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? 

 

The Metric That Is Great News For Creatives

Creatives were always against any measuring of our work (except by awards juries).

We scoffed at brand tracking studies, despised research, and when told that our ad had failed to achieve certain metrics would protest, citing Albert Einstein, that "Not everything that counts can be counted."

But this attitude has now changed dramatically.

A new metric has arrived, which has become almost a new form of currency in advertising - YouTube views.

I've known Creatives to check their YouTube view-count up to three times daily, following the release of a new viral ad.

Okay, that was me.

But I bet you've done it too.

Interestingly, the interests of Creatives and Clients are now (perhaps for the first time) aligned. We both want exactly the same thing: lots of views.

The result is work - brilliant work - like this:

7 million views so far. And it's for P&G.

P&G!

The company that is also still capable of putting out work like this:

This one has only 2,000 views.

And that gives me tremendous hope.

Clients have always cared about what can be measured. And now that the boredom of a boring ad is so acutely measurable, they'll view that as a failure. To put it another way, since only cool stuff gets lots of YouTube views, hopefully all clients will now want only cool stuff.

Am I being too simplistic?

I don't think so. History provides many examples of new measurement techniques prompting significant behavioural change. Advanced analysis of baseball stats led to different types of players being hired. Advanced political polling led to different types of policies being adopted.

So surely the coalescing of interest around this new metric... will lead to a different and better type of ad being made?

New Year's Resolutions - All Time Top Five

I've been making New Year's Resolutions every year for the past 12 years or so.

Some of them are work-related, and some I think could apply to any Creative, any year.

Here are my Top 5:


1.  More coffee

Part of the Creative's job is to let your mind wander. As the tagline of this blog used to read: "When you see me staring into space, that's when I'm working." However, it needs to be productive staring. Productive staring is when your mind is wandering over the brief, and the random associations it throws up. But if you are sitting there monged-out, mind blank... that's unproductive staring.

Resolution: when mind has gone blank, drink coffee.


2.  More craziness

We're all under pressure, there's less time, clients are jumpy, yada yada. A lot of forces are pushing us towards safe solutions. At times, it's easy to forget that the truly breakthrough answers don't just 'solve the problem'. It's amazing how often they also have a spark of stupidity or craziness. As someone once said, "If an idea does not at first appear insane, it has no value."

Resolution: leave room for the crazy.


3.  More conversations

Innumerable times, over the years, my partner and I would be discussing a brief, and wonder "What does this bit mean?" Solution: ask the Planner. We'd also wonder if the CD had something particular in mind for the type of answer. Solution: ask him. As a CD or ECD myself, I've found the more conversations I have with the Client about what they want, the better things tend to go. As Creatives, especially in a large agency, you can be a bit removed from everyone else. And of course, at times you need to be, to have quiet space to create in.

Resolution: never wonder, or assume - keep having conversations with everyone, all the time.


4.  More caring

As mentioned, we're all under pressure. Clients perhaps even more than Agencies. We are there to help them achieve their commercial goals, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there is also more to life than commercial goals. Are you involved in a pro bono project at the moment? And if yes, are you doing it purely to win awards?

Resolution: do some stuff that is good for the soul, not just for the bottom line or the trophy shelf.


5.  More concentration

The empty mind is a problem (see Resolution #1) but an equal but opposite problem is the busy mind. It's so easy to find mental stimulation nowadays - there are a thousand cool and interesting articles and videos just waiting for you on the internet. But sometimes inputs are the enemy of output. Thinking is hard work and it's very tempting to just look at the internet instead. Not only is it instant entertainment, but you can also kinda kid yourself that it's useful because it might become an idea one day. And that's true. But it also might be work-avoidance.

Resolution: switch the computer off sometimes. Hey, and the phone too, buddy. Just gently.put.it.down.


Have a great year!

It's Christmas!

Happy festival of capitalism, everybody!

Of Course You Can Crack Any Brief. But What If There's Two?

Sometimes, the agency brief is not the only brief. Sometimes, the client writes their own brief first. And then the agency writes a brief based on that (called a 'reverse brief').

This system, quite frankly, sucks balls.

Because when you have two briefs, the potential for confusion is immense.
 
I remember one occasion at a previous agency, when the most senior client had a strong view on what their next ad should be about. This was translated by their team into a client brief. Which was then translated by our team into a reverse brief. The proposition our creatives got was 'fun'. We duly wrote ads to fun. But when the work got back to the senior client, it had apparently wildly diverged from what was wanted - they had asked for ads about 'great service.'

