Okay, I like strategy.  Sometimes it can be a difficult birth, but it’s such a noble profession.  Organizing.  That’s what brand strategy does. Inside the company, it organizes, the product, the experience and messaging.  Outside the company it enables creative counsellors and vendors to deliver selling brilliance, unencumbered by a blank page of intention.  For a creative person, having a blank page is hard. Really hard.  With a foot in the blocks at the starting line, facing in one direction, creatives can accelerate and thrive.

All that said, creating programs, events, campaigns and communications is what gets the blood moving. Making stuff.  Be it beautiful pictures, heart-warming cinema, a raucous consumer event — these are the things consumers remember.  (Google “brand planners prayer.”) 

I miss making the stuff that my words direct.  Watching other people make the stuff my words direct is a nice second but not a close second.  No regrets though. Advertising is a stressful business. Especially without good brand craft upon which to build.

The tagline for Lucent Technologies, a brand I worked on years ago was “We make the things that make communications work.”  That’s brand strategy in a nutshell.

Peace.