Eimear Colleran.
Let’s be honest for a second, often “strategic planning” in marketing is just a fancy way of saying we made it up, but look, it’s in a spreadsheet. We dress up our best guesses in slide decks, baptise them in jargon, and hope no one asks too many questions. As Peter Drucker wisely said: “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work”, but in marketing, even our intentions are sometimes held together with ‘vibes’ and a couple of well-designed charts in our brand colours.
The reality behind many planning processes is that they’re reactive approaches dressed up as “strategy.” We scramble to explain sudden spikes in acquisition costs, scramble again when traffic drops, and reallocate budgets mid-campaign based on executive intuition - also known as “gut feel.” It’s less like following a strategy and more like assembling IKEA furniture without the manual, a lot of activity, questionable confidence, and the growing sense you’ve misplaced a few screws or god forbid, the Allen key. We become experts at reacting to what’s in front of us, often forgetting what we set out to build in the first place.
Teams launch ambitious “test-and-learn” initiatives that generate potentially valuable insights, yet these learnings rarely find their way back into the strategic decision-making process, creating a perpetual disconnect between action and analysis. This approach doesn't constitute a genuine strategy; it represents organisational firefighting concealed behind polished Canva presentations and marketing buzzwords like “low-hanging fruit”... ick.
This fundamental disconnect persists because most marketing teams are trying to plan strategically without the one thing strategy requires: a dynamic, responsive model of how their business really works. Instead, they’re making decisions based on outdated decks, hopeful guesses, and internal politics. It’s like going on Married at First Sight to find a lifelong partner. Technically possible. Historically... not that promising.
You can’t plan what you can’t see
Marketing runs on assumptions about everything - channels, audiences, creative, and timing, many of which are outdated before plans are even signed off. As Sun Tzu said, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” It’s a warning that applies all too well to teams flying blind without visibility into market dynamics or their own operations.
Traditional marketing mix models (MMM) are too slow, too shallow, or too siloed to offer real-time insight. They’re great for post-mortems, less so for steering the future. Dashboards might look pretty, but they mostly report yesterday’s news, not tomorrow’s risks.
The result? Decisions driven by recency bias, gut feel, and office politics. A fog of data where signal and noise blur, and strategy meetings start to feel suspiciously like group therapy with charts.
Planning starts with a model that reflects actual reality
To transition from reactive tactics to a proactive strategy requires more than intention. It demands a fundamental shift in how marketing organisations model their business environment.
As Einstein said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Marketing doesn’t just need better execution, it needs a new way of understanding business dynamics. That means a robust analytical framework, one that reflects the real interplay between channels, teams, and spend, updates fast enough to guide decisions in real time, and models scenarios before the budget’s already gone down the gurgler.
This isn’t about adopting yet another black-box attribution tool. What’s needed is a living, mathematical representation of the business, one that captures the messy complexity of modern marketing and makes strategy not just possible, but provable. When it works, it connects decisions to outcomes in a way that genuinely moves the business forward. Because the best strategy doesn’t need a 40-slide deck, six conflicting definitions of brand purpose, or a pre-read you have to “circle back” on.
Quick reactions create motion, yet strategic planning creates progress
The reactive approach remains appealing because it creates the illusion of agility - fast decisions, responsive teams, and an image of adaptability. But as the saying goes, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.” In good times, reactive organisations seem to thrive. But when conditions shift, it’s clear who’s been skinny dipping without a plan.
This surface-level speed carries hidden costs, budgets drained on the wrong bets, siloed teams working at cross purposes, and campaigns chasing short-term metrics while long-term brand value quietly erodes.
This is where evidence-based planning flips the script. It builds momentum through aligned action toward clear goals. Marketing becomes less of a supplicant for budget and more of a strategic driver, knowing not just what to do, but why you’re doing it. It’s the difference between reacting to the noise and actually moving the business forward (all while wearing your bathers).
It’s up to you
Today’s real question for marketing leaders: Are you doing strategy, or just rebranding gut feels with a chic deck and some well-chosen buzzwords? Marketers, after all, are experts at marketing…even to themselves… #guilty!
For organisations ready to move beyond intuition-led marketing, the shift to evidence-based strategy is no longer optional - it’s essential. In a world awash with data, gut feel alone won’t cut it. As W. Edwards Deming put it: “Without data, you're just another person with an opinion”, and most meeting rooms already have plenty of those. What’s needed is a foundational capability that turns aspiration into action and brings rigour to decision-making. Otherwise, strategy just becomes storytelling with better fonts.
Eimear Colleran, Head of Marketing, Prophet