Again I quote Mark Fitzloff, Global ECD of W&K, who said in a recent panel discussion: "Everyone between the CD and the most senior client is playing a game of telephone." ('Telephone' in some countries is called 'Chinese Whispers'). At first I thought this was a tad arrogant. But maybe he's right...

Having a great strategy is a great advantage in the creation of advertising. But even the best strategy will be unhelpful if it's one of two.

Maybe we have to accept that sometimes the client has their brief, and that's what they want answered. Planning was invented in an age when clients walked in with a product and not much else. It was up to the agency to decide how to sell that product. Nowadays, the client often has their own insights manager, has done their own research, and has their own view on what they want to say. What they want the agency to do, is to say that well. Not write another brief.  
 

The Worst Brief In The World

...is the agency Christmas card.

Why? Well there are plenty of briefs on which creatives complain "everything's been done."

But in the case of the agency Christmas card, that might just be true.

You can see a mahoosive collection of them here and here.

So what to do?

Well, obviously it has to be something digital. You don't want to imply that your agency is a stegasaurus.

Though the irony is that although it's the most 'instant' medium, anything digital actually takes longer to make. And is often expensive.

Over the years, Mother London have probably produced the most interesting examples. The one that still sticks in my mind is this video, in which Mary and Joseph are depicted as modern-day asylum seekers, and get turned away by every hotel in London.

But that was 10 years ago.

I wonder if, by now, 'digi-card fatigue' is setting in.

Will clients and rivals truly be wowed by "a Christmas gif for you" turning up in their inbox? Or will they simply press 'delete'?

Uber-planner Russell Davies writes in his Campaign column this week: "Don’t do an agency Christmas card... no-one wants a Christmas wish from a corporation."

And he might have a point.

Especially when you consider that, for the same cost as that self-indulgent e-card, you could send every client a bottle of champagne.

I know which I'd rather get...

What's Bigger, Your Ego Or Your Insecurity?

Last week I bought 2,000 Twitter followers.

It only cost me $5, via Fiverr.com, and now my mundane Twitterings are reaching two thousand more individuals than they did before. Largely in Bangladesh, I gather.

I'm not quite sure why I did it, but if pushed, I would have to say it was either ego or insecurity. 

Having insecurity means worrying that everything you do is shit, or meaningless, or both. Having ego means other people think you're a dick.

Creatives are regularly slammed for being egotistical. We're told that we shouldn't think of ourselves as the most important people in the agency, and that it's wrong to believe that all of one's ideas are brilliant.

But conversely, we are also viewed as insecure. People accuse us of getting overly defensive when our work is criticised. We also exhibit other insecure traits, such as envy, and a constant need for validation in the form of awards.

Is it possible to be both egotistical and insecure at the same time?

I guess it must be.

One of John Lennon's biographers, Larry Kane, wrote: “People would be surprised at how insecure he was, and his lack of self-esteem. Throughout his life, even during the height of Beatlemania, he had poor self-esteem, even though he exuded confidence.”

Another point: Insecurity is only a problem for those who have it, whereas Ego affects everyone around them. Maybe that's why the phrase "Creative insecurity" returns 7.1 million Google results (in just 0.27 seconds!) whereas "Creative ego" gets a whopping 50 million. 

I don't know. For us, it's a simple cause-and-effect, isn't it? We have the urge to be creative, but because what we create is out there for all to see, we feel insecure about whether anyone will like it - and in fact people are queuing up to tell us what's wrong with it. Therefore, we are forced to develop an ego, just to survive until Friday.

Does that describe you?

The One Place Where Teamwork Doesn't Work

Last week, AMV BBDO promoted Paul Brazier to Chief Creative Officer.

"Creatives start fightback against the bean counters," screamed the headline in Campaign.

Now, obviously I'm delighted to see a creative (and by all accounts a highly talented one) taking a spot in the 'C-Suite', alongside the CEO and CFO.

But although ours is an industry built on teamwork, is it really appropriate at the top?

I'm always amazed that a start-up - typically an equal partnership between three individuals from the disciplines of creative, strategy, and account management - is able to function, when you consider the average size of these people's ego's.

I suppose what happens in reality is that the account man, the person whose actual skill is leadership, ends up running it.

Apparently Wieden & Kennedy take deliberate steps to prevent this happening. Mark Fitzloff, Global ECD of W&K, explained in a panel discussion that Dan Wieden insists every W&K office is run by two creative people and only one account person, because "If you have one creative person and one account person running a company, there will be a death-match, and the account person will kill the creative person. Because they will be better prepared for the fight... it will be in their schedule." 

