9 sweet takes on comms strategy

The other day I met the CSO of Craft Media London, and took a physical copy of their book home with me. It's such a good read. There's a digital copy available for free too, ​you can get it here​.

Anyway, this got me into the rabbit hole of revisiting everything I've written about comms strategy over the last 12 months. Now tidied up for your reading pleasure, so please do scroll, click and indeed enjoy.

1/ ​To blend social and comms strategy, combine rigour and restlessness​

In which I reflect on a conversation I've had with a brand director recently, on how taking forever to be right is no longer enough.

2/ ​Brand vs comms strategy: 12 blunt questions answered by two honest strategists​

A wonderful collab with Magda Adamska over at BrandStruck, which makes me want to do more writing collaborations. If you got an idea and want to riff on something, hit me up!

3/ ​Comms strategy as songwriting​

This one time I ran a panel on comms strategy which not only broke an attendance record (for me), but also managed to break my Google Meet. Which, in itself, was a good lesson in comms improvisation.

4/ ​Comms strategy is about integration not imitation​

A little term I started using after running a comms strategy training session for Publicis, which still works very much for my brain. And therefore it might work for you too, when speaking to your clients.

5/ ​Order in comms strategy tends to emerge over time​

One of my favourite things to do is to try on a strategic narrative for size and shop it around in its verbal form with my client leads. It really does wonders on selling the thinking, or sharpening its bluntier bits.

6/ ​Comms strategy advice for startups​

Be everywhere all the time! Great advice, except if you have a few hundred grand instead of five million quid. Here's a little something I ran on this topic, for an ecommerce founders network a while ago.

7/ ​Good strategy, like a good idea, is ‘very something’​

One of my favourite things to do is co-opt stuff like writing advice or advice for creatives, and simply twist it until it works for strategists too. Here's why some part of your work should be 'very something'.

8/ ​A short primer on CEPs for the benefit of you and me​

Another writing collab, because this is how I entertain downtime now I guess? Alex Mason, of the wonderful Weekly Brand Strategist newsletter, asked me to write about CEPs. So I did. Here's the repost.

9/ ​Meaning and momentum as an operating system​

Probably the mental frame that underpins all of the above and how I like to work best. Meaning and momentum was actually at some point the positioning of Salmon Labs, and while it wasn't very good or useful at being a positioning, it acts wonderfully as a value system.

This week was as bit more deep work focused than usual. I met a Salmon Crew member for coffee to scout a few co-working spaces. I had a business development call. I wrote a draft POV on celebrity first social strategy for a prospective partner. I did a lot of writing, structuring how I handle my pipeline, and prepped for ​Cannes​. All while listening to TOOL pretty much on loop.

God they're good.