How to avoid becoming one of the poor bastards on the Chalamet Zoom call?
Simple. Have a strategy in place before anyone starts brainstorming.
We’ve never had more “strategists” in marketing, yet the absence of actual strategy has never been more glaring. And that’s a shame because marketing strategy really isn’t that complex. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Targeting is the start of the strategy. Most companies can’t clearly articulate to their ad agency who they are targeting when they brief them. So decide who you intend to go after with your marketing, and who you don’t. It’s a more complex question than it used to be, as targeting approaches range from personalization through STP to sophisticated mass marketing. Each approach has its merits, but as Michael Porter once told us, the art of strategy is choosing what not to do. So, choose.
Then comes positioning. The intention behind your brand or product. There is no greater shitshow right now than the nonsensically complicated decks and brand books that pass for proper positioning in most companies.
Most marketing teams are just glorified communications units.
What do you want to stand for? If you need more than a page to answer that question, you need help.
You had twelve weeks, sixty grand, and seven workshops to come up with your positioning “masterplan,” but your target consumer only has two spare brain cells reserved for the whole category (if you’re lucky). Keep it tight. Focus on distinctive brand assets and a very clear positioning message.
Finally, strategy is about objectives. If you ever want to separate competent marketers from the pretenders, ask to see their objectives.
The chaff will show you dreamy, open-ended statements of vague intent. But if you have more than four or five objectives, you don’t have objectives — you have what former P&G CEO A.G. Lafley called “dreams that will never come true.”
Plans with a handful of annual objectives are far more likely to achieve something than those based on a laundry list.
And write your objectives properly. Use SMART or OKRs — it doesn’t matter which. But include a benchmark, a specific goal, and a deadline. Good objectives aren’t about “growing share” or “increasing revenue” — that’s like a football coach whose game plan is “win the game.”
Show me a marketer with three or four clearly written, specific objectives, and I’ll show you a properly trained marketer about to deliver their results twelve months from now.
You can develop strategy first and make any tactical execution easier and more effective. Or you can opt to spend the rest of your career on the receiving end of Timothée Chalamet meetings, nodding along as someone inanely explains why everything needs to be orange.
Mark Ritson will teach the ADWEEK MiniMBA in Marketing in April 2026, a ten-week MBA level training program for senior managers who never received (or have completely forgotten) proper marketing training. Sign up here.
