I saw a film where a bunch of brand loyalists were made to do without their favourite packaged brand for a couple of weeks.
They were given and unbranded replacement and moaned for the whole two weeks about how it wasn't as good.
Only to find they had actually been using their favourite brand without the packaging.
That's the power of brands. It's the belief in them as much as the actual quality.
So if you want to really understand the role of anything in people's lives, do some research where you take it away from them and get them to talk about what it's like.
Like when a office goes mad because the milk isn't delivered - it's the tea and coffee they go mental about missing.
When a car breaks down, it's having to suffer other people on public transport they hate (very British disease this one).
Take Heinz ketchup away and bacon sandwich becomes a waste of calories.
So I'm working in a new place with a heritage in PR. I know what you're thinking, probably this:
That's mostly my experience too. But not all PR folk are like that, and they're not here.
It's funny really, you can't move for all sorts of integrated agencies banging on about influencing culture, mind you, it is fair to say that some of them are pretty good at it.
But the good PR spend their entire career understanding what people are really talking about and what people will give a monkeys about. They instinctively get what's going in the lives of normal people.
That's a great starting point for any client who gets that the biggest challenge for any client is that people don't care that much about brands and understands the best way to overcome that is by looking popular and tapping into something actually do care about.
Not parroting stuff people are talking about, adding to it.
So I'm quite liking this.
By the way, if you want to do the influencing culture thing thing, there are two ways:
Tap into something that's in popular culture to make the execution better. Which is fine, it build cut through if you've done your core competence and not done anything dumb.
This for example taps this Australian beer brand taps into a deep memory we all have of movie police chases
This shamelessly mashes up provenance credentials with the X Factor
Something more potent, but harder. Getting into issues, tensions, passions and challenges in actual life.
While this from Axe taps into the very current confusion young men have on what they're supposed to be in modern society. It's not made up, and you could have got this from messing around in Google trends, where men are asking the internet if it's OK to cry. You just need the instincts to look for the right things
It's nothing like in the text books or the case studies. Most ideas and projects are dragged kicking and screaming into the world through hard work, trial and error and coming back from rejection with something better.
No one really cares about the creative brief. At its worse, it's first stage thinking from one person (the planner) that everyone then enjoys ripping to shreds. At its worse, its the client brief written down in order to get to the first review when the real strategy will hopefully emerge. At its best, its summary of first stage conversations everyone has had and direction towards something even better
You'll have to do lots of workshops because the suits are scared of selling ideas to the client, so want them to get involved in having them. Or you'll have to do them because no one in your agency will listen to a word you say, so you need to get them to discover what you already know for themselves. The suits will judge the success of the client workshop by the quality of the stimulation, not the quality of the ideas, so you'll be working late night creating pen portraits and competitor slides that look amazing even though they tell folks nothing new.
You'll spend entire meetings where the account director will answer strategy based questions the client has asked before you can respond, then ask you what you think.
You'll learn at least half of what you need to know from great creative types who could do your job if they weren't doing something more interesting, rather than your boss who's main job is getting you to follow the process.
If you do the same TGI run for any client audience and interpret it compelling enough, no one will be able to tell the difference.
You'll come up against strategists in other agencies who can fill whole hours saying nothing of value, you'll be quietly chortling with glee and how daft they're making themselves look, only for the client to say it's brilliant, makes total sense and give then a standing ovation. A little like this:
Hopefully, you can spend most if your time being brilliantly simple. Every now and again, you'll need to make the simple look brilliant. Live with it. 8. No one knows what they're doing. When I started, it was hard enough when everyone pretended they knew how advertising works. Now, with social, native, programmatic, content, dark social, partnerships and Big Data no one even knows what advertising is. The trick is look like you do, without believing you do.
9. This industry is tiny. People will always show up again sometime. You can't afford to alienate any one. Even the people who really deserve it. And if you start in the wrong kind of agency, that could be everyone.
10. Not everything Byron Sharpe is automatically right. As it was for Seth Godin. As it was for Rosser Reeves. As with most brands, people buy what they think everyone else does, not what it best. If you want to make a client think, don't quote How Brands Grow (they have either read it or discarded it because it opposed their cherished world view too much), challenge it.
11. No one buys facts, they buy what they want to buy. Don't believe any kind of evidence will persuade a client (or a target audience) your job is to make them want to believe your evidence. Emotional advertising sells harder (although try telling that to certain retail clients) so does emotional presentations. Move them.
So decided to actually take a lunch break and stroll around town for an hour.
I find it funny that certain London strategy departments believe this is actually 'a thing'. Going out and mixing with people rather than sitting at your desk.
It's not that you notice anything ground-breakingly new, it's just that when you loiter around people going through their day more, you develop a sixth sense for how they feel about stuff.
I totally believe in reading and experiencing as much diverse stimulus as you can, when you connect two unrelated things together, amazing ideas can happen. It's true.
But I great skill of planner types is to admire their audience, get to grips with what matters in their lives.
Today I saw that most of the people coming out of Harvey Nichols has massive logos on their t-shirts, I bet most of their buyers are not half as well to do as they would like them to believe. Just as most luxury brands make most of their money from lots of people that save up (or run up credit) for one or two of their products, rather than the people who can actually afford it whenever they want.
I saw a bunch of cyclists outside a cafe drinking espresso and wondered why, with cycling generally on the rise, with coffee so ingrained in that sub-culture why coffee brands don't make more of it.
I saw children going shopping with parents (it's the summer holidays) and missed my own kids. I also wondered if retailers and food retailers make enough of the magic of going on a trip with your parents getting to touch and choose for yourself, rather than the lack of emotion you get from a few clicks. I remembered going shopping with my Mum in the same streets over 30 years ago and meeting my Dad on his lunch break, how special it was to have both of them to myself. Not to mention the pride and wonder of him letting me go into his office and sitting at his desk.
I saw a 20 something daughter out in town with her Mum and wondered what my kids will be like in 15 years or so, will they want to go shopping with us?
And I bought a pasty from Greggs.
People who have studied such things have discovered that cities make us more creative and drive innovation and ideas.
Fair enough.
For agency types, I wonder if really exploring a city, rather than floating around Clerkenwell, The Meat Packing District or The Northern Quarter keeps us human.
So decided to actually take a lunch break and stroll around town for an hour.
I find it funny that certain London strategy departments believe this is actually 'a thing'. Going out and mixing with people rather than sitting at your desk.
It's not that you notice anything ground-breakingly new, it's just that when you loiter around people going through their day more, you develop a sixth sense for how they feel about stuff.
I totally believe in reading and experiencing as much diverse stimulus as you can, when you connect two unrelated things together, amazing ideas can happen. It's true.
But I great skill of planner types is to admire their audience, get to grips with what matters in their lives.
Today I saw that most of the people coming out of Harvey Nichols has massive logos on their t-shirts, I bet most of their buyers are not half as well to do as they would like them to believe. Just as most luxury brands make most of their money from lots of people that save up (or run up credit) for one or two of their products, rather than the people who can actually afford it whenever they want.
I saw a bunch of cyclists outside a cafe drinking espresso and wondered why, with cycling generally on the rise, with coffee so ingrained in that sub-culture why coffee brands don't make more of it.
I saw children going shopping with parents (it's the summer holidays) and missed my own kids. I also wondered if retailers and food retailers make enough of the magic of going on a trip with your parents getting to touch and choose for yourself, rather than the lack of emotion you get from a few clicks. I remembered going shopping with my Mum in the same streets over 30 years ago and meeting my Dad on his lunch break, how special it was to have both of them to myself. Not to mention the pride and wonder of him letting me go into his office and sitting at his desk.
I saw a 20 something daughter out in town with her Mum and wondered what my kids will be like in 15 years or so, will they want to go shopping with us?
