Interview Summary

This was an interview with Paul "PR" Smith, the creator of the SOSTAC marketing planning model. Smith explained how he developed the framework by analysing the structures of numerous marketing plans to create a more logical, memorable process. He then walked through each of the six components of the SOSTAC acronym: Situation Analysis, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action, and Control. He emphasised the importance of starting with a thorough analysis before setting objectives, distinguished between a selfless "mission" and a selfish "vision." He highlighted the critical role of excellent execution in the "Action" phase. Finally, Smith announced the recent launch of a new SOSTAC-certified planner program available through a dedicated portal.

Interviewee Background

The interviewee was Paul "PR" Smith, the creator of the SOSTAC model and the author of many popular marketing books, including "The Softstack Guide to Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan." He revealed that he developed the SOSTAC framework after earning his MBA from Cass Business School in London, where he systematically collected and analysed the structures of marketing plans to find a more logical and effective model.

 

Key Points

  • The SOSTAC model was developed to provide a simple, memorable, and logical structure for the complex process of marketing planning.
  • The process must begin with a Situation Analysis ("Where are we now?") because a deep understanding of the current market, competitors, and internal capabilities makes all subsequent decisions easier and more effective.
  • Objectives ("Where are you going?") should be informed by the initial analysis. Smith differentiated between a company's "mission" (a selfless goal of how it helps the world) and its "vision" (a more selfish goal, like becoming number one in the market).
  • Strategy ("How do you get there?") is the high-level approach, while Tactics are the specific tools (e.g., advertising, PR, email) used to execute that strategy.
  • The Action stage is about ensuring excellent execution. Smith argued that an organization's ability to execute a plan flawlessly can be a significant competitive advantage.
  • The Control stage links directly back to the Objectives, involving the measurement of the KPIs and metrics established in that earlier phase.
  • A new SOSTAC certified planner program was recently launched, offering two levels of certification for marketing professionals.

 

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Kiran Kapur, host (00:00):
We start with a model which was voted as one of the top three business models worldwide by the Chartered Institute of Marketing members, and that's the SOSTAC model for marketing planning. SOSTAC is an acronym and it's very popular because it's an incredibly simple way of looking at something that's quite a complex idea that I need to sit down and plan out where I'm going to go with my marketing. SOSTAC allows me to break that down into six separate segments and help me through that process. So SOSTAC stands for - there's S-O-S-T-A-C, and that's situation analysis, objectives, strategy, tactics, action, and controls SOSTAC. And I'm delighted to be joined by Paul Smith, who is known as PR Smith, who is the author of many popular marketing books, including the SOSTAC Guide to Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan. Paul, welcome to the show. Could we start with how you came up with the idea for Sostack?

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (00:57):
When I did my MBA many moons ago in Cass Business School in London, I was kind of troubled by looking at marketing plans that to me were just long lists, not quite a meandering river of discontent, but really a long list that you could not possibly remember all the components. So I asked all my colleagues that graduated with me to keep in touch and to send me copies of their marketing plans when they developed them - without the body, just the contents pages is all I wanted. So I collected those for years and rigorously collected others and looked at them and tried to make sense of them and see what were the common pieces and was there more logical structure. And went through various iterations and eventually came up with SOSTAC and the lights went on. Everywhere I went, people went, "Wow, that's it. Got it!"

(01:44):
So I knew it was a useful acronym thereafter.

Kiran Kapur, host (01:48):
I think what people love about SOSTAC is it's an easy acronym to remember, but it also, it does very much take you through step by step through the plan.

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (01:57):
Yeah. The situation analysis would cover basic stuff like your customer analysis, your competitor analysis, your market analysis, including what sort of trends are out there, particularly the trends. It would include... the situation analysis would include your analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. That would include your performance, what were last year's results like, what are you particularly good at, what are you not so good at, where the gaps for improvement? It would also include the trends in the marketplace, which takes you into the opportunities and threats. So you can see SWAT is in there. And that would give you the bones. But the more you do in the situation analysis, the easier the subsequent decisions are. In fact, those decisions are almost made for you because the information will be giving you direction for the best decisions when you get into the objectives and strategy and tactics.

