After a good first term and a half of thinking long and hard about what my master’s capstone project would be, I had a revelation.

While sitting down and mapping out my areas of focus in school (strategy, economics, DE&I, and design), I realized I was looking at it all wrong. I wanted to draw a line of synthesis through all of those topics and have it make sense.

That didn’t work.

Instead of drawing something that looked like a recycle sign but as a square, I began to center different topics. This lead to my final mapping here on the right, which had everything tie back to strategy.

From there, I was able to draw several smaller lines of synthesis or relation between different topics, such as the symbiotic relationship between capitalism, economics, and strategy in advertising.

I asked myself, “What do I wish I knew when I was getting into advertising?” because that’s exactly who this is written for.

People who understand the lingo a little bit, and want to know what strategy is from someone who isn’t going to give them the academic language runaround to showcase how smart they are.

The business of marketing and communication exists because we are good at communicating. Why is Pharma one of the biggest client categories for ad agencies? Because scientists are not good communicators.

That’s why the goal was to create something that was accessible to a wide audience in terms of tone and length. I wanted to communicate my knowledge in a way that would resonate with those who read it.

What does the outcome look like?

I began to search for what I wanted this project to become. How could I tie in economics, design, and diversity into a project centralized around strategy? I began to spitball ideas and jot random things down in my notebook which was interrupted by a gripe I began to have with academia.

Why is academic writing so damn cryptic?

I’m not dumb. I can read it and understand it fine, but that’s beside the point.

why make something longwinded and complex when there’s a simpler and more efficient way to say it.

Isn’t that what strategy is about anyways?

So I set down a path, albeit an ambitious one, to summarize all of my learnings and experiences in my three years of being in the School of Journalism and Communication and internship about what strategy is.

In a handbook that was less than 50 pages.