“So... what’s your strategic process?”

It’s a popular request of agencies in the RFP process. There are many answers to how agencies work—and they usually come curiously packaged and trademarked. But they all seem to boil down to Stephen King’s famous “Five Questions” that make up the classic planning cycle.

“Stephen King,” you might exclaim. “The author of horror and suspense designed the planning cycle?” Well, that’s just what I thought when I first came upon this wonderfully elegant tool. But I quickly learned that this Stephen King was the co-inventor of account planning.

King’s five simple questions help keep the marketing journey on track and energized. They provide a model that recognizes that the planning and execution of any program strategy can only be a process for continuous learning and adaptation—and, of course, improvement. Nobody said simple and basic was easy. But, but if you do it right, it will always be interesting, effective and rewarding.