Series 1 Episode 04: Lisa Killbourn
On episode 4 of Strategy Sheroes I speak to Lisa Killbourn.
Lisa is a Strategist with 30 years experience, including 20 years across some of the biggest agencies, including Collett Dickenson Pearce, J Walter Thompson, and AMV BBDO. Brands she has worked with includes Kellogg's, Mars, Wrigley's, United Distillers, Nestle, Kraft Jacob Suchard and and Rick Stein Group.
Lisa has spent the last few years as a freelance consultant collaborating with organisations to develop brand value and business growth strategies.
I speak to Lisa about:
The client/strategy relationship and agency role
Outcomes vs outputs in client briefs
How to effectively use Net Promoter Score
Brand competitive advantange
Behaviour change
Read some of my favourite take-aways below, or subscribe on itunes.
On the role of the strategist
One of the key problems agencies have is that the brief is often focused on outputs rather than outcomes. The client will already have decided what they think the solution is. Whereas what we really want from clients is; this is what my problem is, this is what success would look like, this is the outcome I’d ideally like to reach.
You tell me what is the best way of getting from where am I now, to where I want to be. You really want a brief that’s focused on the outcomes and not the outputs that they think they want. That is the job of the agency and the strategist to think about all the different ways they could get to where they want to go.
The IPA talk about it as a bridge. Where do you want the bridge to start, and where do you want the bridge to finish. And the agency’s job, and the strategist’s job in particular is to then design the bridge of how you get there.
Getting buy-in through behavioural sciences
Often I’ll use external sources of credibility to get them to take a step back and re-look at the problem. Particularly things like behavioural economics which has become much better understood in the last few years. The science of behaviour change, which is another nice way of thinking about the business we’re in. Which is the business of changing people’s behaviour, which is almost what every brief asks us to do in one way or another.
Brand competitive advantage
One of the fundamental things is that brand is one of the few things that can deliver long-term competitive advantage. If you have a piece of kit in a factory or a product feature, those things are not sustainable in the long-term, they tend to change or come and go. Other people will bring in innovations that beat your product or match your product point of difference, but brand if properly maintained, can give you long-term competitive advantage.
