Boost your strategic skill-set

For strategists, understanding your audience, empathising with them, and knowing how to build a strategy that successfully connects with them is only half the battle. Now, you have to align this with the objectives of a brand, build this into a brilliant brief, inspire a creative team and bring your clients on this journey with you.


In D&AD’s Active Strategy course we provide templates, tools, and guidance to ensure your strategy is the right one to pursue, translate this into a brief that can activate creative ideas, and build trusting relationships with your team, organisation and clients.


This course is part 2 of our Strategy 101 series, exploring how to hone a strategy and communicate it.

Course curriculum

  • 1

    Welcome to the course

  • 2

    Solve the right problem

    • Welcome to part 1: Solve the right problem

    • Brand strategy and creative strategy

    • Understand the brand

    • Pushing the envelope

    • Using the brand message

    • Strategy vs tactics

    • Understand the different kinds of objectives

    • Which type of objective are these?

    • Creating objectives

    • Set your measures of success

    • Exploring objectives - award-winning work

    • Task: Explore the brand

    • Wrap up: Solve the right problem
  • 3

    Finding the right strategy

    • Welcome to part 2: Finding the 'right' strategy

    • Capturing your strategy

    • 'Right' vs interesting

    • The Dark Side

    • Find the unexpected

    • Leaning into a weakness

    • Play the Reframe-game

    • Sharing an unexpected perspective

    • Overcoming controversy

    • Trusting instinct

    • Make it famous

    • Are you on the right track?

    • Task: Seeking your strategy

    • Wrap up: Finding the right strategy
  • 4

    Inspire creativity

    • Welcome to part 3: Inspire Creativity

    • Presenting your research

    • What's in a brief

    • Brilliant briefs

    • Brief briefs

    • Breaking down briefs

    • Brief to broadcast

    • Understanding your expertise

    • Task: build a brief

    • Wrap-up: Inspire Creativity
  • 5

    Strategic partnerships

    • Welcome to part 4: Strategic Partnerships

    • The place for a strategists

    • Selling strategy

    • Selling a risky strategy

    • Building trust

    • The Long Road

    • Knowing when to bend

    • Your career as a strategist: What next?

    • Wrap-up: Active Strategy

Who this course is for

- those pursuing a career as a creative strategist

- anyone needing to brief a creative team

- existing strategists looking for a refresher on core skills

- those looking to boost strategist thinking for their roles in communications, marketing, or advertising

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