How do you balance strategic (annual) messaging/campaign theme with the need to be responsive to the market?

You should have different types of messaging:

- Overarching brand message
- Product messaging
- Campaign/event/launch messaging

This^^ allows you to adapt to market and customer changes without scrambling or pivoting so often that your audience can't remember what you do.

Too many teams try to create a single message house, meant to cover all use cases. But having messages tailored for the audience, offering, and time horizon helps you strike this balance.

I'd say the overarching brand message and product message can go through the annual refresh and alignment process, while the campaign/event/launch messaging goes through a quarterly or half refresh, based on the timing of the relevant event. If there's a market-moving change, then you can revisit the brand or product messaging before the annual refresh.