⚠️ Wait a minute.

Lil' reminder that, if you're not part of the Salmon Crew, you're missing out on 80% of the good stuff I do these days. Specifically:

• Slack: Where we discuss ideas, help each other, and swap resources on how to do our strategy work more effectively.
• WhatsApp: Our other private channel, where we sometimes go rogue and stratshitpost (now a thing) when it's necessary.
• Resources: My private swipe file, where I have 2,000+ artefacts by now, covering strategy skills and cultural signals.
• Private panels: We're planning events on how to cut through in complex categories (July!), and how to do cultural strategy (September!). Crew members get exclusive access to those.
• Working sessions: We're organising working sessions where members help with each others' questions, and I'm toying with doing writing cohorts for strategists, because co-writing is fun.
• Co-working: We're planning our very first physical co-working experiment somewhere in South London, because serotonin!

The water's lovely. Come on in, and let's go upstream together.

Hey – Rob here.

The other day I met the CSO of Craft Media London, and took a physical copy of their book home with me. It's such a good read. There's a digital copy available for free too, you can get it here.

Anyway, this got me into the rabbit hole of revisiting everything I've written about comms strategy over the last 12 months. Now tidied up for your reading pleasure, so please do scroll, click and indeed enjoy.

1/ To blend social and comms strategy, combine rigour and restlessness​

In which I reflect on a conversation I've had with a brand director recently, on how taking forever to be right is no longer enough.

2/ Brand vs comms strategy: 12 blunt questions answered by two honest strategists​

A wonderful collab with Magda Adamska over at BrandStruck, which makes me want to do more writing collaborations. If you got an idea and want to riff on something, hit me up!

3/ Comms strategy as songwriting​

This one time I ran a panel on comms strategy which not only broke an attendance record (for me), but also managed to break my Google Meet. Which, in itself, was a good lesson in comms improvisation.

4/ Comms strategy is about integration not imitation​

A little term I started using after running a comms strategy training session for Publicis, which still works very much for my brain. And therefore it might work for you too, when speaking to your clients.

5/ Order in comms strategy tends to emerge over time​

One of my favourite things to do is to try on a strategic narrative for size and shop it around in its verbal form with my client leads. It really does wonders on selling the thinking, or sharpening its bluntier bits.

6/ Comms strategy advice for startups​

Be everywhere all the time! Great advice, except if you have a few hundred grand instead of five million quid. Here's a little something I ran on this topic, for an ecommerce founders network a while ago.

7/ Good strategy, like a good idea, is ‘very something’​

One of my favourite things to do is co-opt stuff like writing advice or advice for creatives, and simply twist it until it works for strategists too. Here's why some part of your work should be 'very something'.

8/ A short primer on CEPs for the benefit of you and me​

Another writing collab, because this is how I entertain downtime now I guess? Alex Mason, of the wonderful Weekly Brand Strategist newsletter, asked me to write about CEPs. So I did. Here's the repost.

9/ Meaning and momentum as an operating system​

Probably the mental frame that underpins all of the above and how I like to work best. Meaning and momentum was actually at some point the positioning of Salmon Labs, and while it wasn't very good or useful at being a positioning, it acts wonderfully as a value system.

This week was as bit more deep work focused than usual. I met a Salmon Crew member for coffee to scout a few co-working spaces. I had a business development call. I wrote a draft POV on celebrity first social strategy for a prospective partner. I did a lot of writing, structuring how I handle my pipeline, and prepped for Cannes. All while listening to TOOL pretty much on loop. God they're good.

Right. Need a nap now. See you next week.

Keep swimming,

Rob

⚠️ P.S. One last thing before you go.

Don't forget to join the Salmon Crew if you want to keep getting access to all the latest stuff we're reading, sharing and discussing on the topics above and plenty more, plus private events and all sorts of stuff to help sharpen our strategy knives. In this concept of a plan of a labour market, we're more likely to go upstream if we do it together.