Getting Paid

Eric B. and Rakim were insistent on being 'paid in full'

  

Advertising is a weird business.

It is extraordinarily difficult to value what ad agencies do.

One campaign may help create a $40 billion brand. Another may disappear without a trace.

Worst of all, successful work may continue to be successful, long after the ad agency has stopped being paid. For example, I still buy a certain chocolate bar based on an ad I saw for it over 20 years ago. The campaign has long since changed (I don't like the new work) so the original ad agency is still succeeding, but not getting any benefit for it.

So, what to do?

Most ad agencies simply charge fees for their time, with perhaps a small bonus or at-risk element that nods to 'payment by results'. 

We all know this model is unsatisfactory, yet very few alternatives have been proposed.

One PR agency offered to charge clients only if it achieved coverage for them. (Note, I can't find any trace of that company's website, so I'm not too sure how it worked out for them...)

An agency in Holland offered clients a pay what you want model.

And last week, Coca Cola announced a scheme to pay agencies a bigger bonus for non-traditional campaigns than for regular work, which is at least innovative.

At the heart of the problem is the age-old conundrum about what advertising agencies actually are. Are we providers of professional services - like lawyers and accountants - in which case a fee structure would be appropriate. Or are we producers of creative works - like songwriters or novelists - in which case a royalty makes more sense.

The truth is we're neither, and a bit of both.

Like I said, weird business.
 

The Confidence Thing

If you want to be good at pinball, it's not enough to be skillful with the flippers. You have to shove the machine a little bit. Not too much, or it'll 'tilt'. But a little bit.

Similarly, to be successful in a field as competitive as advertising it's not enough to be good at writing ads. There are all kinds of little things you need to do, to give yourself an advantage.

And perhaps the most important of them is to display confidence.

N.B. not too much, because over-confidence translates into arrogance, and that's a negative.

But a healthy dose of confidence... makes a difference.

What a lot of creatives don't realise is how thin the line is between a creative director saying "yes" and saying "go again." Even the most experienced creative director is not always 100% sure whether an idea is good or not, and a team that throws in a little comment at just the right time, like "we think this could be really funny" or "no one's ever really done anything like this before" can help get your work over that line.

And the same goes double for clients. Most clients have an excellent understanding of the kind of work that will be right for their brand. But they're not judging creative work every single day, like creative directors are. So when they look at work, they're not just looking at whether it's right, they're looking at whether the person who is presenting it, believes in it.

Everyone is human, and everyone is influenced by the attitudes of others.

Clients hire agencies because we're experts at making ads. And like anyone hiring an expert, they want to feel that the expert is confident they know what they're doing.

Always have a recommendation. Always say why you think it's right. And always present with belief.

Because if you don't believe in your work, who else will?

The Whole Notion Of 'Target Market' Is Basically Just A Sham

Bob Hoffman, AKA The Ad Contrarian, is aghast that agencies never target older people. He points out that Americans over the age of 50 buy 62% of all new cars and 55% of consumer package goods. And yet, they are the target for only 5% of US advertising.

On the other hand, you could argue we should actually be targeting younger than we do. A recent report (can't find link) showed that boys already know which brand of car they will go on to buy... at age twelve.

John Hegarty's view on the same debate is that we shouldn't give a stuff about who we target. In his book Hegarty On Advertising he argues (and I'm paraphrasing a little) that people buy brands that are famous, therefore we should target as widely as possible.

I don't know who is right, but I do know that the current orthodoxy is dreadful. If a brand is targeting housewives, you 'have' to show housewives in the ad. If a brand is targeting businessmen, you show businessmen.

The new HBO campaign (above) proves this is bollocks. HBO Go is for anyone who wants to watch HBO on a laptop, tablet, or mobile. Which is basically anyone. And yet the campaign superficially looks like it's solely targeting teenagers. Why? Because teenagers who don't want to watch Game Of Thrones with their parents is a strong demonstration of the product benefit.

And this surely has to be the answer. The goal here is to sell the product, and if the best way to do that doesn't involve showing the target market in the ad, then that's the way to go. 

Smart clients know this. I presented an FMCG script a couple of years ago which featured two housewives, and the client suggested that this particular concept would work better with two men rather than two women. They were right.

So if anyone ever tells you that you 'have' to feature the target market in your ad, remind them that the target market for John West is not bears or fishermen, the target market for 3 is not ponies or singing cats, and the target market for PG Tips was not chimps.  

Is PR The New Scam?

Answer: no, it's not.

Consider two new campaigns that were released last week.
 
