap and a beard and took worldwide adapters [because Pitbull calls himself ‘Mr Worldwide’]. Talk about a cheap-as-chips idea. It went absolutely crazy.

How would you change the strategy industry?

I would introduce junior strategy roles. I was starting to do that when I was chief strategy officer at PHD. Before I launched my business officially, I worked with Dyson and UM, which has junior strategy roles, and the junior strategists I worked with there were phenomenal. There is no good reason why we make people go off and pay their dues in another specialism. You don’t have to be a planner for five years before you can think about strategy.