“It’s September, and we don’t have a style guide for Holiday. We’re making it up as we go.”

“We’re having challenges getting our brand campaign faithfully executed by our internal creative team and agency partners.”

“We need more events, beyond the retail holidays, to get customers excited about coming into our stores.”

“We need more assets so we can allocate more of our print budget to the digital space.”

“We want our marketing team to work further ahead so we can guarantee a 360-degree experience.”

Whoa. That’s a lot of really big challenges. Any of them sound familiar? Most retailers—indeed most marketers—have experienced these issues. And they all share one thing in common: an urgent need to plan ahead.

Does this conversation sound familiar?

“Hey Bob, have we implemented marketing automation yet?”

“Do you mean Salesforce?”

“Well, Salesforce can be part of it, but I mean the software that automatically sends out our content?”

“What content?”

Lately, we've seen a lot of our clients struggle with similar problems: a demand for more output on a smaller budget (with a smaller team), how to manage and anticipate emerging competition, and how to stand out in a noisy, crowded marketplace. And while our experience solving these problems with proven tactics is invaluable, we're always looking for creative new ways to help our clients be more successful. At the end of the day, that's the only reason agencies are in business!

But you don't have to leave creative problem-solving to your agency partners. If the "old ways" aren't working anymore (and they probably aren't), break the cycle of complacency once and for all with a method that will push you and your team to dig deeper and generate the innovations your customers want.