On the left, a print/outdoor piece for highlighter pens(!) With apologies to those involved... this feels terribly old-fashioned to me.

But the MJ Bale work, on the right, which put a paywave chip in the arm of a suit, is a totally different beast.

Yes, it was probably agency-initiated, and the principal motivation was probably to win awards, but the crucial difference is that it will also do a great job for the client. In fact it already has - that suit got shedloads of PR coverage.

Like World's Most Powerful Arm, Mobile Medic, Fundawear, FlavorPrint, and Honey Maid, it's a perfect example of the modern, low-budget, tech-based PR piece. 

For whatever reason, the news outlets have gone crazy for tech stories - they feature a tech story every single day. Therefore, if you come up with a cool tech idea, it will be featured in the news media, reach millions of people, and get genuine results for the client... as well as winning awards.

Result - we don't need to do scam any more, people.

An interesting side-aspect of this development is it means that we're all in PR now, to some extent. I don't mind, because I think PR is very fun. And fortunately, ad agencies seem to be better at PR than the PR agencies are...

UPDATE - A couple of friends who work in PR have pointed out to me that many of the case studies I listed – including the MJ Bale campaign - were not created solely by ad agencies, but by ad agencies working in collaboration with PR agencies. Which kinda invalidates my point about ad agencies being better at PR than PR agencies. We're better together! Let's do this.

3 Things TV Can Learn From Social Media

 
Bob Hoffman's talk at Advertising Week Europe has generated a super-fun controversy.

A commenter on Campaign Brief opines: "So glad this is out there. Sick of the so called 'social specialists' in the agency talking shit the entire time."

Whereas my old colleague Carl Moggridge describes Bob (via Twitter) as "The world's most jaded and deluded adman," and points out that Bob's speech, which largely praises TV and derides online, was sponsored by the UK's largest free-to-air TV broadcaster.

The comments I've seen on the various ad blogs seem mostly to be on Bob's side, in a ratio of about 5 to 1.

And yet a lot of those commenters are angry.

Yes, there's a lot of bullshit spoken about social. And I applaud Bob for calling it out. But my question is - rather than being angry about the rampant rise of the online world, would it not be more interesting to consider what the old world can learn from the new?

So here goes, with 3 things TV can learn from social media. 

1) Social media campaigns are short

When a cancer charity asks people to post a 'no make-up selfie', it asks them to do it once. Not six times. And the whole campaign is around for about a week, not six weeks. And yet media buyers insist that people need to see a TV ad multiple times. And that a TV campaign must last for weeks. Is that really necessary? If it's impactful enough, do people need to see it multiple times? Would it not be better to invest in different executions, rather than hitting people over the head with the same one, again and again?

2) Social media campaigns get people to do something

It's well-known that getting people to do something makes them more likely to buy. That's why vacuum cleaner salespeople are so keen for you to have a go yourself. And yet 95% of TV ads are nothing but one-way messages. Please note I'm not saying that every ad needs to urge people to enter a competition, or go to a website. It just doesn't need to be a closed loop. It could ask questions, or make people think. Rather than just broadcasting at them.

3) Social media campaigns are light-hearted

Marketers have quickly worked out that to get engagement online, you have to do something funny, interesting, or quirky. Because that's what people respond to. And yet when it comes to TV, that learning seems to go out of the window. There's a belief that it's okay to broadcast ads which are wall-to-wall product benefit, testimonials, or rational sales messages. It's not. Just because you're paying to send someone a message, doesn't mean they'll respond well to it.

Despite Bob's assault on it, the internet is not going away. But nor is TV. So wouldn't it be great if the two sides could play nicely, and see what they can learn from each other?

Has The Next Step In The Evolution Of Our Industry Begun?

 
The accepted wisdom is that you need to observe at least three examples of a phenomenon to start calling it a trend.

But what the hell, I'm calling it on two.

First, a quick refresher on what's wrong with our industry:

Clients now have separate agencies for social, search, analytics, CRM, media, digital, and above-the-line creative. The Agencies are frustrated because, with only a small piece of the pie each, we're not making enough money. And the Clients are frustrated because they're not getting joined-up thinking.

The change I see happening - and feel free to call me Captain Obvious - is that things need to come together. And you know what? I think it's started.

The first example, and it's a hugely significant one, is that British Airways have just awarded their entire account - ATL, digital, social, CRM - to BBH.

I predict this will be a massive success for both parties.

BA will reap the benefits of fully-integrated thinking. (They will no doubt achieve a cost saving too, having dispensed with multiple agencies).

