It's what you do after the punch that matters.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth
Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernhard Graf von Moltke was a 19th century Prussian army commander and one of the main architects of the country's military theory. He wrote (among other things) a three-page essay called On Strategy that addresses the desire for developing a "perfect strategy."
"No plan of operations can extend with any degree of certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main body.”
Mike Tyson, former American boxer (among other things), modernized von Moltke's writing with the famous quote:
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
(What Tyson should have said was "Everyone has a plan until they get half their ear bitten off." But I digress.)
Whether you've just been hired to fix a marketing dumpster fire, you're the first marketing hire at a startup with no program, or you've been with a company for years and it’s annual planning time…you're going to have a plan. And that plan will not survive first contact with the enemy as is.
So what do you do?
It depends on what your strategy actually is.
If your strategy is just a collection of tactics, then every "punch" scrambles the whole thing and you're left with trying to bite off someone's ear.
If your strategy is a framework for decision-making i.e. a system of expedients, then the "punch" doesn't destroy it. The "punch" is the point.
The role of strategy isn't to preserve a fragile plan. It's to prepare you to adapt without losing the plot. That's why the best marketing strategies aren't laundry lists ("Run Google Ads. Post on TikTok. Start a podcast."). They're operating systems. They tell you how to decide, not just what to do.
When your CAC spikes, when Meta changes its algorithm again, when a competitor launches a predatory pricing campaign, your tactics will need to change. But your strategy (your framework for how you prioritize experiments, allocate resources, and interpret feedback) should remain intact.
Here's a strategy template that I've used in the past that anchors my thinking and helps me not view strategy as only a list of actions.
The strategy argument
The status quo: here's how things are in the market right now
Why this sucks: the reason this needs to change
Our belief: what we think that's different to everyone else {our breakthrough insight}
Our solution: what we're going to do resulting from our insight that's going to fix the problem, and deliver massive value
The strategy statement
Simple, one-sentence summary of what the strategy actually is. Don't make it pretty, too short, or sound like a tag line. Make it clear: unambiguous, practical, usable. Tesla example: Our strategy is to use EV technology to create luxury high performance vehicles, in order to attract people to the segment and grow the size of the market.
The implications
product
brand
distribution
marketing
etc.
The execution flow
First we need to do this. Then we need to do this. And then we need to do this.
We usually start with the execution flow…do this then this then this then this. That should be the last thing we should think about.
Until next week,
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