And I bought a pasty from Greggs.
People who have studied such things have discovered that cities make us more creative and drive innovation and ideas.
Fair enough.
For agency types, I wonder if really exploring a city, rather than floating around Clerkenwell, The Meat Packing District or The Northern Quarter keeps us human.
You'd think my first day as a strategy director at a new place would be vastly different to the first time I walked into work as an account exec, but not that much.
It's fair to say that back then I was excited as it was the first time I had work emails, while everyone was talking about the new website department.
Oh and we checked films and chromalins back then.
But to be honest the first day is always the same, for me at least.
The fear of the unknown, not to mention lots of people you don't know yet.
Getting the IT to work (which was fine this time by the way).
Believing you'll never remember everyone's names.
Wondering how you'll get you head around client business.
Seeing a culture emerging, but not the undercurrents that slowly reveal themselves.
The slow but unwavering mission to get everyone to drink proper tea and coffee.
If you have time, it's worth listening to the Revisionist History podcast. Every episode re-interprets a historic event and finds new evidence or focuses on something previously overlooked.
Now, look at that keyboard on your computer or phone, the one with the QWERTY structure. It's like that because it's not the best structure for fast typing, it's pretty much the least effective option. Because when they designed the original mechanical typewriters, if folks typed too fast, they wold break the machine's mechanism. So they designed the keyboard to SLOW them down. It's simply survived because no one questioned it and eventually, we all became so used to it changing it would be simply too difficult.
History is written by the winners, who always want to put the best spin on why they are there, and create even more success. Or sometimes gloss over the uncomfortable truth about where success came from.
Which is why you should never believe most of the case studies in advertising and marketing. No one really knows if anything is going to be a wild success, it's fair to say that there's some solid performances that do the job but are not the be and end all....and most of these follow some sort of pattern. But then then there is the 95% of campaigns that achieve nothing (which is why tracking studies are so important, even if they have little commercial impact, one can fall back on claimed brand impact). Created by the same organisations sometimes.
Losing the opportunity to learn from failure. Pretending we know what will create incredible success. When we don't really.
Just as most new brands fail, yet all sorts of organisations have tried and tested rules to 'guarantee success'.
Based on the stuff that worked, rather than being honest and learning from what brands failed.
Which flies in the face of how most great leaps forward in any discipline really happen. One step forward, two steps back, failure after failure showing what works by what doesn't work. Dyson wasn't the only one who thought of the bagless vacume cleaner, he was just the only one who stuck with developing prototype after prototype until he found one that worked.
Darwin's theory of evolution was only published when he realised Wallace had the same idea. They both had the same 'insight' because they were building on the success and failure of many, many great minds that came before them.
So next time you want to hire an agency if you're a CMO, ask them what their worst work was and what they learned from it.
Which is a good policy for hiring people come to think of it.
And don't bother with most case studies and certainly don't copy them, as any new formula for success, even if there was such a thing, won't be a formula for long, as everyone will be copying it too.
Or if you wan to flip it, Fox were so sure Star Wars would flop, they let George Lucas have the merchandising rights. We all all know what happened next.
You can't beat going out an meeting the people who you want your advertising stuff to influence.
I don't know if mirror neurons actually exist, but you must be aware of playing a song you love to someone and hearing it through their ears.
It's why I have a renewed love for Star Wars now I watch the films through my children's eyes, not to mention a fresh perspective on music as some of their favourite music come from ELO, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and The Jacksons (thanks to the Marvel Universe, God help me if the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 soundtrack has Queen in it). I love Led Zeppelin and have always has a soft spot for ELO, it's amazing to listen to them without the historical and cultural baggage that comes with both.
So two pieces of advice to stop yourself getting carried away with some trend or semiotic study when you're working on a project - not to mention a piece of content everyone thinks is funny, touching or thought provoking.
The first and most important is this. Before you start a project, go shopping for the thing you're selling (yes selling, all advertising is selling, it's the brand babbler that pretend otherwise, if a 'brand ad' isn't crafted to removing a barrier to sales, long or short term, it's an act of vanity and commercial vandalism), I mean go out into the real world, make the journey to the shops or wherever people can make a purchase in the real world and through the entire journey and experience, put down your bloody smartphone and soak up what's happening around you. Look at the people on the way, the folks in the actual store, listen to what they're talking about, take in what they are wearing and imagine what they're thinking and how they're feeling.
Then go to wherever people use the product of service. Go into Pizza Hut and decide for yourself how much people are 'Tasting Freedom'.
Go into the bar of an exclusive five star hotel (if they'll let you in) watch the people with more money than sense displaying the labels and decide for yourself how discrete modern luxury really is (that's what the trend spotters will try and tell you), imagine this target audience for a Bentley reacting to this...
Consider how much anyone really cares about a 'brand purpose'.
I guarantee you when you start building audience insight and helping shape some sort of communications, you'll have a better feel for what to do as you remember seeing the world through their eyes. Even better, take some creatives or whoever makes your agency's output with you.
Second piece of advice....do it again when you're a good way into development. Trust me, a campaign that will 're-cast the man of action archetype for young males' might seem as capable of re-writing the advertising lexicon when you leave a creative review and go straight to a gym, or watch a football match in the pub. You see the ideas through the eyes of your audience and automatically feel if it's any good.
If you get the chance, talk it through with someone roughly in the audience, it will be more beneficial than 'creative development research'.
If you want the science bit, the biggest brands get thought of in the most category entry points, be that around when the brand is used or when the brand is bought. The more you get a feel for what is really happening in both, the better.
Oh, and if you're clever and work on a brand that sells stuff you quite like, you claim your shopping or visit to a restaurant on expenses. Of course, if you're selling luxury cars or a lapdancing chain you might have some explaining to do, not just to your FD, but your partner.
Let's be honest, not everyone thinks there is a point to planners, strategists or whatever the job titles is these days.
Even in 'good' organisations, client or agency, there are suits, clients and creatives, media buyers and so on, all thinking they don't anyone else to so own the strategy bit.
Sometimes they have a point. The best creatives are brilliant planners, are the best suits and even clients.
Of course, in less good organisations, some don't see the point of strategy full stop but we'll agree to let that one go shall we.
Now some would say that strategy types are the ones who 'own the consumer' or 'target audience'. That was never true and still isn't, the research guys would claim this, the client head of insight would claim this.
Others would say it's about helping agencies doe their best work, which usually means post rationalising creative work or some sort of media plan, or content idea. It means helping the agency get award winning work through.
That isn't doing your job either. Of course, there is the data from the IPA that award winning work is more effective, but that's from a small base of case studies with the right econometrics, with a provable ROI effect that the client was happy to share. Agencies don't enter IPA awards unless it's effective work that is also coming with a story that will impress the judges.
Some might say it's keeping the client interested with new things to think about while making the agency output easy to buy. New things are unfamiliar, they're hard to sign off confidently, but this really harks back to the last point. And strategists can be trojan horses for novelty and fadism getting into client meetings if you're not careful.
So what's the point?
I think it's about cutting through the bullshit and provoking everyone to do the right thing for the client business, rather than what their biases tell them to do.
There is no one else with the scope, or the skill, to look at consumer research, cultural trends, the creative process, the client business culture, the agency culture, the actual task for communications, the dogma of best practise.........and chip away through all the extraneous rubbish to what the actual problem is, the best approach that solves is and then help shape the solution.
And no one else who can do it quicker....because you read and absorb more stuff than anyone else and constantly train yourself to be objective and practice challenging the subjectivity and bias of other while leaving them smiling.
