Another year for the Open Strategy newsletter.

A compendium of the best strategy reads we’ve shared over the past 12 months

This is a visual analogy of our newsletter subscribers’ inbox

Yes, It’s that time of the year. That day you’ve all been waiting for since February 21st of last year. Exactly one year ago, we published a recap of the most read articles from our first year publishing our weekly newsletter. And today, as we’re about to hit ‘send’ on the 104th issue, we’re publishing the much awaited (not really) sequel.

This year, once again, we’ve read a ton and shared only a few. Once again, we’re very proud to see more and more people subscribing and reading us. We’re still not sure if it’s for the articles we’re sharing or for the magnificent intro each newsletter comes with, but whichever it is, we’ll take it.

And with the next issue scheduled to be sent less than an hour after I hit ‘publish’ on this post, we’re already on our way to our third year sending the Open Strategy newsletter to our dear subscribers.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, you should listen today’s greatest philosophers, all are saying the same thing:

“Give it a thumbs up (actually a heart here) and hit that subscribe button” (© every single Youtuber on earth)

1. No one Gives a Sh*t About Your Content…and What to do About it by Caroline Tseng
2. What is a Brand Nowadays? by Dom Boyd
3. It’s not all about Millennials or Generation Z, people by Rachel Hatton
4. So You Think You Have a Strategy… by NOBL
5. In Praise of Small by Gareth Kay
6. Branding in the Age of Social Media by Douglas Holt
7. A brand’s number-one job is to simplify choices, not to sell by Charles Vallance
8. How to Build a Strategic Narrative by Mark Bonchek
9. To target or not to target, that is not the question by Shann Biglione
10. The Near Future of Added Value Services in CPGs by LHBS
11. The world beyond ‘storytelling’ by Martin Weigel
12. Business Strategy is Simple, doing it is hard by Ramzi Yakob
13. Why context is everything for brands by Richard Shotton
14. A strategist’s view on why you should shred your brief by Constance DeCherney
15. Strategy and Tactic Trees by Neil Perkin
16. Brand Building: the different approaches by Gethin James
17. The medium is as important as the message by Ian Leslie
18. Brands — if you want to understand culture, you need to participate by Leo Rayman
19. Is The Lure Of Shiny New Technology Killing Strategy? by John Ounpuu
20. Brand Purpose: does the evidence stack up? by Richard Shotton
21. Beyond a beautiful tension: brand ideas and cultural conflict by David J. Carr
22. Billion dollar interviews by HJ Kwon
23. Speaking to People: The Strategist’s Secret Weapon by Lidia Taylor
24. Creative Brief — benefits of un-fixed perspective by Wojtek Szumowski
25. How To Create An Ecosystem Around Shared Values by Adrian Ho
26. Michelin-Starred Strategy by Matt Sadler
27. More than a Promise: Brands are Platforms by Brian Monahan
28. Why is a Good Insight Like a Refrigerator? by Jeremy Bullmore
29. You’ll Never Find a Target Insight Sitting at Your Desk by Kevin Murray
30. What is happening to strategy? by Stefan Erschwendner
31. Creative Development: A planner’s guide to building not bombing by Shadi-Sade Sarreshtehdarzadeh
32. What Ad Agency Strategists Can Learn From Comedians by Kim Lundgren
33. Why we need to adopt whole puzzle thinking by Richard Huntington
34. Let Strategists pick up their razors and shave complicatedness clean by Antonis Kocheilas
35. ‘I Hate Creatives’ by reddit user @thevirtualme
36. Developing Advertising Strategy by John Griffiths (& Stephen King)
37. Make Marketing Longer by John Dodds
38. A Map of Modern Brand Building by David J Carr
39. Actions drive attitudes better than words by John Griffiths
40. Design Sprint for Branding by Julian Koschwitz
41. ‘Millennials’ is a useless term by Jed Hallam
42. Different Schools of Strategy by Claire Strickett
43. Imagining other people’s lives is a crucial marketing skill by Craig Mawdsley
44. Strategy as a Creative Act: Making Space for Radical Ideas by Timothy Morey
45. Byron Sharp: view from the trenches by Evgeny Bik
46. Good habits, bad habits, and riding crops by Claire Strickett
47. The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything by Derek Thompson
48. “Strategies are like assholes. Everybody has one.” by Phil Watson

If you want more, you can find the past issues of our newsletter by clicking here.

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PS: If you could also share this post please, we have numbers to hit set by our board of directors. Thanks in advance.