Marketing - Corporate Strategy = Chaos

It is not possible to have an effective marketing/communications strategy without a corporate or institutional strategy. You can have effective marketing tactics, but not strategy. The whole point is that your marketing and communications efforts help drive attainment of your corporate goals and objectives.

There is a great article in the April edition of the Harvard Business Review titled Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

Two import ideas in this article:
1) You need a brief, understandable strategy statement that everyone in the company can understand

2) A good strategy requires trade-offs. If you focus on institutional clients, you may have to give up consumers. If you focus on increasing profit margins, you may need to sacrfice sales.

Too often, corporations and institutions do not have clear, consice strategies that help guide decsion making. Without this clarity, how can a marketer be successful? It is possible, but I would argue it is likely tactical and not sustainable.