And BBH benefits from economies of scale. What could potentially have been several separate businesses are now one business... all sharing the same HR, finance team, reception, security guards, CEO, catering, the people that come in to water the plants, parties, and office rent.

Example two: Cummins & Partners in Melbourne.
 
This shop does everything, including - crucially - media.

To quote from their website: "We want all parts of the communications process working as one. Collaborating. No silos, no divisions, no off-shoots, no multiple business cards, no holding companies holding disparate entities together. We’re a media company that’s creative. A creative agency that produces content."

 

And their work's pretty good. Simple, entertaining ideas like this one for Woodstock Bourbon, and of course, I Bought A Jeep. If you don't like that campaign, just remember that civilians have uploaded multiple parodies of it onto YouTube. It has cut through. This is an agency that knows what it's doing, and is doing it well. And if you don't agree with that verdict... ask yourself why they were named AdNews agency of the year.

So in short, the future is going to look a lot like the past. Like some kind of malignant amoeba, advertising divided itself into multiple cells, but they're now all coming back together. Which has to be a good thing, right?

Would We Like Briefs More If They Were Upside Down?

Briefs are primarily written by Planners - aided and abetted by the Client and Account Handlers.

By definition, they only hand over the brief when they're happy with it.

And yet the receivers of the brief - the Creatives - rarely seem happy with it. In fact they're notoriously silent and tense in the briefing. Could that be because the briefing document, in the eyes of the Creatives, is actually upside down?

This was the conclusion my friend Dustin reached, when he went to a talk about innovation funding. (Incidentally you should be reading Dustin's blog, it's really very good.) 

One of the speakers put up a slide, illustrating the different approach of how academics usually digest information, compared to how investors absorb it.

And Dustin's observation was that there's a strong parallel between how Creatives absorb information, and the other departments.

When Creatives hear about a brief, the first thing we want to know is the proposition. And when we hear about an ad, the first thing we want to know is the idea.

Yet most (but not all) Planners, Account Handlers, and Clients are the other way around. They first want to hear the background to a brief - the pieces of evidence that lead up to a proposition. And when it comes to ideas, they want to be 'taken on the journey' - start with the thinking that went into it, and end with the idea.

A clue to this conundrum may lie in an aspect of Myers-Briggs.

For anyone who doesn't know, Myers-Briggs is a method of defining personality, by assigning each individual a four-letter 'character type', e.g. ISFP, or ENTJ. Each letter reflects where the person  sits along one of four different axes, for example either 'E' for Extrovert or 'I' for Introverted.

The distinction that's relevant here is between 'S' - Sensing, and 'N' - Intuitive. (I think they picked 'N' for intuitive because 'I' was already taken for Introverted).

'Sensing' people gather evidence before reaching a conclusion. Whereas Intuitive people come up with an answer first, and then look for evidence to back it up.

When I did the Myers-Briggs, as part of some Creative Director training course a few years ago, the results were quite interesting. Some of the CD's were Extrovert, some Introvert. Some were 'T' (Thinking) and some were 'F' (Feeling). But every single one of us was 'N' (Intuitive).

The tester wasn't surprised at all. She mentioned that she had now run the Myers-Briggs on 500 Creatives, and 499 of them were Intuitive rather than Sensing.

The conclusion for Creatives is that we are probably best served by presenting our ideas in what feels (to us) like the wrong way round. 

And here's a thought for people writing briefs:  Your brief is a document intended for an end user. To the end user, it looks like it's upside down.

Any chance of flipping it over?

Does It Make Any Sense To Feel Loyalty Towards A Corporation?

It's obvious why companies want to have loyal employees.

Loyal employees are less likely to leave, more likely to behave the way the company wants them to, and may possibly work for lower pay.

But does it make sense for a person to feel loyalty towards a corporation?

Is a corporation not an entity that exists purely to facilitate its own survival, while generating profits for shareholders? To a corporation, isn't a person nothing more than an income-producing asset, to be discarded once it has outlived its usefulness?

Doesn't loyalty mean something irrational, something that goes beyond mere 'fair exchange'... which implies that the loyal employee is giving more to the company than they are getting back?
 
Are corporations even perhaps laughing behind their backs at our loyalty, or simply bemused by it?

Author Jon Ronson profiled the notorious American businessman Al Dunlap.

At a plant in Mobile, Alabama, Mr Dunlap asked a man how long he'd worked there.

"Thirty years!" the man proudly replied.

