Strategic Planning, The Remix
Photographs by Andrew Pieroni
Of course, before you get to the remix, it’s important to appreciate the artists behind it. To find out more about the early days of strategy, we asked each panelist to tell us about starting from the bottom. For Dustin Rideout, Chief Strategy Officer at McCann Toronto, it was creating online poker sites (no bluff) that helped him break into strategy. Funny enough, Dustin’s early years found him crossing paths with Jay Chaney, the former Chief Strategy Officer of Cossette and current the Chief Creative Officer at Koho, who got his start after a curveball to his baseball career. For Umar Ghumman, Head of Strategy at Mirum, he cut his teeth in policy work, while Sarah Stringer, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Juliet Creative, began on the “dark side” of account management. Despite coming from different worlds, each panelist has seen strategy upgrade from “a dark corner of the room,” to starring role.

Jason Chaney
Chief Creative Officer
Koho

Umar Ghumman
Head of Strategy
Mirum

Sarah Stringer
Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Juliet Creative

Dustin Rideout
Chief Strategy Officer
McCann Toronto
“Today’s strategists have an opportunity to provide predictability, while pushing the work into a more creative, unpredictable space.”
– Jay Chaney

“Today’s strategists have an opportunity to provide predictability, while pushing the work into a more creative, unpredictable space.”
– Jay Chaney
“The best creatives can be super strategic, you just have to let them into your world.”
– Sarah Stringer

“The best creatives can be super strategic, you just have to let them into your world.”
– Sarah Stringer
“What the client really wants is creativity, not just creative.”
– Umar Ghumman

“What the client really wants is creativity, not just creative.”
– Umar Ghumman
“You have to find people who want greatness and believe in it.”
– Dustin Rideout

“You have to find people who want greatness and believe in it.”
– Dustin Rideout
- For Dustin, you’ve got to start by showing what the people can do for the business.
- From Jay’s perspective, it’s about getting comfortable hanging out with people who are different than you and who challenge you.
- Sarah places the emphasis more on culture, noting that momentum is sexy, so why not harness it to engineer a positive experience.
- Perhaps most importantly, Umar says that you simply need to put smart people together.
Our Strategy and Planning Bootcamp kicks off September 3rd, 2019! To learn more about the program, click here.
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