It's an amusing story, but for me it still illustrates the central problem of having a team run things - there will be a fight.

And fighting is a waste of energy.

Call me old-fashioned, or a fascist, or both, but I believe in having one CEO on top.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that person has to be a suit. There are numerous examples of successful CEO's coming from a planning or even a creative background.

I don't care what discipline the leader comes from.

But in the words of Highlander, surely 'there can be only one.'

What's The Point Of 'The Point Of Difference?'

At first sight, this infographic is so shameful it should make any self-respecting ad person want to crawl into his den with his tail between his legs.

It's a map showing how consumers perceive different financial brands. They're all spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising to explain why they're different, and why consumers should choose them over their competitors - and yet consumers just think they're all basically the same.

I got into an argument about this subject last week, over on Ad Contrarian, where I said that differentiation was hard to achieve, in today's era of product parity.

And a B2B guy called Tim Orr took me to task.

"In my opinion," he wrote, "'product parity' is mostly an excuse used by lazy ad people to justify not doing their homework. I once heard a talk by a guy who had made his living selling chemically pure sulfuric acid to industrial customers. There's no greater parity than that! And yet, somehow, he managed to differentiate his offer enough to beat his competition. Every product, every offering is different from every other. Find that difference and exploit it!" 

Unfortunately I'm not aware of the solution that Tim's acid salesman devised.

But I'm not sure I agree that laziness is the factor at play here. In my experience, ad people usually do put in the effort to find out everything about the product, and uncover differences. It's more of a deliberate decision not to use them.

Fallon probably discovered that Sony Bravia TV's have a special TLX-3000 chip in them or something, but decided it would be more effective to do a beautiful and emotive ad on a generic quality of colour TVs - great colour. Similarly, John Lewis has differentiators, but the agency has for the last few years been going with a generic 'emotion of Christmas' message, and it's leading to great work, sales are up, etc. Budweiser is brewed slightly differently (using rice) but consumers don't really care about that, and a generic fun/ socialising message ('Wassup') worked pretty well.

Maybe ad people have instinctively realised that product differences don't matter.

Martin Weigel, the Head of Planning at W&K Amsterdam and writer of the excellent Canalside View blog, has long argued that differentiation is pointless.

"Positioning theory argues that brands must develop and maintain  points of differentiation and uniqueness," he writes. "And who has not been in a strategy meeting which has centered around what our brand can ‘own’?  Yet the data repeatedly shows that if a characteristic matters in a category, it is shared by brands. Indeed, brands share characteristics more so than they exhibit marked differences."

Instead of trying to achieve differentiation, Martin argues we should just aim for salience. And hey, if one of the world's leading planners says that our objective should simply be to come up with some cool ads, then who am I to argue with him?

How Do You Storyboard A Smile?

Why is the latest John Lewis Christmas ad so good? In large part because it's so damn emotive.

And of course, that emotion comes through a lot more strongly in the finished ad than it would in the script.

The ad takes us all the way from super-sad hare...

...to joyful hare.

Via wondrously surprised bear.

And as the animals feel, so do we.
 
Because our emotions are very linked to other peoples faces.

(It's irrelevant that the characters are animals in this ad, since the animators have given them basically human features).

Of course the ad is clever too, and has lovely music, but at its core it is just an incredibly successful elicitation of emotion, which then inevitably becomes associated with the brand.

It instantly reminded me of Bill Bernbach's famous "How do you storyboard a smile?" quote. With those six well-chosen words, Bernbach asserts the centrality of emotion in successful advertising, that the script is often only a fraction of the communication, and that performance and directing are so important. 

(The importance of emotion perhaps explains the recent success of all those Candid Camera-style ads, since little is more effective than seeing real people moved. Example - Dove Sketches). 

Bernbach reminds us that we should constantly be striving to put more emotion into our work, and to be courageous in explaining to people that we show our work to (whether that be creative directors, clients, or account teams) why something that seems quite basic and perhaps unimpressive on the page will actually be powerfully effective.

An old buddy of mine, David Chriswick, who is now a top strategist at DDB Chicago, tells me he has started using Paul Ekman's facial expression tool with clients when formulating a brief. 

(Paul Ekman is the psychologist who worked out that all emotions can be seen through no more than seven basic facial expressions, and this is universal from Amazonian Indians to London bankers.)


