How top global agencies build strategy, and how you can use this method, too
Walk into a top global agency and you don’t hear jargon. You hear questions. The kind that unsettle assumptions. The kind that change the direction of a company. The kind that make you shut up and think.
The myth is that strategy is magic. That big agencies have access to something smaller businesses don’t. But that’s not true. Strategy isn’t magic. It’s a method. And the method is repeatable.
If you run a growing business and you want to think like the best in the world, stop trying to reverse-engineer their headlines and start copying their discipline.
This is how they do it.
Strategy is not a deck, it’s a process
Big agencies don’t treat strategy like a phase. They treat it like a system. It’s not a document you create before the real work begins. It is the real work.
Most agencies, despite their differences, work through strategy in a way that’s structured, consistent, and brutally effective. It looks something like this:
- They interrogate the business, not just the brand
- They reframe the problem
- They dig for human tension
- They build a single, unifying idea
- They use strategy to light a fire under the creative
You’ll notice what’s missing: fluff, trend-chasing, “how do we stand out on Instagram” energy. The best agencies don’t chase relevance. They create it.
They start with the business, not the brand
Junior strategists talk about color palettes and voice. Senior ones ask why customer churn has doubled, why your conversion rate dies after the first click, or why your sales team doesn’t believe in the product anymore.
The top agencies work from the business problem backward. They’re not dressing the house, they’re checking the foundation.
They ask questions like:
- Where’s the actual pressure point in the business?
- What are we pretending isn’t broken?
- What happens if this campaign works?
Strategy that doesn’t touch business outcomes isn’t strategy, it’s set decoration.
They reframe the problem
Clients always think they know what the problem is. “We need more awareness.” “Our ads aren’t working.” “We want to target Gen Z.”
But global agencies don’t take briefs at face value. They challenge them. They rip them apart and rebuild them. Because the real problem is almost never the one on the slide.
Droga5 didn’t launch UNICEF’s Tap Project by saying, “Let’s get donations.” They flipped the question entirely: “How do we make people feel the value of clean water?”
That’s what good strategy does. It doesn’t solve surface issues. It rewrites the question.
They find the tension
Strategy only works if it moves people. And people don’t move unless there’s friction. Not a fact. A feeling. Something unspoken that makes someone shift in their seat.
The best strategists look for that tension. They mine it. They don’t settle for vague insights like “people value convenience.” They find the contradiction inside the convenience. The guilt. The discomfort. The compromise.
- “People want to support local, but still want Amazon speed.”
- “Professionals crave autonomy but fear becoming invisible.”
- “Everyone’s obsessed with wellness, but no one’s sleeping.”
Find that, and now you have something to work with. A crack in the wall you can drive a wedge into.
They build one idea to rule them all
At the centre of every global agency campaign, you’ll find one idea that pulls the weight. Not a list of talking points. Not a slogan. One idea that makes everything else align or collapse.
For Johnnie Walker, BBH created “Keep Walking.” That didn’t just anchor the ads, it redirected the entire brand. It gave the company a spine. Tone of voice, media buys, brand behavior — everything bent toward it or fell away.
A strong idea gives you discipline. It makes the next hundred decisions easier. Not because they’re obvious, but because they have a centre to orbit around.
Without that, you’re just putting messages into the void and hoping something sticks.
They turn strategy into a provocation
Top agencies don’t brief creative teams with platitudes. They give them a challenge, a battle line, a point to prove.
They don’t say, “Make it inspiring.” They say, “Make this brand impossible to ignore in a category full of cowards.”
They don’t say, “Position us as caring.” They say, “Prove that rest isn’t laziness.”
The brief isn’t a fence. It’s a fuse. It should explode in the hands of a smart creative team. That only happens if strategy is sharp, loaded, and emotionally charged.
How to use this in your own business
You don’t need a New York address or a Cannes Lion to think this way. You just need to get serious about process. Here’s how:
- Don’t start with copy. Start with business pressure.
- Ask better questions. Ones that make the founder pause, not nod.
- Dig until you hit something raw. Something unresolved.
- Choose one idea and kill everything that doesn’t serve it.
- Brief your team like they’re warriors, not vendors.
It’s not complicated. It’s just disciplined. And that’s why most companies skip it.