#5 Short break for an interview
It's with Rob Estreitinho, guys!
Hi,
This is Room To Fail, a newsletter about learning how to become a strategist right beside me, a junior-strat that is constantly (and fearfully) looking for things to do wrong & fail at, just to only get them right the next time. Or the next.
I’m Irina. Welcome and buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Hopefully.
These read takes you about 9 minutes.
🧠⚡︎BRAIN FAILURE
This week - the good type of brain failure. A first interview - I got to ask some questions to this awesome person and strategist: Rob Estreitinho, Senior Strategist at VCCP in London, partner at GroupThink - a global community for strategist, father of Salmon Theory newsletter and meme enthusiast as you have seen here.
So, let’s not waste any more time.
What’s your work process? What do you need to get started?
I tend to over-think things, which means I instinctively stress before starting to do the actual research. The best way around this is to list 3-4 sources I want to investigate, then as I go along just make quick and dirty notes on a notepad. I avoid writing things down on a document or deck until the last third of the process, because I tend to get more results (and less over-thinking) when it's just me, pen and paper. Then I like to find a way to organise information so I can start organising things into buckets, but the overall 'template' is split in three: what's the competition/market looking like; what do I know about the audience; what do we know about the brand that's either differentiated, or at least has the potential to be more distinctive than competitors. I've also worked with models where there's a fourth bucket, for cultural observations, but these days I bucket those under audience. Finally, once I'm done with all the research, it's a simple narrative exercise: what's the market / competition doing? What do the audience need? How can we offer something that feels different? It's as simple as that. Though of course it's never that simple at all. ;)
What’s your go to thing for inspiration when you feel frozen?
https://tvtropes.org/. Seriously, if you ever feel stuck, just look whatever you're investigating there. I promise you will either learn something new, or get a new idea, or a new avenue to investigate. It's a fantastic mental unblocker for me. Otherwise, read something completely unrelated to what you're doing. Learning when to leave the rabbithole is also a useful skill.
When do you feel most nervous? When do you feel most comfortable?
Most nervous: right after I get off a brief, and right before I go and present our response. Perversely, I tend to feel most comfortable during both those very things (discussing the brief and presenting our work), but it's the anticipation of going in and the aftermath of the initial conversation that leave me in a place of, "oh shit, there's no turning back now".
Can you tell me the story of a fail that changed you? How did it change you?
Once, during a very stressful project where I was an account manager (a past life), I thought it would be a good idea to respond to a shouty client on the phone with some shouting of my own. Obviously, that didn't go well, and got me to think real hard about a) being in client services b) my own anger issues. How did it change me: fast forward a few years later, and another project where I was dealing with a shouty client, I was measured enough to realise that what they needed right now was the most calming and assertive voice I could do. Never fight stress with stress, you will probably both lose that way.
What is your personal definition of strategy?
A more intelligent or creative way to win.
What do you know about your work and wished you knew in your first year? Or just a piece of advice for junior strats.
Everyone's trying to figure shit out. Even your bosses. As we grow, we don't stop having problems or anxieties. We just upgrade to more complex problems or anxieties. This is ok.
Beautiful, right?
Let’s see what else do we have this week.
🤯 “HOW DID THEY THINK ABOUT THAT?!” SECTION
Just one cool link today:
This really interesting read on how TikTok came to life and what it means for UX and future of content: The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company, ByteDance on Turner Novak’s blog.
🍴INTERESTING TOOLS TO GET WRONG
This week, a basic tool: words.
I recently spoke to a client and, in the middle of the conversation, realised that we used the word “engagement“ in a completely different way. That was causing a lot of raised eyebrows.
Then I stopped (Hammer time!) and clarified the meaning and everything went from “wtf?!” to smooth.
So I started thinking and searching for definitions of marketing and advertising words we frequently use and putting them in this spreadsheet. Nothing new, nothing shiny, but a thing I sometimes forget to clarify in meetings. And that causes more problems than it should. Didn’t that happen to you too?
Also, I found this huge glossary online, but I thought it’s more useful for learning new things that clarifying the old ones we confidently wrong-use.
As you will see, my spreadsheet is open for edit. (If you can’t, just tell me in a reply to this email.) You are free to add the terms you use most and their definitions. If you disagree with one of the definitions, just write yours in the next available column. It would be awesome to see how differently we use these words (maybe in different industries too), am I right?
📚 THE STRATEGY BOOK CLUB
(Underthink it, Adam Pierno - COMPLETED: Y/N, 130 pages)
Just finished reading about the Phase II: Campaign. You have some highlights about Phase I: Foundation here. I don’t think I underlined so many stuff in a book before. I’ll leave with you a highlight from each of the 3 chapters: customer relationship to brand, campaign brief and role of media.
The customer relationship with the brand can be defined with the use of intuition and tools. Adam Pierno sketches two of them: The FCB Grid and continuums for the brand. These shape what’s expected of the brand and how do people get to buy it. Is it low involvement or high involvement, low emotion or high emotion? Understanding this helps defining the campaign efforts - don’t add emotion when people don’t need it, or maybe add more to stand out.
“The digital existence of these frozen peas should mirror the experience in customer’s cart, freezer and plate.(…)It’s a low involvement product. The digital experience should be equally low involvement; something simple like recipes or grocery shopping help and probably not a messaging app with Snapchat integration.”
One thing I loved about the creative brief was that its job is to inform and inspire. Words matter. I remember being a copywriter and hanging to every word in the brief in the search for inspiration.
The role of media part paints a real picture about the fact that people hate ads.
“People don’t read ads, they read things that interest them and sometimes it’s an ad.”
I believe this idea is crucial in understanding how to do our jobs better and pushes us to do more interesting and spot-on content that sells the products without throwing it in the face of people.
This book really feels like the short strategy manual it’s designed to be. So if you haven’t already started it, come on, you CAN touch this.
Stay curious and keep failing - only to become better,
i.