This chart helps Chizzy to have a conversation not just around messaging but "what emotion are we trying to elicit." Good on him, I say.  

What's Your Brief Like?

I once asked a Creative who had changed agencies what the brief was like at his new place. He replied: "Same shit, different boxes."

It's certainly true that every agency is obsessed with having their own unique format of brief... but it probably has far less impact on the work than their culture and clients do.
 
And yet... the document does communicate something about the values of the agency behind it.

Some briefs are aggressively unconstrained (see Fallon's brief, above). Others have the complexity of a psychology examination. 

And of course, they do influence an agency's output to some extent. They must do.

We are in the process of overhauling our creative brief here at Naked right now, and it feels like an exciting time.

What form of words can we come up with, that will have an inspirational effect on everyone in the agency, and produce work that blows juries' bollocks off?

I quite like this BBDO one.

Then again, I do slightly worry - about this one and especially the Fallon one - that although they look fantastic, and feel like they offer a lot of creative freedom, they could actually trip the Creatives up; for example by not including crucial info like the desired tone of voice, or any mandatories that are realistically going to have to be addressed. Maybe these follow on a separate page, I don't know.

So what do you like to see in a briefing document? Is there a good one you've worked to in the past? 

Do you like to see stuff like the business problem or brand purpose in there? Do you get upset if there's no proposition? Or is the format of the briefing document pretty much irrelevant to you... as long as there's some clarity and insight, it could be written in comic sans on a piece of bog roll, for all you care? 

I Am Actually Warming To Millward Brown

Like many creatives, I have always considered Millward Brown to be the anti-christ.

Everything I had heard from them seemed to be a guide to how to make ads worse. Often much worse.

And since nearly every ad on TV has 'passed' Millward Brown, but nearly every ad on TV is shit, I just assumed they were charlatans or fools.

But recently, I was sent a copy of one of MB's 'Knowledge Point' reports... and it's f***ing great.

Full of useful advice. And actual science to back up its claims. I tell you, the thing has rocked my world a little bit.

This particular report was about branding, and offers a beautifully balanced point of view.

They annihilate agencies who would make an 'art film' or 'random comedy sketch with the brand tacked on at the end', insisting that "The brand [should be] integral to the idea, story or structure," a thought which they also express as "Can I describe the story of this ad without mentioning the brand?"

But they also undermine the commonly-held view that an ad should have repeated packshots or branding, by demonstrating (with data) that "Strong branding is not achieved by showing the brand early or often." And "Brand linkage is not related to the time at which the brand appears in the ad" and "There is little relationship between the number of brand appearances and the branding score."
Best of all (for us creatives) - the Number 1 most important quality an ad needs, to score as well-branded, according to this new report from Millward Brown? "Creative stopping-power." (Which MB defines as 'involvement' and 'enjoyment')

Guys and girls, I reckon Millward Brown is our new best friend.

I'm now going to read the rest of the reports on their site. Maybe you should too.

Let's Play 'Fantasy Agency'!

Everyone keeps remarking that the current agency model is broken. But, they never propose a new one.

So here goes.

First let's look at the current model. It goes something like this:

(Click to embiggen)

For simplicity, I've left many people out, including Production, Reception, Security, I.T., U.X., Executive Assistance, Catering, and Technologists. Doesn't mean they're not important. They are. They're just not departments I have a new structure for.

And I'm not meaning to call out any particular type of agency here. I'm meaning to refer to 'traditional' agencies, digital agencies, integrated agencies, above-the-line, below-the-line, through-the-line, never-heard-of-the-line... everybody.

Also, though I've put Traffic at the bottom, I don't mean to say they're the least important. I would love to show them permeating the whole system - like the oil in an engine - but I just don't know how to draw that.

Now, here are three alternative models: 


Alt. Model 1: 'The BBH'

This is the model that was put into place at BBH in London, about three years ago.

The thinking behind it was that clients come to agencies for great creative, and great strategy. They don't come for 'great account handling'. (N.B. their words not mine). Therefore Account Handling becomes more of a support function, with the role of Traffic subsumed within it, which saves a little money.

The crucial 'Team Director' role needs an extremely talented, super-organised person, but they could potentially come from a Traffic background, and may not need to be as well-paid as the top Suits previously were.

However, this is not a cheaper model overall, since as you can see, the savings are ploughed into hiring extra Planners. The goal of this model isn't to cut costs, but to increase quality (clients are theoretically receiving more of the expertise they actually want from an agency) and to increase efficiency (there are fewer moving parts).

