Dear frazzled marketer: are you all TAC and no SOS?
It’s 9.07 on Monday morning. You’ve barely opened your laptop and already:
Sales needs a brochure for Thursday.
The CEO has spotted a competitor’s video and wants one “just like it”.
Someone has asked you to post about an event you didn’t know was happening.
Your carefully planned work is waiting patiently at the bottom of your to-do list.
You know you should be thinking about the bigger picture. But first, apparently, you need to find a photo of the team holding a giant cheque.
If this sounds familiar, you may be all TAC and no SOS. And I don’t mean that as a criticism. I mean that your role may have become an emergency response service for everyone else’s marketing ideas.
Welcome to the TAC trap
SOSTAC® is a planning framework built around six stages:
Situation: Where are we now?Objectives: Where do we want to get to?Strategy: How will we get there?Tactics: What will we do?Action: Who will do it, and when?Control: How will we know if it worked?
The trouble is that many marketers are handed the last three stages and expected to make them work without the first three.
You’re asked to choose tactics, organise action and report results. Yet nobody has agreed which customers matter most, what marketing is expected to achieve or which opportunities the business will prioritise.
So you deliver. Of course you do. You’re good at your job.
But being good at getting things done can make it even harder to escape the cycle. The more reliably you say yes, the more “quick requests” arrive.
Some familiar signs
You might be stuck in TAC mode if:
Your campaign calendar is full, but the business priorities keep changing.
You’re asked to “make something go viral” without being told who needs to see it.
Your reports show plenty of activity, but nobody has agreed what success looks like.
Every department has a marketing priority, and all of them are urgent.
You spend so much time delivering the plan that you never get time to review it.
It’s exhausting. It can also leave you defending results from activity you had very little say in choosing.
Your SOS is a request for clarity
You don’t necessarily need a week away from your inbox and a 60-page strategy document. You need enough space with the right people to answer three questions.
Situation: Where are we now? What do the sales figures, customer conversations and recent campaigns tell you? Where is demand coming from? What is taking up time without producing much value?
Objectives: Where do we want to get to? What does the business actually need marketing to contribute this year? More qualified enquiries? Growth in a particular sector? Better retention of existing customers?
Strategy: How will we get there? Which audiences will you focus on? What do they need to hear? Which opportunities will get your limited time and budget?
Once those decisions are made, the requests become easier to handle. You can say, “Yes, that supports our priority,” or “It’s an interesting idea, but what should we pause to make room for it?”
Try this the next time a “quick job” lands
Before opening Canva, booking a stand or writing the post, ask:
“What do we want this to achieve, and who are we trying to reach?”
You might also ask:
“If this is the priority, which piece of planned work should move?”
These aren’t awkward questions. They’re part of doing your job well. They help colleagues see that your time is finite and that marketing works best when its activities have a purpose.
You deserve more than a never-ending task list
Tactics matter. Delivery matters. Measurement matters. But marketers also need the context and authority to make good decisions about all three.
If you’re feeling frazzled, the answer may not be a better to-do list. It may be a conversation about the business’s Situation, Objectives and Strategy.
Get your SOS in place, and your TAC has a fighting chance.
At LMC Associates, I help marketers and leadership teams get clear on their priorities and turn them into practical plans. Our SOSTAC® training also gives marketers a framework they can use to lead those conversations with confidence.
If you’re ready to get out of reactive mode, let’s talk.