No one else who doesn't get swept away by a brilliant creative idea that isn't actually relevant to the problem. In case you wonder what I mean, loads of folks use the Byron Sharpe assertion, that brands needs to be distinctive not differentiated, as an excuse for rampant shock and awe advertising, while conveniently forgetting that every piece of work needs to remove reasons not to buy and ensure that the brand is remembered in buying situations. They build awareness (maybe and usually prompted) rather than SALIENCE. That's why so many people talk about 'that great ad' but forget what brand it was for.
Or takes a tracking study seriously.
Or allows data to be the answer to everything.
The marriage if logic. emotion, common sense and humility you might say.
Everyone else has a specific job and to quote Mark Twain, give someone a hammer and all he sees is a nail. Your job is to help everyone see beyond what they do and make them all bigger than the sum of their parts.
Less a planner and more of a shaper, but shaper is a worse job title than planner I guess.
I was 13 or 14 when it came out, playing team tennis. I loved playing, I viscerally hated the culture in British tennis.Wear white, follow the rules, juniors always make way for seniors on the court and, worst of all, in lessons and team coaching, play like they did 40 years ago.
This ad represented everything I felt, and to be honest, everything I felt as a teenager. It was just the right time.
It helped sell a hell of a lot of overpriced tennis gear for Nike, but also made loads of young tennis players feel like they could take on the establishment. It didn't matter how you played, how you showed up, as long as performed and had a bloody good time doing it.
I think strategy folks could do with a hefty dose of ignoring 'the rules' in service of actually getting results too.
The dull arguments over brand models, including the latest fashion over 'purpose'.
TV is dead, TV is brilliant.
Outspend your market share, build fame.
And the new, equally constricting rules over big data.
It's really easy to hide behind the models and received wisdom and a lot harder to put your neck on the line, tear up the rules and try and do stuff that works .
But not only is that more stimulating and more satisfying, it will also create disproportionate success for you and your clients.
Fall for the latest thing. I know I’ve said don’t read advertising books, but I would say it’s worth reading Paul Feldwick’s ‘The Anatomy of Humbug’. Mostly because he doesn’t really tell you how advertising works, rather it depends on the brief and the client. But also because he shows that most, so called, leaps forward in advertising thinking, are really different riffs on the same stuff that came before. So don’t think that ‘rational product messaging’ is wrong, nor subliminal communications, or even brand led advertising, all are right, all are wrong. I like his analysis of Byron Sharpe’s thinking as ‘do lots of publicity’ which I guess means put PR at the heart of you thinking, but I think he misses the point. He ably argues that ‘showmanship’ that bit of magic is possibly the best way to give yourself a good chance of advertising in all its forms to work, but that’s kind of Byron Sharpe too – don’t bother to differentiate, just be distinctive and get noticed.
Even stuff like native is just an ‘advertorial’ which is kind of how advertising began. Just as ad funded programmes and content are not new, the reason soap operas got their names was that soap brands funded programming that lots of people would watch weekly.
Quote books or respected sources all the time at clients. They’re either read How Brands Grow by now or they don’t want to, you don’t look clever by reading a book, you add value by applying good thinking to client’s specific problems, then claiming it for your own. Take ‘reach the whole market’. Any idiot can reach the whole market, even with moderate budgets, it’s just it will be on really bad TV programme, display ads everyone ignores on awful platforms and other stuff that delivers big numbers but has the same impact as trying to knock out a heavy weight boxer with a feather.
Quote industry research as gospel. This goes for the IPA databank as well. The data is generalised and from a ludicrously biased and small sample. It’s funny how the same strategy folks who like to dismiss research love to quote the IPA, mostly because it fits with what they want the client to buy, while research involving real people tends to spoil the argument.
WARC are at it, with analysis of their prize entries. An even smaller sample of people who entered and post rationalised their work to try and win.
Look, I’ve written award winning papers, I’ve delivered case studies to clients. I can’t remember one I’ve done that didn’t either bend the truth, leave out data that didn’t support the argument or at least pretend the process was simple and linear. When mostly, myself and the team stumbled upon the core thinking after lots of false starts, the first presentation was in-conclusive and the final approved plan wasn’t a very different version of what was originally intended.
Expect anyone to work to a brief. Creatives, media planners, content strategists, media owners. All want to put their stamp on the work. In almost every case, a good brief should major on a great objective or task, rocket fuel for the people you are briefing to get to a great solution. It should rarely be the solution itself, especially slaving over a proposition that’s a brand line in disguise. The first instinct of any creative team will be to ignore it at all costs.
I suggest an exception might be media owners here, they have a habit of trying to ‘do the strategy’ and create work that’s nothing to do with the brief, perhaps here, you should get them to follow a constricting brief exactly. My own view is that you need them to buy into what you need, which means the usual trick for them (and indeed everyone) of making think it’s all their idea. The amount of value they will throw if they believe in the project can be staggering.
You are surrounded by experts, you should hope and, to be honest, expect, the final output will make your brief look very ‘first page’ and shaky. Which it will be.
Think Powerpoint is the point. Now, I’m not saying don’t do slides, unfortunately clients expect it in many cases. But do try and avoid them unless you really are making a presentation. But don’t do slides until you have a story with a maximum of three key points. If it’s all building into three key things you want people to remember, you’re on track. It’s worth approaching from the standpoint that for every slide you create a kitten gets shot (unless you hate cats, a fairy then). That said, ignore people who simply count the number of slides and tell you it’s too many, when they haven’t seen you actually present – it’s how they support what you SAY that should be how they’re judged, the deck is not what matters, it’s what YOU deliver as a whole.
I’ve written 200 page decks for a half hour presentation where every slide was a picture. I’ve delivered two -page decks for a three hour meeting.
And if you have a boss who just looks at the slide headlines, run away from your organisation fast. If that individual writes them forward, run even faster.
Don't forget, we're all in advertising unless we're on the client side, it's just cool to call it something else these days.
1. Only read marketing and brand stuff. If you only look at industry stuff, which is what everyone else tends to do, you’ll make the same kind of work as everyone else, which, again is what everyone else tends to do. It’s good to know this, but read as much about EVERYTHING as you can, great thinking tends to connect two things in a way no one else, re-combination if you like.
2. Not get to grips about the boring bits of your client’s business. In fact, let me correct that, there is no boring stuff. The more naïve folks on the twitterweb might go on here about solving business problems rather than marketing problems.
They are right, but the reality is that most clients don’t want you to solve business problems, that is there job – the good ones would rather talk about business objectives, but they are few and far between. I don’t mean the majority are bad clients, but there’s too much experience and baggage from years of media agencies only wanting to talk about media, creative agencies fetishizing the ‘brand’, PR folks talking about fluff and so on. If you want clients to talk to you about their business, talk to them about it first.
Read the annual reports, build relationships with the non-marketing folks, and in general, respond to marketing led briefs with marketing led solutions, on the face of it, but evidence your work with business reasons, not just consumer and brand reasons.
3. Blame clients for your, and the industry’s shortcomings. It’s not entirely the fault of clients they are all going for short term digital stuff they can tick, when ad and media agencies were perfectly happy for so long to join in with the tracking conspiracy….if the activity shifts tracking scores it has worked, no matter how people have actually behaved.
Or even worse, pretends IPA Awards really showcase effective campaigns and provide a bank of data to help others do better – rather than a vault of case studies that happened to use econometrics, that the client would sign off on and that would provide a ‘story’ to the industry.
There are three ways to deliver additional payback for a marketing budget – innovation, deals to get the media for less and then the stuff between…basically knowing what you’re doing, working to the right objective, finding the right audience, creative assets that build on what people already recognise about the brand, Fame strategy etc etc.
