Strategy

Strategy is where Skeleton Key turns Research findings into actionable marketing direction. Four strategists run sequentially, each building on the output before it. The full Strategy run takes about 7-8 minutes, and the Strategy Summary another 1-2 minutes after it.

1. Goals Strategist: translates the campaign objective into one Objective and two or three numeric Key Results, each with the metrics that drive it.
2. Audience Strategist: defines three prioritized buyer personas tied to those Key Results.
3. Communication Strategist: builds a messaging architecture around three named pillars.
4. Media Strategist: sets channel rationale, allocation principles, and flighting structure.

After all four complete, a Strategy Summary synthesizes the outputs into a one-page executive brief.

What it produces

Each strategist's output appears on its own tab on the Strategy page and opens with an Executive Read, a short summary of that strategist's main calls. After all four complete, a Strategy Summary becomes available as a separate synthesis output.

The four strategist outputs and the summary all carry citations and export to PDF, Word, and Markdown. See the Strategy Summary page for what's inside the synthesis document.

How it fits in the workflow

Strategy is always campaign-scoped. It requires a completed Brand Profile, a Campaign brief, and a completed Research run: either one scoped to the same campaign or a brand-level run. You choose the source when you start Strategy.

The strategists read the Research reports, and when a report leaves out a figure, period, or source, they can look up the search findings stored behind the Category, Competitor, Consumer, and Culture reports. A fact taken from a Research report is cited to the source that report gives, or to the report itself when it gives none.

The full dependency order is: Brand Profile → Campaign → Research → Strategy → Media Plan. Each phase becomes available once the previous one is complete. The product enforces this automatically.

Refining and version history

Each Strategy run is preserved as version history and accessible via the History icon on the Strategy page. You can restore any prior version with one click, which promotes it to the current run.

When you Refine a strategist, the platform determines which downstream strategists also need to re-run based on what changed. Refining Goals triggers a full Strategy re-run, since the other three depend on it. Refining Audience may pull Communication and Media back through, and refining Communication may pull Media. The Strategy Summary does not regenerate automatically after a refine. Click Start on the Synthesized Summary strip to produce a new summary against the refined version. The full model is in the Refine workflow guide.

You can attach documents to any Strategy run. PDFs, Word files, Markdown, CSVs, and Excel sheets uploaded on the Documents page can be selected at run time, and the strategists treat them as high-priority context alongside web research. One run reads about 600,000 characters of document text in total. If a file is trimmed, the run page says how much of it was read. Standing rules on the Guidelines page take precedence over attached documents when they conflict. See Documents for the details.

If you've run a Marketing Mix Model, its results are saved as a brand document too. Attach it the same way, and the Goals and Media Strategists ground their target ranges and channel mix in the returns the model measured, rather than benchmarks alone.

If you're new to Skeleton Key, the Quickstart walks through the end-to-end flow. Otherwise, the per-strategist pages and the Refine workflow are linked below.