"Why would you want to stay with a company for thirty years?" Dunlap said, looking genuinely perplexed.

He then fired the man. (Dunlap recounts the story himself, with glee, which is probably why he ended up in a book called 'The Psychopath Test'.)

But if Dunlap is suspicious of people who stay too long, it has to be said that we are also suspicious of those who move too much. 

Do they have itchy feet, or is it that they keep getting found out?

Obviously there are times when it makes sense to move. There might be family reasons, or you might be at an agency that has gone downhill, or you've gone stale.

But let's not forget that moving carries risk.

You see, there's a strange phenomenon in our industry.

A talented team will do great work, take the opportunity to move to another agency for more money or better opportunities... and then not get anything out for a year.

Happens loads.

There seems to be something helpful about 'knowing the ropes' at a place. It takes about a year to figure out which briefs are 'fools' gold' (look fantastic but are in fact worthless), which people you need to get on the right side of, and the often-mysterious process by which work actually emerges.

So that's an argument for staying put.

Also, commitment brings psychological benefits. 

I remember talking to a Creative at Goodby, who was telling me that he had moved around a lot in the past, but had now decided to "really put down some roots - and commit to a place."

I like that. If you're not thinking of a place in terms of what you can get out of it, but instead in terms of what you can give... you're actually likely to get more out of it too.

So although there are arguments on both sides, I'm going to come down in favour of commitment.

Yes, it could be seen as slightly irrational to feel loyalty towards a corporate entity. And yet... if that company embodies a set of values you believe in, and contains a group of people you like and respect, then loyalty does make sense, does it not?

Upworthy's Founder Talked At SXSW... And You'll Never Guess What He Said

Upworthy is one of the fastest-growing news websites in the world.

CEO Eli Pariser spoke at South by Southwest, and although his subject was news media, he had a very interesting lesson for us advertising folks.

In short, what he and his clickbait-loving journalists have realised is that the title you give something has a huge effect on whether people engage with it.

He cited a fantastic example. The video below, which features a young man talking about his two gay mothers - arguing passionately that they should not be discriminated against - was originally titled 'Zach Wahls Speaks About Family', and had been watched around 200,000 times. But once its title was changed to 'Two Lesbians Raised A Baby And This Is What They Got', the video took off, and has since been watched more than 18 million times.

In advertising, I believe we don't think carefully enough about the titles we give things.

If you're creating a piece of communication which is intended to be socially shared, you've simply GOT to come up with a title that is powerful and intriguing.

Even for something that isn't intended to be seen by consumers, titles are important. For example, the first thing anyone reads in a TV script is the title. And I've lost count of the number of scripts which have crossed my desk that go by the unbelievably bland name of 'Launch Ad'.

A CD or Client is going to see your script, and you want them to be excited about it. So give it an exciting name.

The same goes for project names. Often in advertising nowadays, we're not just creating a single piece of communication, but an entire suite of activity.

Give it a name. Always. Once something has a name, it becomes real. And if you give it an exciting name - like Durex Fundawear, or The Honesty Experiments - it's more likely to get made.

Advertising's Peculiar Relationship With Technology

It's not hard to mock a hipster.

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, it currently consists of about 50% excited posts from SXSW, and 50% mockery of people wearing Google Glasses, beards, or both. See image above.

But let's face it, all this mockery is just jealousy in disguise.

The truth is that the world of technology is now far more exciting and more profitable than the world of advertising. 

Advertising used to be a rock star scene. "I was 26, living in a house on Sloane Square, and earning more than the prime minister," recalls the author Peter Mayle, about his time in advertising in the 1960s.

Fortunes were made, big characters abounded, and the media were interested in us.

But the rock stars of business today are the people working in tech. And rightly so. They're making far bigger fortunes than we ever did. The industry is filled with characters way more eccentric than the wackiest copywriter ever was. And the media runs stories every single day about the latest technology products. 

On top of all that, the tech guys are making stuff that's far more remarkable than any advert could ever be, stuff that's genuinely making a difference to people's lives. And technology is actually changing the world - nearly always for the better. Whereas advertising has never been anything more than, in Vinny Warren's marvellous phrase: "The hair and make-up of capitalism."

And yet advertising has a long history of co-opting technology. The first cinema opened in the United States in 1896, and the first cinema ad was shown less than a year later. The first radio stations began broadcasting in 1920; radio advertising was introduced two years later. The same goes for the inventions of television and the internet. Whatever the new invention, advertising seeps in, like a gas.

The most exciting opportunities in advertising today are in the field of interactivity, we just need to figure out how to seep in better.