4. Take research and data at face value. Most research is done badly and analysed even worse. Sometimes it’s not of course, but the good stuff, even focus groups can useful if conducted in the right context – for example doing football research at a football ground – and with the right objectives. Just as big data can be good if you know what you’re looking for and you know how it was collected – for example, even a sample size of million from social media is usually hopeless for understanding what most people really do, because no one shows what they’re really like on social, unless you have male friends who post how much porn they’re watching.
Listen to your boss. Seriously, it’s a flaw of human nature that we only see and appreciate facts and experiences that fit with our world view and our opinions.
In other words, we all hate being wrong and miss out on amazing feedback and ideas that challenge what already think or know. In a work situation, the higher the stakes, the more stress and more likely views and ‘knowledge’ is unshakeable. There is nothing higher stakes in an agency than running it, you are seen be their because of your experience and judgement, therefore, most bosses will be keen to give advice, asked for or not and usually it will be wrong, based on their experience and inferior knowledge of the project…and it’s harder to change their mind.
So avoid sharing work with very senior bosses and if you have no choice, involve them early, be sneaky and ‘help’ them have the ideas you want and when you shoe them something different later on, if it is, help them believe it was their ideas all along. Same with senior clients, tissue sessions are great if you do them early enough. It’s not their fault though, if you manage not to get fired for disagreeing with your boss and eventually get their job, or move to client side, you’ll do just the same, because you’re human.
5. Not listen to your boss or the people around you. Perversely, you need listen to feedback and advice as much as possible, even your boss. Your boss might just be on to something now and again, although it’s more likely that your wider team and agency partners will (if they’re the kind of people who want to be nice and good rather than ‘win).
The best ideas are rarely the flashes of insight, and even great ideas end very different to how they started out. Dyson wasn’t the only one to think of the bagless vacuum cleaner, it’s just that he was the only one to keep working on it to make it fit for the market. So don’t sit waiting for ideas to come, start working and open if your work to as much feedback as possible (apart from your boss) and kicking and screaming, the good stuff will emerge, phoenix like from the ashes of your very bad start.
Which also means don’t be precious about good ideas when they arrive, open them up to feedback, it’s the constant ‘tested to perfection’ mentality that creates standout ideas and work. It’s also why agencies that fetishise the brief, creative, media or otherwise, or clients who reject responses that are not on-brief are like runners cutting off one leg, they’re missing the chance for truly standout work -and as for dinosaur organisations that still bow and scrape to the creatives, or the TV department, or clients who never question the sophistry of brand consultancies..well you know what happened to the dinosaurs.
Assume you are not in advertising. It doesn't matter if you work in PR, digital marketing, content (ha ha), sponsorship or even 'native' you are in advertising, you are making every effort to get someone's product or service in front of people, to change their relationship with that product. You may be a goalkeeper, centre forward, midfield, sweeper or even manager, but you are still in football.
Assume you are an artist, a philosopher, anthropologist, comedian, behavioural psychologist or Stephen Speilberg. Depending on your job title, you might be a little of some of these, but the difference is, your job is to use these practices to sell things. it d
It doesn't matter if your five minute slow motion film of dancing mermaids recalls Fellini at his finest moment, if it doesn't get your client closer to a commercial result, you've wasted your client's money.
Rely on a process. There is a conspiracy among most large agencies of a variety of specialisms that a proprietary process will reliably produce outstanding work. All processes are variations on what everyone else does and only serve to make all the work variations on the theme too. It's about hard work, having an open mind and chipping away.
Believe you're better than the competition. Most agencies go to clients with the same sort of strategy and idea (see above). The trick is to make them want to buy yours because it feels different, or because they like you more.
Believe clients like you behaving like a dick. Some of the very best agencies still believe clients like them to be cool. Which is mostly true, since clients work in proper offices doing a proper job, without pink cows in receptions and concrete tables. But, some of those agencies , who create brilliant work, believe being cool means being objectionable. Some clients will accept hateful treatment if the work delivers results, but will fire you as soon as you mess up -and eventually you will. Lasting relationships are built on great work, but also mutual respect and even affection, even in these procurement led days, when you mess up, clients liking you means you get forgiven, for a while at least. It's the same working with other agencies, as soon as you make a mistake, if you've been horrific, they'll be happy to stab you in the back.
Not being nice. See point 6, but this applies to you personally and the people you work with and the people you work for. We've all worked with and for people who can work the system without being any good, or people who are good but treat the people around them like dirt. We've all worked in places where bullying, sexism and presenteeism are rife. These people eventually get found out. Once again, the job is too hard not to make a mistake, that's when you need people who have got your back, if not, expect a sharp knife between the shoulder blades. It's a small business, people talk, makes sure they say nice things.
Someone asked me recently if I know anything about how to do research. Which was funny, because when I started out learning to be a planner (I still call myself that) one of the first things I learned was how to get to grips with the research tools we had back then.
Datasets like TGI (no touchpoints then), the specifics of quant research and how to manage, pre-testing (know thine enemy) but also conduct your own qual research. I could still get away with moderating focus groups now, although I hope you, like me, would rather carry out primary research that’s a little more useful.
A little while back, experienced planning folks use to bemoan new young turks joining agencies and getting to grips with idea creation and executional tweaking rather than understanding how to manage research. It’s fair to say we had loads of folks with brilliant opinions with little to back them up.
Of course, then came digital strategists, media folks doing content strategy and now, in our present day, an ocean teaming with Big Data. To the point where I’m seeing, perversely, a huge bunch of planning and strategy folks with lots of evidence and no opinion.
Sorry, opinion is a dreadful word, I mean instinct. In fact instinct is wrong too, thanks to our behavioural bias our instincts have shit for brains. I mean judgement.
Let’s think about this. What is research these days?
We still have plenty of organisations using traditional qual and quant, with planning types staying well away. Planners were invented to not just defend agencies from the tyranny of bad research, but to use research to make better work. It seems that we’ve gone back to letting research dictate again.
Even more challenging, we’re mobilising against Big Data, trying to own that, but also being totally subservient to it also. And not questioning nearly enough.
It’s fair to say that people now leave digital trails suggesting what they do, what they like and what they think. But people are not reliable digitally, not just in focus groups.
Take social mentions, sentiment and generally platform behaviour. No one is communicating what they really think, they’re communicating what they think is the version of themselves people want to hear.
There are few pictures of Mums about to have a nervous breakdown because their baby won’t stop crying, but millions of shots of little Mummy with her angelic little angel having the time of their life.
The most common words wives post about their husbands tend to overwhelmingly positive. But google data shows the most common words associated with searched around husbands are words like ‘mean’.
But even google searches, one of the few places where people don’t fib, are not reliable. They are short term behavioural signals and they don’t capture totally what influences people.
In other words, relying just on big data might well tell you what people do, it might tell you what influences them, but it rarely tells you both at the same time and it’s mostly short term. Just like a decent planning knows how to question and shape more traditional research, the best approach to big data is to ask what it’s not telling you.
Imagination, originality and, well magic is what still builds brands, even the digital ones- Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google? They’re all investing in emotional brand advertising.
Imagination beings me to Netflix, data led entertainment. Take the wildly successful House of Cards – built from data that lots of people like political drama and Kevin Spacey. I enjoyed Stranger Things, but you can see the calculating data behind it, the love of content from the 80’s, Speilberg tropes, Goonies, ET et al plus Twin Peaks. Like a really good covers band, familiar, much loved riffs put together into something that doesn’t fire the imagination like any of the originals did – that 20% of magic.
Programmed entertainment can be really good, like to scarily life like sex robots they’re developing, will never quite match the real thing.
So what does modern research look like?
Like it always has. You can’t beat going out to meet real people in the actual environment you are trying to influence.
It’s just we have more tools.
Sometimes, that can mean ‘meeting them’ online too.
