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Straterday mind note
I went to Straterday by Mark Pollard this month, he is one of my favourite strategist in lately. Back in the 90s, he started Stealth magazine, and now finishing up his role as strategy director at UM and off to New York in May, and I wish him the best of luck.
You can find a bit more about him here: 
The session was insightful with lots of learnings, so I like to share it with you more in detail.
What is strategy?
Placed quite nicely, strategy is an informed measurable point of view about how to approach a problem or exploit an opportunity.
It’s really just a point of view, as it’s not the only way. It needs to be informed and measurable, the use of “more” or “better” doesn’t cut it. Whether it’s for clients or our own start ups, we are here to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity, this is where strategy comes in play
Mark really liked to use simple words. We often use way too much fancy words during client meetings, to spice up our idea, to make it sound intelligent. Strategy should be simple, the idea should be simple, because it’s coming from an insight discovery process, and people is in the centre of this. To discover this, we need to uncover a number of layers that’s mask it. Thought the reward is worth the process, because an insight often touches someone emotionally. Mark said it quit well, there is a difference between ” I found something” and “I found and insight” in agency land. An insight is a certain human truth which is often unspoken, and can’t be discovered by data analysis. It comes to you by talking to people.
For example, have you ever felt uncomfortable when you see a homeless person pass by? Don’t you just feel a certain sense of uneasiness? Why? Certainly I did. Could it because people were worried if they were homeless themselves? Possible insight.
Once an insight is discovered, the tactics, the media and the idea comes quite naturally.
Julian Cole was also there. He is the strategist at The Conscience Organisation. He showed us a simple approach to find out the conversion around your brand within the social media atmosphere. Here is the run down
-Open Facebook: around 3-5% profiles is open, and this tool searches what people are talking about
- Twitter Search: simple to use, real time twitter search
- Facebook: search for pages, groups. Pay special attention to what people are saying in these groups, today’s people gathered base on interest as opposed to demographics .
- Youtube, Vimeo, TED, again, check out the comments section
- Last one is one of my own, redit. Here you will find a lot of early adapters.
How to come up with an idea?
We often get labelled either as a creative or process driven person. The creative type often seen as “dreamers”, “oh I am not the creative type” is something we use when we can’t come up with anything. But really, coming up with ideas is just another skill, coming up with ideas shouldn’t be hard. It’s just comes with practice.
An idea is often a mix of two things into one which is better. Think 1+1 = 3, the final idea often serves a greater purpose. Think about our smart phones today.
Camera + Phone + Computer = smart phone
The final product serves a complete different purpose.
So how?
Practice your lateral thinking
Our mind works best under pressure, so when practicing lateral thinking, place a time limit, say 1 -2 minutes.
Quantity then quality, this is important. When coming up with ideas, it’s better to focus how many before how good they are
Word associations is often useful to come up with something. For example, let’s say a pen. Think of 10 words when pen is mentioned, this doesn’t have to be associated in any way. Then pick one of the 10 words you came up and repeat the process which gives you another 10 words. Chose one of these words and marry it up with the pen, you never know what you will come up with.
So that’s just some of what I have learned at Straterday, lastly, Live Audaciously