So although I'm not attending, I'll be following SXSW pretty avidly. And far from mocking the people who are there, I'll be hoping they have an absolutely stonking time... and bring back some answers.

Creatures Of Adland

Loving this new tumblr, Creatures of Adland.

The idea is that just as there are collective nouns for animals - a murder of crows, a crash of rhinos - there should be collective nouns for the denizens of our business.

They're superbly illustrated, but of course they are stereotypes, and I began to wonder... like all stereotypes, do they have a hidden meaning?

I'm talking about the way collective nouns reveal more about the people who coin them, than they do about the creatures being described. For example, the phrase a 'murder' of crows doesn't really tell us anything significant about crows - in reality they are no more murderous than many other birds. But it does tell us plenty about what humans find sinister - darkness, high-pitched screaming noises.

So I apologise in advance to the creative team that created these, who are clearly very talented, first for abusing their copyright and secondly for dissecting their work... but here we go.

A straightforward one to start off with. 'A feast of freelancers' overtly seems to be saying that freelancers earn shitloads of cash. In this very cool image, they are literally swimming in it.

The reality is they aren't. Day rates are static or declining. And obviously you don't earn in-between gigs, or during holidays (or illnesses). The vast majority of freelancers would much rather have a full-time job, should they be offered one.

What this image really tells us is that today's creatives - the people that this image is intended to appeal to - feel they are dramatically underpaid. "Look at those other guys," it says. "They are earning way too much. That should be us."

Again, a very cool image. Superficially, it tells us that Creative Directors say 'no' a lot. Now obviously, that is a huge part of our job. What if two teams present work on the same brief, can we say yes to both? No, clearly we can't. Or even one team presenting several ideas... are we supposed to say yes to all of them? Of course we can't. Also, most ideas aren't good. In fact someone once defined the job as "saying no in an inspirational way."

So what does the image tell us about the mindset of the creatives who created it, and the creatives it will appeal to? In my opinion, and this isn't rocket science, it again speaks to how frustrated today's creatives are. They feel their creativity is being stifled, and the easiest person to blame is the person who most directly blocks it off.

The image may be about ambition too. Are the creative directors portrayed as an obstacle because they are (currently) preventing young creatives from becoming CD's themselves?

I know I keep saying it, but what a fabulous image. The people who put this together have real talent.

But what's it really saying? Superficially it's about anger, but I suspect that it's actually about powerlessness. Creatives have slipped further and further down the hierarchy of the advertising business. Rather than running the show, as we used to, in most agencies there is now no reverence for us or our skills at all.

'Rant' is a great word. To some extent it has positive qualities - the word seems to imply a level of articulacy, and describes someone who is not afraid to speak out.

However, it's fundamentally a powerless word. A rant is purely a public venting - it's not going to actually change anything. A rant is an acknowledgement that you have already lost the debate, and just want to express how angry you are about that. 

Again, I love love love this image. The poses of the creatives are akin to rock stars, and the sea of raised hands in the front also makes me think of the crowd at a gig. On the surface then, the image is saying that creatives are deluded because they think they are rock stars.

But I wonder if it's possible to interpret this image in terms of regret not delusion. Is it about a nagging feeling that we 'settled' for advertising - described in Freakonomics as a 'Second Tier Glamour Profession' along with fashion and publishing, but ranked behind music, art and film? 

We are artistically talented people, we dress cool and 'are' cool... is it possible that, if we'd played our hands differently, we could have become rock stars? Or artists or film-makers? 

Okay, we have reached the end of our session.

Sorry if all this has seemed rather serious and dark. When you go under the skin of a joke, you inevitably kill its humour. And reveal a nest of anxieties and insecurities - which are what give jokes their power.

And in the case of creatives, these images reveal that we feel underpaid, stifled, powerless, and are worrying whether we made the right career choice.

Have a great week!

1 Weird Trick That Can Help You Crack Any Brief

A good Creative can crack any brief... as long as that brief is clear, and simple.

Hence, the real problem most Creatives face is not coming up with great ideas, but getting to a brief we can work with.

I'm now going to let you in on this one weird trick, that can get you to a clear and simple brief in around 30 seconds or less.

But in the spirit of those '1 weird trick' videos for losing belly fat or curing diabetes, I will first give some rambling examples that demonstrate why this tip is necessary.