But sometimes SatNAv gets you lost and without a decent sense of direction or ability to read maps, you're pretty fucked.
It means being clear if you want to find out what they do or what influences them – how you find these things out will be different.
It means getting to grips with a world of more tools and people using and delivering them that are not planners.
Basically, like when planners were first invented, it’s about using research to inform your judgement and great better, evidence- based solutions.
I read something in the Observer at the weekend about young British people. I can’t find it and I guess you won’t bother following the link anyway
It was about a real tension and contradiction on their lives and how they go about culture, as we all know, or I hope we do, really great brands try and resolve tensions in culture.
That’s the problem with pen portraits and segmentations, or God forbid, focus groups, they try and reduce things down to simple, one dimensional observations.
Real life just isn’t like that.
If it was, I wouldn’t crave being by myself on my bike after a great holiday with the kids…..and yet miss them so much I can’t think straight if I’m away with work for more than three days.
Anyway, this article persuasively set out that the ‘hard work, growing up young, neo puritans’ side you will have heard about is live and kicking, but so is the instant gratification, show my life on Instagram, ‘Everything Now’ ‘Infinite Content’ without being content (I like Arcade Fire) side of their lives too. At once down to earth and tremendously floaty.
Who, buy the way, pity my generation for having such a boring up bringing without Wi Fi.
These two polar- opposites are real life. There’s power in contradiction, play in it.
I’m sure you’ve heard the children playing football metaphor, the one about how everyone just chases the same ball
It’s usually used by creative folks to show clients the need for distinctive creative strategy, my media agencies to show the need for thinking harder about media channels where no one else is playing…..well you get the picture.
The thing is, it’s happening more and more to agencies themselves. Creative agencies finding it hard to sell ads, so moving into the world of content, digital strategy and even media planning, while the media folks continue to move into content, pretending that data is the only answer to everything, tech and all sorts of special services, from creative designed for programmatic to the kind of partnership planning previously owned by the PR folks. Meanwhile PR folks are coming up behind with all of the above, with the advantage of knowing about influence.
And digital agencies continue to pretend that digital media is still a ‘thing’.
And the pace will only increase.
Now, you’ll be used to agencies squabbling over territory, with the familiar land grabs over core communications strategy, earned digital and the like. In the past, that was because most people in agencies never learned how to play nice. Creative agencies are possibly the biggest culprits, but I’ve worked with some very aggressive media agencies too.
But now, the battle isn’t about egos or landgrabs, it’s going to be about survival. Clients can’t be bothered to manage lots of agencies who don’t get on or try and do the same thing, it’s all a bit too complex these days and what we all do was only ever 10% of clients’ world in any case.
So we’ll winners from the organisations who can deliver great, neutral advice and ideas, nimble enough to be expert in a number of, what to be used to be known a disciplines. Planning, media and creative specialists, the consultancy folks if you like, who can’t think across the whole marketing piece will be seen like a football manager who is only any good at managing the midfielders.
There will be a small but robust group of specialists in implementation, probably the stuff that can’t be done by robots…great video production and imagery for example.
Hopefully researchers who can work across data science and ethnography, surely despite the need for arse saving in clients companies and agencies alike, we’ll see the death rattle of artificial qual like focus groups…or claimed quant survey only analysed on a short term basis (not to mention social sentiment being seen as anything but a picture of how people want to be seen, rather than what they do), I bet there’s some next generation insight gatherers who could make a lot of money.
This should be great news if you want to be stimulated, challenged and be prepared to be flexible, if you’re good or want to be. If you prepared to build value rather than follow the latest trends.
Because the thing about chasing the ball is that eventually it’s no fun and very few actually get to kick it, let alone score.
It's good being in a job that's about people. What is more interesting than the wonderful, scary, frustrating, contradictory human race? The ones in real life, not the pen portraits I mean.
It's also a constant challenge because while basic human behaviour, tech and stuff means that the culture ad folks are really competing with (not the market) is shifting faster than ever. Certainly the media, paid and otherwise we exploit to try and reach them is evolving right in front of our eyes.
And the pace is only getting faster.
Knowing when an how to adapt is the trick, and when and how not to change, but adapt we must.
The industry, your organisation and most most importantly, you.
You'll find if you don't keep your eyes and ear open that sometimes your employer has become obsolete and you go down with them.
Sometimes you wake up and see you have become obsolete in your organisation. Like the moment someone switches off a fridge and you only then notice the buzz, all of a sudden, something has been happening under your nose, your place has moved on, you haven't just like that, you don't matter any more.
This shouldn't frighten you, it should excite you. If you're a planner, wisdom rather than information (data!!!) will always matter, as will the ability to look at things in the way others don't. But how you apply that, the tools you use and who you work with is, and will continue to constantly shift. You won't get bored and if you're one those who can embrace change and also keep core competence, you'll have a fine future.
In other words, keep soaking up stuff from the world around you like always.
But keep a sharp eye on yourself, your specialism and your employer. Sometimes they need to change, sometimes you need to change, sometimes other places have magically evolved into the perfect place for you, where you're at and where you want to go.
Keep moving, like a great white shark, you'll be fine, its only when you decide to stop moving forward that the problems start.
You may have watched Finding Nemo, you may have liked it (your kids will if you have them). It's one of the most successful animated movies of all time.
It nearly flopped.
Previously, Pixar relentlessly put in an open feedback loop, on all elements of the script development of all projects. That's right, one of the most successful creative company of our times have more in common with Team Sky than you might think. Marginal gains, relentless, little improvements of all tiny aspects leading to a game changing whole. Think about it, all aspects of the creative process open to honest criticism. In fact, with it built in.
They tried to streamline the process for Nemo, and it bombed in every audience pre-test. It was only when they went back to the constructive criticism that the genius movie began to take shape.
Compare that to most agencies, creative, media or whatever...the worship of the creative types or the grand strategists, the obsession with the proposition, the simplified comms strategy or the purity of the game changing creative idea.
The worship of the beginning, the leap of insight (or the re-hashing of the obvious in many cases).
Another comparison, Lord Dyson and his game changing new hoover. He wasn't the only one to have the insight about bagless vacuums. He was just the only one who could get it to market, could get it to work. After the insight, he relentlessly prototyped until the game changing machine evolved, emerged if you like. Flashes of insight are fine, brilliant ideas that word in the real word seem to require lots of hard an failure built into the system.
The Japanese have a phrase for this, Kaizen...graduallist. Everyone in a Nissan factory is tasked with spotting little ways they can improve the whole.
You could say that proper brilliance is a little like Pointillism, a fantastic piece of work is actually made of of lots of little dots that gradually make up the bigger picture.
So, thinking about marketing services agencies that tend to pride themselves on great ideas, originality and obsession with the best work. Perhaps the truth is that they obsess with great initial ideas, but miss a trick in making them truly the best work, because they're not stress tested enough. Also, once campaigns are signed off and they get made, it could well be that they should still have room to develop.....rather than 'don't fuck with the idea'.
Maybe the lead agency, who tends to define the core strategy and creative, should welcome early feedback from partner agencies and clients alike.
God help us, maybe the tissue session in actually a good thing.
Now before you object and tell me about the magic of true creativity, I give you the myth of great poets, the romantic legends of yore. Most of them took copious amount of drugs, not to alter their mind and dredge of insights from the ether. They took drugs that let them work harder, so they could chip away at okay prose and gradually transform it into the stuff of legend.
I want to do this partly because decent media planning is a lot tougher than many think.
Partly because today's customer avoids brand stuff more than ever, and chasing them with re-targeting and spooky Facebook ads than know who are and what you've done are not the way to go.
Partly because good channel planning works with good brand and creative thinking. There's too much infighting between creative and media agencies. The more good thinking that goes into how to reach people BEFORE making ads and stuff, or at least, working together, the better for everyone.
