Future of Strategy 2022: vital skills and worrying shortages

WARC’s Future of Strategy survey finds that, in a tumultuous world, strategists continue to gain influence, but talent shortages are a major concern for the profession. Here’s what you need to know.

Why it matters

From the COVID crisis through to today’s economic environment, uncertainty necessitates strategists.

Strategists’ generalist abilities stand out, as the report describes clients in need of professionals that can simplify, integrate, think big-picture, and address issues outside traditional marketing and move into new areas like responses to climate change. 

You can read the full report here.

Method

These findings are based on the tenth edition of the annual study, taking in responses from over 700 client- and agency-side strategists, as well as 12 in-depth interviews with strategy leaders.

The report examines “how strategy careers are evolving, the biggest topics impacting the function and what strategists need to do to meet high client expectations in an uncertain world”, explains Anna Hamill, Senior Editor - Brands, WARC.

Five ideas you need to know

1. Tumult keeps strategists in demand. Though the pandemic might have ended, the upheaval has not. Respondents feel optimistic about the value and influence they can bring both to their clients and agencies.
   
   
2. Agencies struggle in talent war against deep-pocketed competitors. Continuing a years-long trend, but with additional urgency, 46% of strategists are concerned about being able to find the right talent at a time when a majority (57%) report that they plan to hire to fill current gaps. Just 30% expect their next strategy role to be in an agency.
   
   
3. Thinking beyond marketing and about the business’s performance. Versus last year, 49% of strategists report working on upstream business problems with their clients as the discipline’s biggest opportunity – a ten percentage point increase on 2021’s results. But other questions are being asked too: a significant majority of strategists expect sustainability (82%) and DEI considerations (70%) to be more visible in client marketing strategies and briefs.
   
   
4. Strategists brace for cost-of-living crisis. Eighty-six percent of respondents anticipate the cost-of-living crisis will have a significant or transformative impact in the next year and 69% believe that it will be at the centre of marketing communications. However, the extent of concern depends on the region. In North America – which has a more optimistic mid-term economic outlook than Europe – just 50% of respondents believe that cost-of-living concerns will be more visible in client briefs, compared to 79% in Europe and 69% in APAC.
   
   
5. Diversity, equity, and inclusion needs work. Both at a client and at an agency level, challenges remain in this area with agencies continuing to lack internal diversity while clients struggle to deliver DEI agendas.
   

Go further

Expert commentary from leading strategists, who include Joyce Ling of Wunderman Thompson China, Aki Spicer of Leo Burnett Chicago, Anush Prabhu of MediaCom, James Honda-Pinder of We Are Social, Mehak Jaini of 22feet Tribal Worldwide, Eunice Tan of The Secret Little Agency and Nick Myers of OLIVER Agency, is available to read here.

The full Future of Strategy 2022 report which includes quantitative and qualitative data analysis and advice, is available to WARC subscribers.

A Future of Strategy podcast will be released mid-October.

What it means when search becomes more visual

At Google’s search event this week revealed several ways in which its core search product would be adapting to the growing trend that young internet users are searching more visually-led platforms; the changes speak to a deeper philosophical shift that could have a big change on the way the massive business of search advertising operates.

Why it matters

In 2021, Google made $149 billion in advertising revenues on its core business of which search plays a huge part – not only to Google’s business, but by search accounting for 34% of the world’s ad spend in 2020. Big changes to a business this big are worth paying attention to.

What’s happened

Its Search On event revealed a suite of new ways in which to search and in which to shop on Google – both will be of huge interest to the marketing discipline. While we won’t rehash them all here, they uncover two trends:

• Searching by vibe: visual search and voice note search are incoming.
• Search isn’t about finding one right answer but a method of discovery.

Where it’s going

This second point is articulated neatly in a good piece on tech site The Verge, in which it observes that search has evolved into a “system for exploration, for discovery, for trying to learn things about which there are no obvious answers.”

While users are usually ahead of platforms in this regard – as evidenced by Google’s own admission that around 40% of young users go to TikTok or Instagram (when looking for a place for lunch) – it’s a significant shift.

This has fed a new feature, Exploration, which will be coming to iOS devices soon via Google’s dedicated app currently dedicated to travel and tourism topics, offering suggestions that help users explore. While nothing is set yet, this is likely to affect the ways in which search ad buyers reach their targets.

Looking to China, where the trend toward the visual is more developed, VC-turned-media company a16z explores some of the adaptations that businesses have made in order to become searchable on Douyin (TikTok in China).

Sourced from Google, WARC, The Verge, New York Times, a16z

Bain research adds evidence to B2B brand argument

New research published in the Harvard Business Review points to the importance of your brand being first to mind even in complex, long-lead B2B purchases as 90% of the time buyers will simply choose a brand they know prior to beginning the search process.

As a result, the article argues, brands tend to place way too much emphasis on channels aimed at converting demand rather than building it, adding to a growing body of evidence about the importance of brand-building (or creating future demand among potential buyers) to the B2B space.

Why it matters

Some brands continue to rely too heavily on short-term digital advertising that is often product-led and rationally aimed at in-market buyers.

This limits their growth potential. While some surveys suggest the importance of brand is growing among business-focussed brands, and academic researchers have established ways to model the kind of memory creation the Bain researchers identify, it is not yet mainstream thinking.

What’s going on

Based on a survey of 1,208 workers at US companies tasked with buying software, cloud hosting, hardware, telecommunications, logistics, marketing, or industrial equipment, and an additional 10 in-depth interviews to flesh out the themes.

• 90% of buyers ultimately choose a vendor they had in mind before they began researching the purchase.
• Word of mouth is very important, with recommendations from colleagues a vital aspect of the purchase decision. This implies that memory creation beyond the individual buyer.
• Previous experience with a vendor is critical, and helps brands to be bought even as buyers move jobs.
• Digital experiences and demonstration experiences are both often underdone. Discoverability and online presence means that digital experience must live beyond the company website.

Understand buying tiers

B2B buying is usually done by committee, with personal motivations often making decisions more about not getting the task wrong rather than buying the very best.

Bain identifies three tiers:

• Ultimate approvers
• Core committee (researchers – typically the most important tier)
• Internal influencers (often the users).

Sourced from the Harvard Business Review

‘Zero Covid’ dampens Chinese commerce

Ongoing efforts to keep coronavirus infections at an absolute minimum in China through lockdowns are having a widespread impact on commerce in the country.

Why it matters

Viewed through the prism of the markets, as Bloomberg does here, the return of pent-up demand seen in other economies – and, indeed, in China back in the Spring of 2020 - hasn’t materialised two years on.

With restrictions tightening ahead of Golden Week, the dampening looks to be creeping into a wider slowing of the economy. However, China’s economy remains vast, and with its middle class continuing to grow there remains great potential both for local and international brands.

What’s going on

• Effectively, people are now cutting back spending not only because of the coronavirus as wider macro issues like youth unemployment bite.
• Retail sales in July, for instance, were down versus the same period last year.
• Elsewhere, it appears investors and analysts have taken a grim view of central government encouragement of thriftiness, part of a long-running anti-graft effort under President Xi Jingping.
• Between lockdowns and shifts in emphasis, luxury brands that had once done very well in China have struggled.

Sourced from Bloomberg