The first one happened when I was working on a major car launch, a few years ago. This was a big project, and several Creatives had been gathered from several countries to work on it. In Amsterdam. The strategist did a supremely thorough 2-hour briefing, taking us through every aspect of the car, and how it was made. The brief was many pages long, and full of densely-written text. In fact the only part that was blank, was the proposition box. When I asked the guy why, he explained that he didn't want to "limit our thinking." Result: 10 days of flailing around.

The second example comes from when I was working on a brief for scratchcards. In the 'single-minded proposition' box appeared the words: "The fun way to win lots of money in an instant." That's right - fun, big wins, and instant. A rare 'triple'. Result: flailing around.

Okay, here's the weird trick. If the brief isn't clear, and you suspect that it will just lead to a lot of flailing around, simply ask: "What do you want us to dramatise?"

The answer to this question should tell you the way to go.

After all, every ad is some kind of dramatisation. (Tell me one that isn't, and I'll revise my theory).

It can dramatise the care with which the product is made:

It can dramatise the glorious silliness of the internet:

And N.B. it's the same deal with a social, online, or utility-based idea - you're always dramatising something. This app dramatises McCormick's expertise in the world of flavour:

So try it. If you're not crystal clear on what you're being asked to do, simply ask "What do you want us to dramatise?" It's a weird tip that really works.

Expectations And Reality

So you may have seen this meme going around - pretty funny, no?

I guess it has spread across the internet because the underlying thought must be relevant to many different industries - "client has high expectations, but not the money needed to realise them."

However, the truth in our industry is a bit different, and in fact strangely toxic. 

In my experience, Clients actually do have a fairly accurate understanding of what their budget will buy. Where they could be accused of unrealistic expectations is over how much time things will take. Especially in the digital sphere. (One of the ironies of digital is that virtual things seem to take longer to make than non-virtual things).

But leaving that aside, the big gap between expectations and reality in our industry is not between client expectations and client money, but between the style and shape of what is initially briefed for, and the final outcome.

And that's not the Client's fault. Or the Agency's. It's actually a kind of weird collusion between the two.

At the beginning of the project, both sides agree that they are going to create something revolutionary, multi-faceted, and futuristic. And what ends up running is a TV ad.

Since I too have the Impact font on my cheap image-manipulation software, I have created my own crappy meme-style comp on the theme, above.

The image on the left represents the first presentation. The Client is really excited about the project, since this product is 'a revolution' in the field of home entertainment/ chickenburgers/ toilet paper. They want something really different this time around. The Agency takes that with a pinch of salt, but is excited to have an opportunity to create a truly modern, integrated campaign. So that's what they present.

But as the process continues, everyone realises that they don't have the time to build that, and it's also too complicated, and some elements of it are risky (because untried), so both sides fall back on the tried and trusted - and familiar and straightforward - a TV ad.

Now, I have nothing against TV ads. Many are great.

But I do find it perplexing, and indeed a little annoying, that so much time is wasted presenting a city of the future, which never gets built. And please note, I'm not blaming either side. Like I said, it's a collusion.

No one starts by presenting a poster for a coffee brand that just says 'Best beans, best taste'. But somehow we end up there.

Why?

Are 'Content Marketers' Smoking Crack?

More and more Clients are saying they want 'content'.

And more and more 'content agencies' are springing up to give it to them. Even regular ad agencies are setting up 'content units' to service this growing 'need'.

Note to lawyers: I am not suggesting that any of these people are literally smoking crack. But I am suggesting their judgement is severely impaired.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, has written an article in which he claims the Super Bowl advertisers would have been better off spending their money on "valuable, compelling and helpful content."

Joe reckons that Super Bowl ads - at $4 million a pop - are horrendously expensive. (This is not correct. Since over 110 million people see the ad, they're actually good value for money).

And he then lists some types of content these advertisers could have made instead, for the same money.

He suggests "53 Issues of your own magazine." (For $4 million, you can develop your own full-color 32-page print magazine delivered to 25,000 of your customers.)

Crikey. Would you really rather send some crappy magazines (brand-created magazines, let's fact it, are never going to match Vogue or Esquire) to just 25,000 customers, rather than have an ad in the Super Bowl?

Or how about "50 books (of about 225 pages) developed for your brand."

Who the hell would want to read a book about a brand, let alone 50?

Finally, "You can get your very own Chief Content Officer to develop and execute your content marketing strategy for 27 years (at an average salary of $150,000)."

Great. Instead of having an ad on the Super Bowl, I can pay the salary of someone to develop useless initiatives.