And finally, I've learned a lot moving into media agency land from creative world, this is much of what I've learned, only fair to share with more creative minded planners, as those jobs continue to fade away, this might be a start of a Plan B.
So let’s start with a cliché that happens to be true.
Brands don’t exist in a bubble, they are part of culture and part of life. As culture changes, so therefore do brands and how they try and connect to people. Because in reality, brands are mostly a way to help us get through life without thinking too hard, perhaps the golden rule here is humility, assuming that no one really cares. Even the Guccis and Nikes of this world are not as important as your friends or the new Star Wars release, they’re not thought about that much and compete with other status symbols or tools for sporting confidence.
It’s also about behaviour, not just eyeballs. The context of where you decide to try and connect with people, your media ‘body language’ really matters. Just as it’s doubtful you would try and chat someone up in McDonalds, but likely you would try in a bar, when and where you decide to do things can matter as much as the creative work. Don’t believe the simplification that it’s just about reach, that’s the same as saying you just need to make people ‘aware of the brand’. I’m very aware of Donald Trump but believe me, I’m not a fan.
Now, like I said, life and culture changes. When I was growing up in the 80s there were four UK TV channels, then it was just the case of deciding over papers, magazine. Outdoor and radio…and direct mail of course. No wonder media folks were always down the pub, it was bloody easy. But culture moves on, people want more choice, they’re used to watching and reading what they want when they want.
It’s very, very complex. You can reach someone anywhere if you want. But don’t discount the unwritten deal you’ve made with people. They still know that if they watch TV for free, or at a small price, the cost is being exposed to advertising. The same with commercial radio, the same with the price of print and digital newsbrands. They don’t get that with social and also outdoor, which is polluting your out and about. Spam is still spam.
All that complexity requires pretty hard questions to cut through what you could do and get to what you should do.
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?
The when and where become critical as people control their own schedule. But ‘how’s is just as important as the channels themselves.
Channel planning is about how to influence what happens in people heads, not just ‘reaching them’. I can ‘reach’ some very good looking women in high end bars if I want, trust me, I can’t influence them to talk to me.
So you need:
AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING
KILLER INSIGHTS THAT UNLOCK THE BRIEF
THE ROLE FOR COMMUNICATIONS
CHANNEL IDEAS: CONTEXT & CONDUCT
THEN PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER
So…to audience understanding.
It’s quite simple and quite hard. You need to select an audience depending on how they interact with the category, your brand and even life.
This is based on work you should have done already…..what are you actually trying to do? What is the barrier to brand growth?
Then you drill into who this in among and the right audience to change this.
One of the most famous examples of car advertising was this Skoda campaign – the audience wasn’t just Skoda considerers, as they were already okay with the brand, it was rejecters who were stopping them by laughing at them.
Look at this famous economist campaign that was mostly outdoor. These days some idiots would tell you to do a tightly targeted display campaign aimed at people interested in current affairs and over a certain net worth. But this only worked because it was wasteful – intentionally seen by the public to ‘celebrate economist readers in front of the less enlightened’.
Sometimes it’s removing barriers. Sky TV used to promote movies and kids channels to the partners of the men who mostly buy for the sport so they could get sign off.
Old Spice here targets both men AND women. Buyer and consumer.
As a rule of thumb, don’t make the mistake of replicating the creative target too tightly. That should be tightly defined and, in many ways, conceptual. You want to build a picture in the audience’s mind of ‘who buys this’ – something usually a little aspirational. Media is most efficient when it reaches as much of the buying market as it can. Persil Mums never really washed whiter and loads of fat over 35 men buy Lynx. In FMCG, if your target audience varies more than 3% from the category profile, you’re being too narrow.
Put another way, is your audience big enough to answer the brief? Get the client to share any awareness to consideration to sales data they have, look at past work they’ve done on how advertising build awareness (I should say salience really that’s the only thing that matters). Look at the frequency of purchase and a whole host of other things. But to be honest, build the broadest audience you can afford.
Look at their lives, what is the most relevant place for the brand to show up (even TV, ITV does the numbers in the UK but if you want to appear cool and ‘discovered’ look at other channels and more innovation).
Consider that brands that connect closer to the point of purchase convert more – but also consider if you want context for the category buying behaviour or the creative idea. What I love about Old Spice is that it does both….the buying conversation and creative conversation are both about women buying things for men. Think about that, think the fact there is no such thing as a brand ad, only communication that addresses reasons people don’t buy. Even if that’s brand awareness, just because it doesn’t’ occur to them, doing stuff that isn’t relevant to the brand, no matter how much it’s recalled won’t cut the mustard.
The real task for us all is getting into the front of mind in as many situations as possible, that won’t happen if they don’t remember the brand and just remember the ad, and it won’t even then unless they can connect the ad to how they behave or feel about the category.
So, in a world where the audience filters our more brands than, don’t fall for the hubris of brand first, embrace people and go audience first – at least for channel planning.
How can you add value to their experience rather than interrupt or make it worse. Yes, it’s true that advertising people don’t like will work if you reach them often enough (based on shorter term metrics), but stuff people like can be more effective by nearly 11 times according to the IPA…and decent econometrics shows great advertising pays back over 3-5 years. The further out from exposure, the more folks remember only how they felt. We all tend to do and buy the things that feel right, not what are right in a logical sense.
Now, the best way to unlock the brief is still a killer insight. Doesn’t have to be a consumer one though, it just has to be an observation that you know will make people go, “Oh yeah!” At once obvious and refreshing.
This is rarely a stat. And while we’re at it, logic and evidence rarely work with clients and certainly not your buyers. And insight gets into the heart, where most decisions are really made. I don’t mean that brand love rubbish, I mean you take notice and makes you feel something that lasts in the memory.
And no bloody generalisations…like ‘young people like music’. No point using insights everyone else is talking about, like the fact young people are very serious minded and hard work is cool. Everyone knows this.
For example, few brands seem to cotton on to the fact that British Mums are sick of the protective parent label and are sick of the knowing, arch eye-browed resourceful one who sorts out the issues created by bumbling Dads. In fact, they hate their partners being portrayed this way. It may well be that a brand celebrating Dads rather than dissing them might work well with Mums.
A powerful observation is that stats mean nothing to people in charity campaigns. Most charities try to use ONE person as an emotional example, but the truth is, most stuff hits home when it happens to someone you really care about. I think this is fascinating for brands that sell stuff too, it’s how celebrity endorsement works.
Once you’ve got a tight insight, you need to have a clear role for communications. It will set your media (and maybe beyond) behaviour. It will drive direction and drive ideas.
It should never be something general…like ‘celebrate life’. It should be specific, audience driven and create a clear context for the media and other activity.
Instead of celebrate life it could be ‘shake up young people’s view of the world by delivering the joy of life outside the filter bubble’ (I’d like to do this by the way).
Or even better, connect with today’s young fogies when they want to remember they’re young.
THEN you can look at channels.
Some of this should be based on what, when and how the audience consumes media and life of course.
But it should be informed by challenge you are addressing and how comms is dealing with it.
The filter bubble idea above means you need to look at the times your audience goes outside the filter bubble…..when they’re engaging in mass media that isn’t ‘pre-selected’, when they’re looking to discover stuff. You might want to also want to ‘do it’ rather than promote it. That might mean the entire media plan is built on the element of surprise.
You could go further and build integrated idea around the fact we adopt new things that are just familiar enough. Have you seen ‘I’ve never seen Star Wars’. The entire media plan could be built on this premise.
But arriving at your list of channels and what to do with them requires rigour and hard questions.
Start again with you role for comms and turn that into three specific tasks (more than that is just a list, less is too narrow).
