Exploring Advertising’s “Blurred-Line Dimension”
The lines between creative and strategy are becoming less defined, and for Sandi Preston, chief strategy officer at Translation, the more tightly interwoven the strategy and the creative partners are, the more tightly interwoven the idea becomes.
Sandi this week chaired the Creative Strategy category at the London International Awards. The jury awarded 13 Golds, 12 Silver and six Bronze, with the Creative Strategy Grand LIA going to AMV BBDO for its ‘Live Fearless’ campaign for Libresse/Bodyform, the latest in a long line of highly awarded work from the client-agency relationship.
After days of debate and discussion in Las Vegas, Sandi sat down with LBB’s Addison Capper to share her perspective on the blurred lines between strategy and creative, the value of cultural understanding, and why the best work happens when boundaries disappear.
LBB> Creative Strategy is about the thinking that inspires the idea, but where do you see the boundary between strategy and creativity, or is there one at all?
Sandi> I don’t like the word boundary. It denotes two separate things meeting at a defined edge. I don’t really think that’s what creative strategy is. I think creative strategy is more indicative of integration – the strategic thought is so well integrated into the creative idea that they’re virtually inextricable in terms of the outcome of the work.
Because we are moving towards a more business-oriented dynamic in our industry, that inextricable link has to be there. By default, it requires some of what we saw today [in judging]. If we're defining impact, what then are we aiming to achieve? It can’t just be performance metrics. We know it can’t just be impressions, clicks, and views. The real question is: what changed?
Sometimes that change is distinctly measurable, and sometimes it's not. But I think clients are asking how they can assess whether the work is actually going to move the needle in a way that impacts their business, not just their brand. That's becoming more and more the concern of a CMO.
LBB> To quote the LIA site, "Creative Strategy recognises the digging, investigation... that inspires the creative idea." What kinds of inputs or behaviours signal to you that a team truly went beyond the obvious?
Sandi> I think it comes back to what we’re talking about when we use the word insight. I do feel like we’ve become a more data-centric business, but the data point alone isn’t the insight.
From my perspective, it’s about what you’re bringing forward – what you’re illuminating – that helps this truth, this fact, this data point to be seen in a new or different way. As I told the team today while we were judging, it’s about the quality of insight.
You have to find the slant. If you don’t, the salience of that insight isn’t going to spark salience in the idea. That has to be there.
That’s the difference between a general observation that gets turned into a cool idea, versus a truly insightful thought – an insightful point of view based in truth – that then leads to a compelling idea.
LBB> Do you think the industry still overplays the distinction between strategy and creative, when in reality the best work blurs the lines?
Sandi> I do think the best work blurs the line. I think we’re in a blurred-line dimension of our industry right now. Not just strategy and creative.
Even as you talk through the subcategories we were judging, whether it’s branded content versus branded entertainment versus brand integration – at a certain point, there’s a question of whether we’re just splitting hairs. But on the creative and strategy front, in my opinion, the more tightly interwoven the strategy and the creative partners are, the more tightly interwoven the idea is.
I also find there’s a lot of safeguarding over what’s considered a creative idea versus a strategic idea. And when there’s that separation of power, I don’t think it makes the work as strong as it could possibly be. From my vantage point, I advocate for that partnership where creatives should feel compelled to challenge the brief and strategists should welcome it. Not for the sake of being contrarian, but to put pressure on making sure it’s clear – that we’re starting from a compelling thought that we all understand, not just something smart or clever.
Equally, strategists should be able to relay feedback on the creative idea with the same pressure: is it strategically sound, is the insight still living and breathing in the idea, and does this direction actually take us to where we’re aiming as an outcome?
The more that partnership is there, the tighter, clearer, and more impactful the work becomes.
LBB> Are you seeing a shift from demographic targeting to context-first or community-first strategies? What’s exciting you there?
Sandi> I love this question, because it falls so closely in alignment with the philosophy that Translation was founded on. When Steve Stoute founded the company, his point was not to dive into the power of advertising – he wanted to dive into the power of cultural capital.
When we start to talk about cultural capital, it’s hard to place people in demographics. He published a whole book about it in 2011, ‘The Tanning of America’. At the core of that was not just theory, but truth: demography alone is declining as an indicator of consumer behaviour.
Once you start to look at things through the lens of culture, it is not just about age, ethnicity, gender, or race. Now you’re talking about the values people assign to experiences, the places they go, the things they buy, and the language they adopt and share. That is a much richer lens by which to determine the most interesting intersection where a brand can relate – not just by a traditional demographic.
I think we are slower as an industry, in totality, to catch up to that. But I do think there’s a theoretical shift now where more companies are talking about culture.
LBB> How do you tell whether an insight is truly ‘of the culture’ rather than just ‘about’ it?
Sandi> I think everything needs to start from an undeniable truth. A truth and a trend are not one and the same. There needs to be an expression of looking at what networks people assign themselves to, and what experiences are being shared within them. We have to demonstrate an understanding of that.
If we’re just holding up a mirror to it, or doing a copy-paste of something trending, there’s no authenticity in that. Authenticity has to start from a place of understanding. Understanding comes from truth. And to get to that truth, you have to release assumptions and biases you have about an audience, and understand who they are.
It’s not just about the audience – it’s also about introspection on the part of the brand. Getting to the brand truth is important, and then finding the intersection between the two: brand truth and audience truth.
LBB> What role do you think advertising should play in shaping, not just reflecting, culture?
Sandi> Intention matters here. For example, when we launched the ‘You Love Me’ work for Beats, there was such a central message in that story that contributed to the cultural moment we were in. It was also, in a way, a historical truth that had not been said out loud, outside of closed spaces. In that way, you could feel how it contributed to culture.
Arguably, although produced and paid for by Beats, it wasn’t an ad in the traditional commercial sense. The logo was there, but there was no product, no hard sell. What that did for us was earn more credibility. Now, when there is a more commercial message aimed at the same cohort we were speaking on behalf of, there’s more credence for them to consider, more reason to have affinity for or choose Beats over another – because that moment happened.
I do think it’s important for marketers to consider that, ultimately, whether it’s an ad or not, we’re creating a form of media. Media tells stories, informs people, and shapes behaviours and beliefs. There is responsibility in that. We have to be conscious of how much influence we have.
LBB> What skills or mindsets do you think strategists will need most over the next decade?
Sandi> Our world is changing dynamically, right in front of our eyes, in ways we can’t even really foresee for the next five years. What I do know is that, as strategists, so much of the cognitive processing of what we do will require us to learn how to carefully use AI as a tool to aid our work – not to replace that process.
It’s very easy, especially for younger talent, to have the calculator without ever learning how to do the math. Technology has changed the way we research, and the way we’re able to distil information to get to the core of what we want to say. But strategists still need to build their muscle in critical thinking and problem solving. You can’t bypass that. The question becomes, what is the role of AI in helping to supplement that muscle without supplanting it? That’s going to be a very interesting balance over the next five years.
LBB> It can be too easy in one sense to get the information, but also using AI, you can be completely overloaded with too much information.
Sandi> In strategy specifically, I used to talk a lot about that moment of internal illumination – when the insight becomes so clear, or the path forward is revealed. It’s literally like the cliché of the light bulb going off in your brain. That moment, to me, is so important. Not necessarily to protect, but to sustain, even as things change or tools come along that help us get there faster or more efficiently.
I do think the intuition of a human – the gut or the heart – is not replaceable. That knowing lives somewhere within us. When that feeling is there, it permeates the brief, it permeates the creative thinking -- and that feeling is distinctly human.