And Joe didn't even touch on the biggest new trend - brands making dull online videos, and calling it 'content'. Yes, it is possible to put films on the internet for zero media spend. And yes, with advances in video technology, it is possible to shoot them at extremely low cost. But just because something is inexpensive, doesn't mean you should do it. 

Check the YouTube channels of any major brand (they all have them). These channels typically have about 45 cheaply-produced videos on them, each of which has a maximum of 1,000 views. That's just a waste of time and money. Just think of the salary costs of all the people who created that effectively invisible content.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of content when it's done well. "McDonalds Gets Grilled" was an interesting piece of brand-funded content that aired on TV so was seen by a huge audience, and enabled McDonalds to correct myths about how their food is prepared, while at the same time positioning the brand as caring and transparent. BMW's series of short films called 'The Hire' used top talent like Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke, and directors including Ang Lee and Tony Scott, and scored over 100 million views.

But to be done well, content requires way more thought and investment than it's currently getting. Too many marketers are simply doing it because they can do it cheaply.

The result is that far too much 'content' is just crap.

Super Bowl Supercraft

Not sure which football teams are playing, but I sure as hell know that VW is up against Kia, Hyundai, and a hundred others!

There'll be a lot of analysis of the Super Bowl ads, but it will mostly be superficial. People will say "I liked this one" or "I liked that one." There might be the occasional comment on the idea or the strategy, but not a lot.

And we definitely won't talk enough about craft.

At the end of the day, that's what consumers consume. Not the idea or the strategy. They consume the music, the performances, the cinematography, and most of all - the storytelling.

So I thought it might be fun to go into a little depth about the craft of one single spot, an ad that I reckon has been expertly crafted.

It's this year's Budweiser Clydesdales ad, 'Puppy Love', by Anomaly New York and director Jake Scott, which at time of writing already has 29 million views on YouTube. Before the game has even started.

Here it is.

 
So, the craft.

First, the music: 'Let Her Go' by Passenger, could not be more appropriate to the story, plus is highly emotive.

Performances: can't fault them. Oscar for the animal trainer, especially.

Casting: again, dead-on. The farmer character is perfectly handsome yet rugged. The puppy adoption lady (despite apparently being a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model) here becomes the epitome of wholesomeness.

The trickiest role to get right was the would-be adopter. The puppy must end up with the horse, and we don't want this to cause the audience to feel sorry for the thwarted adopter.

All is achieved very cleverly. First of all, he's a bit of a dick - he's wearing sunglasses, at a farm. And most importantly, when this wannabe adopter is first given his puppy, he's checking his phone.

The implication is clear - this douchebag doesn't deserve a puppy.

And that brings us on to storytelling. What a masterclass. First of all, any good story makes us care about the protagonist. But most storytellers don't know how to do that. (Especially in ads). They think the way to make the audience care about a protagonist is simply to make them likeable, which is why we end up with so many characters (especially in ads) who are attractive and smiley.... but we don't care about them. In fact many great stories feature protagonists who are dislikable, even actively evil - such as Tony Montana in Scarface or Michael Corleone in The Godfather - and yet we become deeply involved with them.

Simply put, we care about a character who has a clear goal that they care about, and struggles to get to it. Someone once said that a movie consists of 90 minutes of a character failing, until they win. (Or lose, it doesn't matter, as long as the result is definitive). Luke Skywalker gets kicked from pillar to post, until he finally blows up the Death Star. Harrison Ford barely wins a single fight in the Raiders of the Lost Ark films - he is repeatedly captured, beaten and insulted - until the final scene.

The more they struggle and suffer, the better. Take Gatsby. He's a spoiled rich wanker. Why the hell do we care about him? Because he goes to an unbelievable amount of trouble - putting on all those immense parties - because he wants Daisy.

Sorry, back to the puppy. He wants the horse. And he struggles a hell of a lot to get to it. 

He burrows under the fence...

...opens a heavy door with his nose...

  
 ...cops a soaking...

 ...but still goes back under the fence again.

That's why we care. Because he's struggling and striving for his goal.

So is the horse. Here he is jumping a fence, to get to the puppy.

The audience identification is cemented with one 'cheat shot'. The entire story is told in the third person (camera as observer)... except for this one shot where we see the horse from the POV of the puppy.  (The same trick that Spike Jonze pulled off in his famous Ikea 'Lamp' spot).

After getting the audience to invest so completely in the puppy as a protagonist, it's supremely rewarding for the audience when he and the horse finally get together. But that's not all. The final shot also makes the audience believe that the farmer and puppy lady will get together - a piece of thematic 'doubling' that makes the climax even more satisfying.