For the filter bubble thing that might be:
Land the idea where people come to together outside the filter bubble – TV, VOD, MAYBE out of home and mass experiential events
Broaden their horizons when they’re in discovery mode – search, Youtube, influencers
Deliver alternatives within the bubble – takeovers of genre specific radio, Spotify, Amazon
Narrow down channels and what to do with them with these questions:
Where can we be relevant? If we’re interrupting can we reward the attention? Are we able to be specific to the channel we’re using? What will people think/feel/do as a result?
And don’t forget looking at context. From selling a new water brand when people are most thirsty, to landing a new brand idea when it will have the most emotional punch.
You could even be topical, but in a new way. In the UK, the most likely birth times are September/October. Much of this is down to conception on New Years Eve, or in boring January where you’ve nothing else to do. Great context for condom brands, pregnancy test brands and also Pampers. Creatively fertile as well as media context.
If you want an over 35 married man to out on a ‘male’ get together, be that footie, the cimema or even laser quest, he needs sign off from the other half and it needs to be agree weeks in advance.
Then pull that all together into a simple one pager. Media and comms strategy needs to be complex these days because the environment is complex. But if you can’t explain in 30 seconds, you haven’t got something water tight.
To for example:
We need to get our brand tried by under aged 25 people
The problem is that they only try things from within their filter bubble – more of the same
So that means we need to shake up their view of the world by showing them the world outside of their feeds
We’ll use TV that’s big enough to reach them and cool enough to be credible to land the idea outside the bubble – contextual ads to objects and situations in the programming that inspire them to try just a little outside their comfort zone (even I like one Queen song and I hate Queen)
We’ll partner with Google so that in search and Youtube, they get served familiar but exciting alternatives just outside their comfort zone, endorsed by video influencers
We’ll broker a partnership between the Guardian (most trusted under 25 news brand), Netflix and Spotify to deliver free non-subscription content.
Finally, show them how the channels will work together, what the phasing is. This is best done by talking through the experience from the consumer perspective.
No one knows what they're doing in this industry. That Global CEO who looks like they have got their shit together? Not a clue. Not a scooby.
Seriously, the more senior you get, the better you get at making folks believe you know what you're doing.
Just like the bigger and more venerable the agency, or even client, the more skilled they've become at inventing rules and practices to make it look easy and predictable.
It's not. Advertising and marketing are just parts of the wider discipline of business and economics. Now you find me an economist who looks like they know what they're doing.
Most ad campaigns are, at best solid. Most don't get entered into IPA Effectiveness Awards. And yet the IPA Databank is venerated as some kind of list of Golden Rules. Simply, it's another way to look like we all know what we're doing.
That's why, for an industry built on ideas and new thinking, we're horribly conservative. No one wants the apple cart upset, you know, look like the rules and guidelines are great, when everyone works in chaos and then makes it fit the accepted wisdom.
You might think this is dispiriting.
You shouldn't.
Byron Sharpe kind of helps, but even there. the data often looks to fit the argument. The great disruption is beginning to turn into accepted received wisdom.........we all need a story to sell after all.
So yes, TV is dead, or it isn't. Programmatic is not to trusted, or it is. Young people hate advertising, until they do. Media agencies are going to be extinct when robots take over.
The reality right now is people know what's going on less than ever.
Which means every person working in this industry has the chance to invent the future. In fact, no they don't. They have the chance to do what the hell they like.
The role of planning folk was never be the voice of the consumer really, it certainly isn't now there are more kinds of planners then there are grains of sand in the Sahara Desert. It was, and is, to get the best ideas out of others and make those ideas palatable and seem predictable to client partners.
Because, Back to that Why Things Fail book. The best chance of avoiding extinction is to continually innovate - but as a rule, perhaps you should ignore that too!
In other words we're all planners now.Who's have thought that?
It shows you how the British are looking for any excuse to indulge these days, in a world where sobriety is cool.
It shows how parents are under pressure to perform like never before. Have a prefect party, the kids dressed just so, the perfect image on Faceook.
This picture though was on our own trick or treat run. A pumpkin the size of a car. to out do the other decorations on the street. It's a bit like advertising these days.
There's a truth that folks are getting wise to the act, especially young folks. They're becoming adept at filtering out the annoying dross. Like the 'impression' some media agency will count as a hit, which in reality is an annoying display ad that may as well not be there.
Or the massive grandstanding campaigns that still happen.
Walking down a street at Halloween with the increasingly , competitively, decorated houses is like the desperation of brands with ever bigger grandstanding efforts to get the attention, with this picture the apotheosis.
All the more ignored because of its blunt desperation. Like women avoiding those overdressed guys in nightclubs furtively dancing with the white man's overbite, people can smell the desperation.
Once upon a time, even when you could buy interruption, as opposed to the JWT fear model (Domestos ads let you know about the nasty germs in your toilet, scaring you into buying), some opted for charm and intelligence as opposed to calculation or brute force. Maybe we need to think about going back to that a bit.
It's amazing how folks talk about post truth and fake news, because when it comes to persuading people, facts have always been a bit useless.
Fox Mulder from the X-Files was on to something. It's about the desire for something to be right, no more, no less.
It's a bitter truth about people that we make up our mind and then find the facts to fit. Blame evolution, no one had time to evaluate the evidence of being eaten by a Sabre Tooth Tiger, they just saw big teeth and claws and legged it.
Mostly, we decide things based on a long build up of experience, frame of reference and general world view. Facts are simply used to fit what we already believe or what we already want.
Worth thinking about when you navigate your own life, you won't change people's minds however good your evidence, in fact, you'll probably reinforce their beliefs. It takes a much longer build up of experiences, references and general change of world view...and changing how they feel before you change what they believe.
Which makes the role of a planner a hell of a lot more complicated than the textbooks would have you believe. Most research is, of course, a waste of time because what people do is very different to what they say.
But the role of research in dirty planning is also a waste of time. You know, making the research make the ideas, plan or whatever easy to buy. Because if the facts don't fit with what the client believes, they'll reject your thinking. Just as creatives, media buyers, suits or whoever else will reject your carefully developed, insight based strategy and briefing if it's at odds with what they have in mind.
It also means the role of value propositions in advertising, and reasoned arguments in general are waste of time with target audiences. No will believe you if they want to.
In other words, you have to be a lot more cunning.
The role of a planner and the role of most advertising is making people want to believe things, or think things without knowing they do. Clients, consumers, everyone.
Don't make the mistake of finding out what people think and then trying to change their mind, make it easy for them by finding out what they WANT to believe, or what they want to do, and making that fit your own agenda.
It's why most advertising works in the long term. It's not just that people are light buyers and so on, it's that changing what people think and how they feel about something takes time.
Or in the case of short term response stuff, getting the hell out the way and getting people who have already decided to buy to do it now.
It's why the most efficient predictor or advertising effectiveness is likeability. If you really like the ads, you'll then find the facts to fit why you want to buy stuff.
It's why borrowed interest, cultural appropriation and sponsorship can be so powerful. If it's familiar and fits with what we know, but retains just enough novelty, we'll give it a go.
Of course, now I've told you all this, you'll want to believe the opposite.
In this industry, you'll get told no more than yes. You'll get all sorts of knock backs.
A lot of the time it won't be fair. That's because there is not such thing as THE right thing to do, there is no such thing as an unarguable logic. There are only half truths in research, patterns in data and people's world view.
You'll get made redundant probably. People will get promoted above you.
Three options....
Give up and do something else.
Pick yourself up, ignore everyone and follow your own challenging path.
Pick yourself and forensically understand what went wrong so it never happens again. Don't pretend when it goes well it was all perfect either.
Some people get to the top through route two with a great strength of will and even more luck. But they fizzle out, it's knackering fighting everyone all the time.
