Yesterday, Roger and Guest Ranter & copywriter Bob Levy teamed up to argue in The Agitator that sound strategy was more important to fundraising success than the "silver bullet" package. Tough to disagree with that.

This — mind you — coming from two creative whizzes who have written more than their fair share of long-lived control packages!

Ironically, they wrote just as I was thinking how much more important strong creative might be these days.

As would-be donors retrench during tough economic times, I’m presuming they ignore a much greater percentage than normal of the marketing, including fundraising, messages sent their way. And I mean "ignore" in the sense of never even bothering to open the envelope or the email.

Certainly familiarity with the message sender gives the strongest boost to the incoming letter or email. But after that, wouldn’t you think that standout creative has a huge impact? And now I’m talking specifically about two things — the carrier in direct mail and, to some degree, the subject line in email fundraising. Mess up either of those introductions, or simply approach the donor with something boring and "same old," and I submit you’re dead in the water … your brilliant strategy and compelling offer rendered irrelevant.

Were I seeking fundraising help these days, I’d want to see evidence of nothing less than inspired creative. Nothing less will get noticed. And I’d like to think I was able to discern whether that copy indeed reflected a smart underlying strategy. Because the two must go hand in glove.

One sees plenty of inspired creative in the commercial world — often of the humorous variety — that nevertheless leaves you asking … "What in god’s name was that all about?! What’s the strategy behind that?"

I guess I would put both inspired creative and smart strategy in the same category at the end of the day — both are necessary, but neither alone is sufficient.

But that said, personally, I believe breakthrough creative is harder to come by than smart direct marketing strategy. My reason? Given the same hard data, each of  ten "strategists" should come to about the same conclusion and recommendations. But give the same creative brief to ten copywriters, you’re lucky if one nails it.

Where do you come down?

Tom