I hope it's not a trade secret. If it is, apologies.


Alt. Model 2: 'The Hybrid'

Account Handlers and Planners both make an extremely valuable contribution to the advertising process, no doubt about it.

But with margins crumbling across the industry, perhaps it's time to look at merging the two departments.

In many cases, this won't be a problem at all. There are many 'strategic Suits' out there, and tons of Planners who have first-class account handling skills.

Of course, it's too much to expect that every Account Handler will be as adept at planning as a Planner is, and every Planner as adept at suiting as a Suit. So, some decrease in the agency's quality and efficicency is inevitable. 

Oh, and in case anyone thinks I'm being biased towards Creatives - by merging Planning and Account Handling while leaving Creative untouched - I'm not. Take another look. I've eliminated the separate Art Director and Copywriter roles, thus making Creatives hybrids too. 

Yeah I know, it sucks. But this is a considerably lower-cost model. When times are tough, you can't eat foie gras and go to the theatre every week.


Alt. Model 3: 'The Ad Guy'

This is a radically lower-cost model.

It does away entirely with the three traditionally separate roles of Planner, Creative, and Account Handler, and instead merges them all into one - the 'Ad Guy'.

Obviously, very few individuals are capable of performing all three roles to the same standard that today's specialists can. So some drop-off in quality may be expected. Though arguably this may be offset by an increase in efficiency, since there are many fewer moving parts to this model.

I'm envisaging that each Ad Guy would have a young apprentice, who is gradually trained up to become an Ad Guy (or Ad Girl) themselves.

Now, before you write off this scheme as complete lunacy, consider this: it is in fact the model in most common use by other providers of professional services today, such as Management Consultants, Lawyers, Bankers, Architects, Accountants, and (perhaps most pertinently to us), PR professionals.

Also it's so low-cost, we could all go back to driving Porsches again. 

Thoughts?

The Hollywoodisation Of Advertising

Hollywood now generally makes either big-budget spectaculars, or much cheaper indie fare, with very little in the middle.

And I reckon advertising is going the same way.

The business model of Hollywood was transformed by the introduction of the first 'blockbusters' in the late 1970s - Jaws and Star Wars.

The strategy - a response to increasing competition from home entertainment (first cable, then VHS, then DVD, then gaming) - is now to create 'event' movies that people feel they have to see at the cinema.

These event movies, such as Iron Man, Superman, and Batman, cost about $100 million to make, and the successful ones make good money. 

At the other end of the scale there are indie or arthouse movies, such as Lost In Translation, Little Miss Sunshine, and Moonrise Kingdom. These generally cost under $10 million to make, and the successful ones in this category make good money too.

But in the middle - the $10 million to $100 million bracket - there is almost nothing.

This hasn't happened because film-makers no longer want to make medium-sized films, such as Serpico, The Thing, or Dead Ringers, but because the economics of the industry have changed, due to the advent of competition.

And I believe that we are seeing a similar pattern emerge in advertising, as a consequence of the competition that TV now faces from online.

In short, it still makes sense to make a big-budget TV ad for a car, a beer, or a telco. And it increasingly makes sense to produce inexpensive video content for the web. But the space in the middle - the medium-sized TV commercial - is getting squeezed out.

Chats I have with directors nowadays return constantly to the same theme - that budgets (except for the 'blockbuster ads') have collapsed. And production companies that specialise in 'content' - i.e. less expensive video - are popping up all over the place, both in the production company field, and also within agencies.

It's a slightly painful transition for some, and the economics and process for 'content' are something that we're all still figuring out, but like it or not, the change is here.

As creatives, we should embrace it. Because the 'Hollywoodisation' of advertising, while a big change in economics, doesn't necessarily impede creativity. Look at it this way: Hollywood produces some moronic and derivative blockbusters for sure, but also some fantastic ones, while the arthouse world is equally capable of spawning both genius and drivel. In the same way, we get some fantastic big-budget TV ads and some dumb ones; some highly innovative and creative content pieces, and some cheaply-produced shit.

It feels very different making a big TV ad than it does making a content piece. But the opportunity to do something good is there with either, since just as with movies, the quality of an ad is something independent of its budget. It always has been.

P.S. I saw Gravity the other day, and I can't understand why everyone's raving about it. It's basically a $100 million special effects extravaganza with a somewhat cheesy storyline - essentially a similar product to Avatar or Battleship - isn't it?