Digital account planner

One way to see experience strategists: they are the digital analogue to the account planner in traditional advertising agencies.

In the new digital context, an experience strategist needs to understand not only how to articulate value but also how to demonstrate and enact it (so the demonstration reinforces the articulation which reinforces the demonstration), and also how not only to reach a customer but how to merge into the customers life and hopefully transform it.

The experience strategist knows how to gather and make sense of the affective and effective factors (feeling + function) on both the business and the customer side and to clarify the competitive situation and its possibilities to the client and agency team.

That’s what an experience strategist is. What is  an experience strategist not? Two conceptions to avoid: 1) that an experience strategist is a kind of business strategist who specializes in the strategic use of digital media and 2) that an experience strategist is a kind of experience architect who knows how to apply experience design strategically to business problems.

Given how the experience and advertising industry has evolved, by this point every business strategist ought to know how to think about and use digital media, and every experience architect should know how to think about and respond to business problems. These are no longer special qualifications, but are the basic skills of the job. But even with these qualifications there is still a gap between business strategy and experience architecture/creative, and it is this gap that experience strategy bridges. An experience strategist defines and describes the parameters and qualities of an experience that will perform as required within the overarching business strategy because it satisfies the needs of both the business and the customer and binds them together in an enduring and mutually beneficial brand relationship.