Oh, one more thing.  Since this is a post about craft, I'm not going to discuss here whether the ad will be commercially effective or not, though I strongly believe that it will (American newspapers are already calling it "the most adorable Super Bowl ad ever"). But there is one craft aspect that's crucial in advertising though not relevant to storytelling in general, which is branding. 

The more the audience feels they are watching a beautiful emotional story and the less they feel they are being sold to, the better. And yet, obviously the ad must be well-branded, because mis-attribution is a disaster, from an effectiveness point of view.

The great advantage here is that Budweiser has been running these Clydesdale ads for years - since 1933, in fact - and it's a property the brand is strongly associated with. So the spot is intrinsically branded.

But even then, the ad's makers have included nine separate shots of the Budweiser logo, before the endframe. The logo features on the farmer's cap. But because it is always very carefully shot to be 'visible but not visible', I'd say it does a fantastic job of unconsciously reinforcing the branding, without an overly-commercial presence that could compromise the emotion of the storytelling.

So, apologies for the long post. But I'm only trying to redress the balance a little. 

We don't talk enough about craft.

Is Comfort Overrated?

I was once having a discussion with a head of planning. I was arguing that we shouldn't put Creatives in brainstorms (or 'workshops', as they're now called), because Creatives hate them. We just find the whole experience supremely uncomfortable.

"Comfort," he replied, "is overrated."

And at the time, I couldn't see how to refute this.

After all, the main purpose of our job is to come up with great ideas, not to have fun. Often we'll have fun, for sure, but you couldn't say that fun is the primary goal.

And thinking about the times I've done good work, I realised that it wasn't always in a comfortable environment.

Sometimes, it's been under pressure. (I've worked at agencies where it felt like you were under pressure the whole time). I've worked at agencies where people were aggressive. I've worked at agencies with crazy deadlines or crazy colleagues; in atmospheres that were intense, political, or fearful. But where great work still happened.

But recently, I thought back to the time when I felt I was doing my very best work. At that time, and in that place, none of the above applied.

That's not to say that we Creatives spent the whole day sitting in the bath, eating popcorn. We were working hard. But there was no aggression. No crazy deadlines. No crazy colleagues. No politics, and no fear. (And no brainstorms). There was only the expectation that you would do great work.

And that's the kind of pressure I want.

Mark Manson, in this insightful post, argues that the most interesting question in life is "What pain do you want?"

He argues that anything worthwhile in life, costs pain. If an athlete wants to win, she is going to have to train hard. If you want a great relationship, you may have to go through the pain of tough communication. If you want to write a novel, you are going to have to suffer the discipline of regular writing.

The trick is, to choose the type of pain that - to you - feels challenging rather than soul-sapping, that feels rewarding, even nourishing. This is what will give you the greatest chance of success.

So - a long time later - I have the answer for that head of planning. By all means let's put Creatives under pressure.

But let's make it the kind of pressure that they thrive under.

Never Put An Art Director With A Stuntman

Darren Bailes, ECD of British ad agency VCCP, has written an article for the UK's Campaign magazine in which he proposes that "This year should be the year of 'hiring the random'. How great would it be to hire a scientist and put them with a copywriter?" he says, adding "Or a stuntman."

I'll tell you how great it would be, Darren. Not great at all. In fact it would be shite.

But I'm pretty sure Darren knows this. He's just led VCCP to the UK 'Agency of the Year' title, and produced a slew of good work; he undoubtedly knows what he's doing.

The real reason he has made this suggestion is purely for perception-management. He wants to portray his creative department as open, and the opposite of old-fashioned. Fair play to him; he's fighting our corner... fighting the tide of people who accuse us of being rigid and protectionist.

But of course, it will never happen.

I worked at one big agency where a new ECD took over and made the same announcement. Copywriters would be working with psychologists, art directors with comedians, etc.

Never happened.

But it sounded great. 

In a way, it's quite sad that we have to go to these lengths to convince people we are open-minded. Quite demeaning, really. An orchestra would never announce they were going to have a scientist play the cello, or ask a stuntman to play the flute. There's a perception that 'everyone is creative' whereas no one goes around saying that 'everyone can play the trumpet.'

Actually I don't think that old cliche is the point here. I don't think Darren Bailes is saying that stuntmen could do a better job than art directors, as individuals. But he is saying - must be - that a creative/stuntman duo would outperform two creatives. He's saying that creative duos are so lacking in fresh thinking, we could benefit from teaming up with someone from completely outside the industry. Do you think he's right?