Kiran Kapur, host (02:52):
And I think you sometimes call the situation analysis the 'where are we now?' It's the audit, it's the beginning bit.

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (02:57):
Yes.

Kiran Kapur, host (02:58):
Okay. So having done my situation analysis, I then move on to the O which is objectives. But I think a lot of organisations start with the objectives and then analyse their situation, but you're very clearly saying the other way around.

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (03:10):
Yeah. Well, it is iterative. And particularly if you're doing your first plan ever, people will grapple with that a little bit and they'll say, "Well, hang on, let's do the objectives first." But I think it's a little crazy to decide what your objectives are, what you want to achieve without considering what resources you need. Have you got those resources? What's your position in the marketplace? What's competition like? To put out objectives out of the air without considering those sorts of things, then what's the size of the customer base, for example. So you have to have the analysis in place to make sensible objectives and it gets easier every year. So typically objectives would start with the mission and the vision, mission being your raise on death, how your business or your product, whichever it is you're planning for, how it is going to make the world a better place.

(03:58):
So your mission should be socially responsible, give direction and boost morale really. Whereas the vision is a much more selfish affair. The vision statement is more about why you're great, what headline you would like to see written about your business, five years time in the front page of the financial times. That would be a vision, to be number one in the marketplace, to be the best for this, for that. So that's about a bit more selfish objectives, if you like, compared to mission statements. And then below that you've got the typical KPIs. You got the commercial return on investment, sales, market share, and all the way down to levels of inquiries through to website visitors, shop visitors, right down to ... Well, they're the physical ones. They're what I call the marketing objectives, the physical activities. And then you've got the marcomms objectives, which are mental activities, which are talking about levels of awareness, preference, propensity to buy, that sort of thing.

(04:55):
So those are your objectives.

Kiran Kapur, host (04:56):
Okay. I wanted to go back on your mission and vision, because that's a very interesting way of looking at it. So the vision is 'I want to be the number one in the world'. I think 'I want to be the biggest in my marketplace'. I think it's quite a standard one. But your mission, you were very clear that the mission had to be much more socially responsible.

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (05:12):
Yeah, it's different. Whereas the vision is selfvision and it's product orientated and it's about you, your products, how great you are. The mission statement is more selfless and it's about how you're helping the world, how your products are helping the world. So if you're a pharma company and maybe you're doing a plan for headache pills, your mission statement is something like ridding the world of headaches or stopping young mothers, young pregnant mothers having migraines or stopping students under pressure from having headaches before exams. You're helping the world to be a better place. Google's mission statement, words to the effect, making sense out of the world's data, making data useful for people. That type of thing, I've reworded it there, but essentially it's not about being the biggest search engine in the world. It's about helping people use data as useful information.

Kiran Kapur, host (06:05):
Okay. So I've spent a long time working out where I am and then sort of starting to look at what my objectives are. So my next stage is to get into the next S which is the strategy and that's where I want to be. Is that part of the objective and strategy setting?

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (06:21):
How are you going to get there?

Kiran Kapur, host (06:22):
How am I going to get there?

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (06:23):
So situation analysis is 'where are you now?' Objectives are 'where are you going?' and strategy is 'how do you get there?'

Kiran Kapur, host (06:29):
OK. So what sort of strategies might I be looking at?

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (06:32):
Well, you can go from the classics of the Ansoffs through to your BCGs and your Boston Consulting Group's sort of approach to strategy. You can go to your military strategies and all of those things.

Kiran Kapur, host (06:47):
Now we're getting down to the level of tactics and this is actually 'how you're going to do it?'. So we're now into the sort of nitty gritty side of tactics.

