ORGS & EDUCATION
WHAT YOU WILL FIND
Strategy is one of those weird disciplines that just kind of started existing without a lot of guidelines or rules. Because of this, there's not really a standard way of working which means there's not a ton of education readily available to help strategists practice their craft. Luckily, in recent years many very seasoned advertisers have found ways to share their knowledge and I've compiled a short list of those resources here.
EDUCATION
The Strategy Finishing School was created by planning lead Julian Cole to help strategist at all level learn the fundamentals of their role. It's a great starting point for people trying to get into strategy or who want more guidance in their learning.
Here Be Dragons is a strategist based out of the UK who put together this great doc on the need-to-know aspects of being a junior planner.
Mark Pollard is a strategist who wrote the book Strategy is Your Words which is a great foundational understand of strategy's role. He also has a podcast and some articles and resources to help strategists hone in on their skills.
Group Think put together 68 tips for new planners to be helpful on the job. It's really just a nice long list of way to keep yourself busy and learning.
The Sweathead group on Facebook (also started by Mark Pollard) sometimes has strategy accelerator programs that run for 6 weeks at a time and is a mix of live work sessions and video learnings.
The Effie's Award organization has several bootcamps they run throughout the year to work on projects with peers and mentors and learn more about effective marketing.
The Brand Marketers Academy is a certificate program for 30 young marketers who will learn first-hand from the world’s greatest brands and industry leaders via classroom sessions and workshops.
HOALA believes that the training of a strategist (or any professional working with brands) must be continuously updated and provided by the most qualified and renowned strategic minds in the world.
D&AD is an awards program for advertising that provides the briefs for their winner so that young strategists can learn from award winning work.
I stumbled across this little book and have come to appreciate the perspective it offers on how to approach the strategic process with a combination of advice, quotes and images.
A lovely strategist put this starter pack together which is a google doc that has a lot of the same stuff as this website but a few extra documents related to advice on doing the job and networking which I think are great.
Morning Brew has two short courses that can be taken to help young strategists or markers learn about honing in on an audience building and learning about storytelling.
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
Sweathead is a facebook based support group for strategists and account planners around the world where strategists can engage one another in conversation and get help for tricky briefs
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
A newsletter for a group of strategists that have regular gatherings and work sessions to talk about all things strat.
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
This organization was created to help connect strategy mentors with mentees to help both parties share knowledge and advice.
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
This is a group on slack for women in strategy to connect strats with resources for advice, tools, research, ideas and collaboration.
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGY ORGANIZATIONS
Now open to any and all (not just bay area) strats who want to participate in work sessions or who want to meet up and network with others.
OTHER USEFUL THINGS
This video is sponsored by Julian Cole's Planning Dirty Academy and is free on YouTube. It's got a great couple of examples and ways into building out a strategy portfolio.
The skills maturity matrix is a very well known chart that helps strategists understand their roles and responsibilities at each level of their job.