±±¾©Èü³µpk10

There are some in the creative industry – client and agency-side – who secretly look back jealously to a golden age when it was all much simpler and probably a lot more fun. A TV script, a couple of Poster scamps and then on to Charlotte Street for a boozy lunch.

The industry is still slow to embrace new ways of working. Old habits die hard and many - clients and agencies - prefer to play it safe...

But really, it is we who are working in the golden age of creative marketing. Not since the birth of television have we been presented with so many new and as yet unexplored ways to try and engage and inspire people.

Complexity breeds opportunity

But with all this opportunity comes complexity. Clients and agencies alike are faced with innumerable choices. You see it increasingly in pitch briefs, where agencies of every kind are asked to make recommendations on the best engagement ideas.

The agencies-formerly-known-as-media-agencies are making content. Whilst creative agencies are brokering media partnerships. This is what diversification looks like.

So what does this mean for the role of the strategist or planner? If this is an industry that believes in the power of commercial creativity to solve business and brand challenges, then how does planning contribute in this new, more complex environment?

Playing it safe

Despite this rich diversification, the industry is still slow to embrace new ways of working. Old habits die hard and many - clients and agencies - prefer to play it safe.

And whilst it’s everyone’s role to push for more diversified and original creativity, a heavy responsibility must fall onto the shoulders of the strategic planner. After all, isn’t it the strategist who’s supposed to frame the opportunity, to inspire new thinking, to stay open to new ways of solving problems?

But how? The key is to be open. Open to new ways of working, open to new forms of marketing, open to new technologies, open to new strategies.

Be open, leap ahead

At the IPA Strategy Group we call this ‘Open Strategy’. Because it is an open-minded approach to strategy that leads to the brilliant intellectual and creative leaps we all aspire to. Leaps that can be seen as heretical but are ultimately transformative.

But if diversification in ideas means inspiration can come from anywhere, how do we make sure we find it? How do we make sure that creativity and new technologies are equal partners in the solutions we deliver? 

The role of the strategic planner is still to write the brief - or at least to help give birth to the idea and then nurture it in its earliest days. So how do you brief for diversification. Does the way we brief need to be different now? What should we brief for?

These questions are at the heart of an exciting new initiative by the IPA Strategy Group. This week, every day between 28 July and 1 August, we’ll be asking how strategists and their agencies brief for creative diversity. What works and what doesn’t? What helps and what hinders? What’s changing, and what’s still left to do?

We’ll be posing these questions every day and via Twitter (#IPAStrategy) to some of the leading lights of modern diversified creativity to see just how they got there. With live Q&A every day to allow open debate we’ll be exploring and defining exactly how open strategy leads to fresh, original and diverse creativity.

The next IPA Adaptathon on 7 October will focus on talent, looking at how the industry can recruit and retain talent which is less one-dimensional, more diverse, which will lead to better commercial creativity. More information is available at