Hey friend – Rob here.

This past week has been a good reminder of the importance of instincts when running your own business.

I've written, recorded interviews, done market research (expansion baby!), connected with other indies for advice (giving and receiving!), started content collab chats, nurtured consulting leads. All while doing consulting on social media strategy, integrated campaign work, a "let's win at Cannes" sort of brand brief, awards submissions, and an earned media campaign scope. And still managed to stay off caffeine, though listening to TOOL is my coffee. 🤷

(Side note: i do all these things because my mum was the first person to encourage me to go abroad and take control of my destiny, so when i reflect on all the work i put in, part of it is for her too. Miss you greatly, mum.)

My internet pal (and fellow Papapalooza writer) Adrian makes a good point when he says strategists get an extra feeling of exhilaration when we're building our own business and staying close to the money, profitability, and so on. It's, in many ways, a more powerful way to practise your strategic skills than training, decks and telling people that yes, we need more than "it's an awareness brief" to have a decent crack at a powerful yet distinct brand comms idea.

A couple of quick things before we move on.

Sharp and socials.

I published a new article on how to translate Byron Sharp's principles to get to better social media work, two fields i don't see being blended in strategic arguments nowhere near enough. May become a series, there's tons on this topic.

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The 'Friends of Salmon Theory' private group continues to grow into a thoughtful space to talk all things strategy, with discussions on things like US agency expansion, the scary level of brand misattribution across most campaigns, social value propositions, if "brand is dead" or not (IMO, not), charts of compound curse words on the internet, and many more. Join us if you haven't already.

Right, let's get into this week's slices, and do stick to the end for a smart TikTok mini essay about spontaneity.

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What sort of winning are you interested in?

I was recently talking to someone about books that influenced me, and easily Ego Is The Enemy sits squarely as one of the top three. Especially as a strategist, where we're indoctrinated with the idea that we're the smart ones, and that everyone else is kinda dumb and short-sighted, and heaven forbid that we admit clients have good thoughts. It's incredible, as a side note, how much of the "thought leadership" i used to respect in our industry has aged badly.

While there is a degree of preparation we have around what the evidence suggests about marketing, brands or how people perceive and interact with any of these two things, i've always struggled with this mentality. For me, the role is less of being the wise one, but more of being a conduit for other people's wisdom. I often describe it as being smart vs helping others do smart things. And for me, winning is just that, a collective endeavour at its core.

Winning arguments sounds great if we think our job is to be right in every given situation. But life and work tend to be much richer when we admit it feels much better to see someone thriving, and having contributed somehow to it. Seeing a client or creative team succeed because my thinking helped steer them 4 degrees to the left, and therefore they avoided the iceberg (weird Titanic analogy much?), is more reward than being told i wrote a genius deck.

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Strategy is a game of roots and wings

As much as i'm not a fan of binary thinking, there are a series of two-word-combinations that i always refer back to when it comes to the craft of strategy. In advertising, for example, you simplify and dramatise. In social, you create pull content before pushing core messages (an art form in itself). Increasingly i like to decode the language of long and short-term effectiveness by explaining that you're either growing your reputation, or growing your revenue.

Roots and wings is a more poetic, but equally powerful, two-word metaphor that we can use to do our jobs. You see, when we think about the intersection of strategy and creativity, roots and wings works brilliantly. If all you give someone is wings, they fly away and may get lost and not come back to the task at hand. But if all you have are roots, then it becomes a straightjacket where creativity gets suffocated. The trick is to spark a dance between the two.

Roots is reminding people of the objective at hand. Or the role of communications. Or the key takeaway message. Or an audience truth. Or drawing from what the evidence says, instead of just doing what we think will work. But wings are about working within these constraints and still finding ways to liberate our collective creative minds. In How Not To Plan, Les Binet and Sarah Carter talk about rigour on objectives and measurement, and raw energy elsewhere in the creative process. Specificity on the why and what, but generative stimulus on the how. It's one heckuva tango.

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The perennial lag between interest and commitment

In 2017, i was working on an independent print magazine project with a friend. By the way, terrible business. We never went anywhere. Anyway, part of the economics of making it work relied on, at the start at least, volunteers. Specifically, volunteer writers. We got a lot of people who were interested in the magazine's idea, and in writing for it. The problem was when a deadline came in, we literally would get ghosted. Genuinely happened 9 out of 10 times.

The lesson here isn't that people are unreliable. It's that there is a difference between someone being interested, and someone being committed. And oftentimes in business environments, there's not just difference, there's a lag. That is, someone might be interested in a new idea today, but take some time before they're committed to helping you see it through. I've seen this with adland ECDs valuing social. They got it in their brains, only years later in their bones.

I'm not writing this to badmouth anyone. What i'm saying is we all have our lag times until we accept something without an incentive, whether extrinsic or intrinsic. There will always be a gap between interest and commitment. Which is why, these days, i encourage strategists to not just practise their smarts, but their stamina. It helps us better play the game of selling creativity in the world of commerce, which inevitably takes longer than we think it will.

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Salty social slices

• ​The fashionification of brand comms. A little thesis i've been playing with. Great builds in the comments. Might turn this into a collaborative report, already got a few things in the works. Stay tuned!
• ​Four sharp AF problem statements. I feel like everyone talks about "defining the problem to solve" but we don't see enough examples of this done in practice. So i put together a few. Seems to have struck a chord.
• ​"We can't do humour". Says every industry that takes itself a tad too seriously. Alas, here is a great example of how a simple concept, well crafted (another fun two-word model!), can use levity to make a serious point.

That's all for this week, sending you good vibes especially if you're navigating the vibecession. It's tough out there, someone literally told me their industry's mantra right now is "survive until 2025". Let's be decent to each other.

Rob

Ps. The underrated stress created by our aspiration to spontaneity.