A lot of people — marketeers included — believe that given the fast pace and short lives of campaigns these days, there is no longer any need for strategies. Strategic planning, for them, is a moot exercise — it is one that should only be done when there is a luxury of time.

I strongly believe that this is wrong.

Because of the fast pace and short lives of campaigns, we need strategies.

Without strategies, which is the font of the “overarching why” of marketing and brand campaigns, all campaigns and marketing programs will be simply a hodgepodge of things to do.

Without strategies, the campaigns and programs one has planned for a brand are simply “things to do in the year in the hopes that they result to better sales, better revenues, better business”.

Because of the fast pace and short lives of campaigns — including digital campaigns — we need strategies. We need to know not just WHAT we are supposed to do and HOW we are supposed to do them — we also need to know (and perhaps, know more importantly) WHY we are supposed to do them.

(I am in the middle of reviewing campaigns for the last year in the hopes of learning something from them. I am at a loss, to be honest, because how can I review campaigns that just simply ran without any declared objective nor any indication of strategies? All I can say is, they delivered XXX revenues. How and why they delivered revenues are beyond me. Unfortunately.)