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (06:57):
Yeah. So now you're into the selection of which tactical tools are best for the objectives that you've set and the strategy that you've set. So typically, I don't know, if you're trying to work on building awareness rapidly, advertising, sponsorship, PR are very good tools to generate awareness quickly. If you've got high levels of awareness and you want to move people into action stages or buying stages or trial stages, it may well be some direct, highly targeted pay per click might do, or some emails or some direct sales efforts and so on. So you can chop up 10 communication and tactical communications tools. And in fact, I've done a matrix, which is on my website, prsmith.org. There's a matrix there, which also appears in a couple of books, which analyses the 10 communications tools, which ones are best at delivering which bits of the buying stages.

(07:55):
And I've analysed it across nine different criteria. So if you really want to get into that discussion as to which tools are best, which tactical tools are best for what you're trying to achieve. I know I've oversimplified the stages there, but if you want to drill down into that, that tactical matrix is work in progress actually, but people might enjoy kind of using it as a document to discuss-

Kiran Kapur, host (08:16):
Okay. Now, when I teach this, one of the questions I always have in class is, what's the difference between the tactics and the actions, the T and the A of SOSTAC? So where do you see the distinction line? Wht's an action and what's a tactic?

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (08:31):
Well, tactics are like listing ... Well, actually tactics can be anything like your decisions you're making about your marketing mix, for example, the major decisions you're making about your marketing mix, which are driven by the strategy. The tactics can also be decisions you make about your communications mix, so which tools, which tactical tools you're going to choose. And you could lay those out in the Gantt chart, for example, over what period of time, which elements would kick in, and much low cost and so on. So that's kind of the tactical element. When you get down to the action, you're looking to say, well, what sort of actions should the plan be helping people to take to ensure that the thing gets executed properly and professionally? And the problem is a lot of major companies are missing out on this point in so far as how many websites have you been on that haven't worked correctly, that have had a dead end or some confusing instruction that didn't work or that you abandoned the shopping cart?

(09:31):
It happens a lot. And the reason is that the plan has not been executed with excellence. So the action section is all about how do you ensure this plan is going to be executed with excellence? And this is such an important area and it's often ignored because there's a bit detailed, some would say that a book was written by Larry Bossidy. Larry Bossidy took over from, remember the GE guy who's the original- Jack Welch. So Larry Bossidy took over from Jack Welch and he wrote a book about execution and essentially he said that it was the difference between - it created a competitive advantage. If you had an organisation that could execute better than another organisation, you could find competitive advantage in that space. Now a lot of people think that's ridiculous because it's so dull and boring, the action stage, but it's very true.

(10:22):
So how do you ensure your team is not going to mess up and not deliver your great plan brilliantly? And you want nothing less than that. You want it delivered with enthusiasm and motivation and excitement and precision. So how do you ensure that? So this section of the plan is all about excellence and execution. And probably these way of summarising that would be internal marketing.

Kiran Kapur, host (10:46):
Yeah. Okay. So we've sort of gone through, and I'm going to cut the control part of SOSTAC short, not because it's not very important, but because we've covered the metrics and the control side extensively on the show in the past.

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (10:58):
Yeah. And just to link in there, the control section links into the objectives. So whatever objectives you've listed, that's what you're going to be measuring.

Kiran Kapur, host (11:05):
Okay. So I noticed that you have SOSTAC certified planners. What are they?

Paul Smith, creator of SOSTAC framework (11:10):
Yeah, we've just piloted, in fact, just finished yesterday, the first pilot group through the Sustack certified planner. So we've got a SOSTAC portal now, which is www.sostac.org and it's up and running now and it offers booklets and guidelines towards using SOSTAC. So level one is associate level and level two is a Sustack certified planner and to take the SOSTAC certified planner, you need to have five years experience in business. If you haven't, you can do the associate level first and then move on. And basically you download the manuals and then you can go back and there's a window of three days every quarter when the exam is open, the online multiple choice is open and people go in there and they log in and take the exam and they get an instant answer whether they've passed or failed and they get their certificate literally instantaneously, which is kind of nice to get a quick reaction to their efforts.

(12:09):
So yeah, we've just launched it and we've also got sort of case studies in there. We've got, we're building Sustack global members in there and this is where senior successful people tell their story, but we categorise it according to SOSTAC, the elements of SOSTAC, which is quite an interesting exercise. We're just building those in there right now.