Putting “strategy” after something doesn’t make it strategic.

There’s a word that gets thrown around music and sport with reckless abandon. Strategy.

Digital strategy
Content strategy
TikTok strategy
Fan engagement strategy
Membership strategy
CRM strategy
Matchday strategy
Catalogue strategy
Gen Z strategy

Lovely. Very official sounding.

The problem is that half the time, what’s being described isn’t strategy at all. It’s just tactics. And I know this may come as a terrible shock to some people in marketing meetings, but putting the word “strategy” after something doesn’t automatically make it strategic.

STRATEGY IS NOT A TO-DO LIST

One of the great confusions of the modern age, up there with why every hotel shower requires the problem-solving skills of a bomb disposal expert, is the difference between strategy and tactics.

Strategy is the big picture. It answers:

Where are we going?
Why should anyone care?
What role do we play in people’s lives?
What emotional need do we fulfil?
What are we building over time?

Whereas Tactics are how you get there.

The posts. The partnerships. The ticket offers. The content drops. The influencer bits. The emails. The media spend. The app notifications. The QR code that someone insists is essential despite nobody knowing why.

Tactics matter, of course they do, but tactics without strategy are just directionless activity. And activity is not progress.

MUSIC LOVES A TACTIC DRESSED AS A STRATEGY

The music business is particularly fond of this, take:

“Let’s make it go viral.” not a strategy
“We need a TikTok moment.” also not a strategy
“We’re targeting Gen Z.”…GOOD GRIEF!

The last one’s not only not a strategy; it’s marketing malpractice in a nice font. If someone presents an age bracket as a growth plan, run a mile.

A proper artist strategy starts somewhere much deeper.

What does this artist mean?
What emotional territory do they occupy?
What world are they building?
What truth(s) are fans responding to?

What role does the artist play in the fan’s identity, friendships, taste, memory, rebellion, sadness, joy or weird little private universe?

SPORT, LIKE MUSIC, IS NOT MERELY CONSUMED. IT IS LIVED

That’s where strategy starts, not with a platform, or a format. Not with “we should get some creators involved.” Those may all become useful tactics later, but if you start there, you’re not just choosing the wallpaper before building the house, you’re skipping the foundations and wondering why the whole thing falls over three months later.

SPORT IS DOING IT TOO

Sport, before it starts looking smug in the corner, is just as guilty. A football club launches a fan app and calls it strategy. A cricket organisation runs a family ticket offer and calls it audience growth. All potentially useful, but none automatically strategic. Because the real questions are harder.

For football: what does the club mean to people beyond the 90 minutes? How does it maintain inherited loyalty in a world where younger fans have infinite choice?
For rugby: what is the club’s emotional contract with its community? How do you bring in new audiences without flattening the culture that made the club matter?
For cricket: what are people actually connecting with? Family ritual? Summer? Nostalgia? County loyalty? National pride? Or just a highly elaborate excuse to sit outside with a drink?

Ok, these questions are simplistic, and we’d be looking for something deeper but they highlight the point that sport, like music, is not merely consumed. It is lived. And if you don’t understand how it is lived, you don’t have a strategy. You have fixtures, content and hope.

THE DANGER OF CALLING EVERYTHING STRATEGY

The danger here is not semantic, because the real danger is that when everything gets called strategy, nothing is actually strategic. The organisation starts confusing motion with direction. Everyone feels busy. Everyone looks busy. But nobody has answered the most important question:

Why should this audience care more tomorrow than they do today?

That’s the question for an artist, a club, a sport, a catalogue, a brand partnership and a fan community. If your plan does not address why, it is probably not a strategy.

STRATEGY STARTS WITH UNDERSTANDING

This is where most organisations go wrong. They start with what they want to do - we need younger fans; sell more tickets; grow streams; something on TikTok because John from commercial keeps banging on about it

Fine. But strategy doesn’t start with what you want from the audience. Strategy starts with understanding what the audience needs, feels, believes, values and responds to. That means understanding the why beneath the behaviour, and it's the why that shapes positioning, messaging, product, partnerships, live, community and content.

STRATEGY IS A FILTER

A strategy is not just a plan, it’s a filter, telling you what fits and what doesn’t. It stops you chasing every shiny thing, applying a cookie-cutter approach, or copying what everyone else is doing. It helps you decide:

Whether a brand partnership makes sense
Whether a VIP offer deepens the relationship or just rinses it
Whether a content idea expresses the world of the artist, club or sport, or just feeds the algorithm another beige little biscuit
Whether a campaign is building something long-term or simply making temporary noise

Without that filter, everything becomes possible and when everything is possible, most of it becomes pointless.

FINAL THOUGHT

The next phase of growth in music and sport will not be won by the organisations with the longest content calendars, the busiest marketing teams, or the most colourful dashboards. It will be won by those who understand what they mean to people.

Now that sounds simple. It is not. Because it requires the discipline to step back before rushing in, and understanding before activating.

Tactics are necessary, but tactics are not strategy. Strategy is knowing why anyone should care, what you are building, and how each action deepens the relationship over time. Everything else is just stuff. And there’s already far too much stuff.