Twelve posts a month

Twelve posts a month. Four stories a week. One film a quarter.

That line sits three pages behind the strategy in a scope of work, and it decides what a brand publishes.

Nobody reached those numbers by looking at the market. They come from what an agency can produce for the fee and still hold a margin, and from what a marketing manager can put in front of finance as value received. A retainer has to be countable. Almost nothing that matters over a year is countable inside a month. Posts are.

So the count gets signed, and the count becomes the calendar. Twelve slots, twelve ideas, and the shape of the month exists before anyone looks at the business.

Some months there are three things worth saying. The calendar still asks for twelve, so the other nine get written anyway: an international day of something, a question posted to the audience, a line of advice on a coloured background. The customer is not confused by those nine. They learn that the account is not worth stopping for, and they carry that past the three that were real.

In every seat I have sat in, the monthly review asks whether the twelve went out. It rarely asks whether the twelve were worth sending, because the document was never built to answer that.

The scope of work is the strategy that actually got signed. The deck says what a brand intends to be. The scope says what will exist by the end of the month, with a number and a payment date behind it, and where the two disagree the payment date wins.

Which is why I read the scope before the deck now. One tells me what a brand will publish. The other tells me what it hoped to.