Most of the people who get somewhere follow path three. They know stuff wasn't fair, but they learn they could have manipulated events and people to get another result (for example, creatives will always ignore the brief and try and do the opposite, there's a lot to be said for getting them to think of stuff for themselves).
They also learn to discern when actually, it was totally fair and they were not up to scratch. This always the hardest, it's much easier to blame everything but your own approach, sub-standard work or sometimes even lack of talent.
Believe me I know, I was told more than once I would never cut it as a great account man and chose to ignore the advice, failing twice before I realised I should be a planner. It was easier to get angry than to get real.
Anyway, you end up with two kinds of successful agency folk.
The first is the incredible operator who can read people and situations and always knows what buttons to push and what not to. They know they are not the best at the craft skills but manage to surround themselves with great people, get the best out of them and recognise their contributions. They're usually fully aware they're not the best and try to make the most of themselves.
The second is the craftsperson who has chipped away at the big rock of their talent, learning from each project, what worked, what didn't, what got great things to happen and what got in the way. Confident of course, they're never arrogant and ever ready to listen to others and bang their own heads against a brick wall to turn good into great. They might be shy, but learn to let their passion for their work shine out and infect others. They usually think they're nowhere near as good as they really are, so always end up doing great stuff because they try harder....and never look like a show off either.
Some bastards are combination of both.
One thing both have in common is that they've learned to be resilient, to welcome knock backs and, above all else, never ever lose their cool.
One tip for getting there.
No one, I mean no one, knows what they're doing. Everyone burns inside wondering what on earth they're really doing. This isn't physics, it's not even law where there are rules and truths for everyone to conform to. This job is about influencing people to want things they don't really need - unpredictable human beings.
Throw in the messiness of culture and there are no rules, simply theories that sometimes produce great results but often fail too. It's quite liberating to always sympathise with the individual who is ruining your life at this precise moment, rather than want to eviscerate them, know they're like you too, they haven't got a clue (even if they don't know it sometimes). Think about what's going inside - what is really driving them, what are they afraid of, how has their day been going?
It can be hard sometimes to empathise with a target audience. Agency folk live in bubble most of the time, but even those with some feel for real life can struggle to connect with their bullseye customer.
For example, I used to work on haircare brand aimed at fashion forward women. I'm a bloke with no hair and no sense of style at all.
Many women I know don't understand why men think football is life or death.
It would be hard for most blokes to get their heads around handbags that cost hundreds of pounds or dollars.
But it's not that hard. Our surface backgrounds and motivations may be different, but to quote the Dad in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' some of us may be apples, some may be oranges, but we are all fruit.
The basic needs and motivations of human beings do not change, if you can find the find the right frame frame of reference, you can get into the heads of anyone.
For example, for a bloke to understand women's relationship with handbags, which is all about the right label and specific design making you feel a certain way about yourself and displaying status to others, it might be worth thinking stuff in your life that does the same thing. We all seek and display status, it's basic being human. Maybe think about the overpriced trainers you are wearing and how you decided to buy them, or maybe even a car if you're that way inclined (some bags cost the same).
Just as a women might want to think about a bloke and football by understanding how it feels when the girls get together. We're all social beings, we need to belong, men don't have that in the same way, they need football as glue. That might be one angle.
For the haircare thing, I happened to think about football because I know both are about fitting in with complex rules and codes you need understand. I also thought about how it felt to lose it (not a tool for all of you of course). Men is part of bloke's confidence as much as a women's, you just don't have to bother with it the same, but the crushing realisation it was going I thought was the equivalent of a bad hair day.
So...
Think about what you're selling.
Think about what basic human need it fulfills (they all do in some way)
Think of something in your life that performs the same task. What does it mean to you? Why and how do you buy it? What is the decision making process?
Works for me anyway.
Great for presenting too ,think it's the MC Saatchi model, but steal away.
Consumer truth +universal human truth + brand/product truth = core thought
This may well be THE iron law of advertising, media stuff and brands.
It sorts out how to manage people. Make sure they feel like you have their back, provide guidance of course, but people in modern organisations crave autonomy.They also want to feel part of a higher purpose. So let them do what they can, make them feel they're part of something they care about that's achieving stuff they couldn't do alone.
Not to mention, we're all working faster and haven't the time to duplicate work. Most importantly, having folks operate just at the edge, or even just outside of their comfort zone is the most stimulating for them and how they'll progress and learn the quickest. We all want 'mastery' too, the sense of accomplishment, the joy of doing something well.
Sometimes it's quicker to 'just do it yourself' but it's a false economy.
This iron law also neatly skewers the folks who think consumers are stupid and need to be spoon fed messages and overly simple ad constructs. When people need to hold multiple plot points together in Eastenders or your country's equivalent soap, you really don't need to do their thinking for them and simplify stuff down to banality. No one wants to work hard as decoding cryptic advertising, but a Howard Gossage said, "When baiting a mousetrap with cheese, leave room for the mouse".
It answers the dilemma of 'content' 'brand experiences' and 'ad funded programming'.
All this has a role. But don't make stuff for people they can get elsewhere, which us usually better. That's why it's normally better to work with people already doing it well, be that people already making great content people like media owners, vloggers or whatever...but even here, what have you got they might want? Why on all earth would they want to make it for you? Above and beyond paying your way into culture, you need to add to it.
It informs challenger brand mentality. People are organising themselves these days, sometimes they just need a catalyst. Rather than helping people (or pretending to) how can we empower THEM to achieve what they want. Connect them to people like them in a way social media might not be right now.
Or at least move them to do or buy something they wouldn't usually. Make them think, provoke a reaction.
I always use The Old Spice guy as an example (sorry). It's hugely funny, entertaining advertising, much of the television programming (or YouTube drivel) it interrupted isn't as good. But there's a bigger tick - it provokes men and women to think a little about masculinity and the rules of their relationship.
This simple rule also questions 'brand purpose'. So many brands decide they want to do a variation on 'make the world a better place'. Not only is usually made up and not true, someone is already doing it much better.
It crucifies planners who decide to interfere in the creative process. Or media agencies who wade into creative agency business, or bloody ad agency planners who think they can plan media. Be very, very sure you are adding something that people genuinely want, or if they don't want it (let's face it, they don't) it's better than where they're currently at, or at least adds to it.
Creatives who think they can do strategy - of course they can, but it's usually very biased to something that will win an award or 'open on a palm fringed beach'.
Media owners who think they're ad agencies.
Propositions as thinly veiled campaign lines. Creative starters. Channel recommendations in a creative presentation. Content ideas in a media presentation. We're all at it aren't we?
Agencies telling clients their job, clients telling agencies their job. There's a comfortable overlap in the best relationships, but so many client briefs are really a solution, or even a series of orders with an unrealistic budget. So many responses to brief challenge that brief because the business context doesn't free up the work the agency wants to make, or fit the deal the agency has in place.
Most advertising in all it's modern forms is still interruption. Most new innovation is chasing people ever more sneakily as they avoid ads. In many cases, that means 'native' ads, where we actually give up on actually being able to make people care and produce stuff specifically designed to add nothing at all. Even re-targeting that shows you the product you looked at 30 seconds ago - if people wanted to look at it again, they're perfectly capable of doing so.
Yep, Never Do for Others What They Can Do For Themselves. Perhaps the only rule that matters (apart from don't listen to social media planners).
What I do know, I put into one little guide for a couple of people, intended for presenting in the real world, not the imaginary one that exists in the case studies and most industry advice.
Anyway, for better or worse, here it is......
IS IT A PRESENTATION THAT’S REQUIRED?
Be sure what is really required is a presentation. If you want (or the client wants) a discussion, or there is less than 5 people in the room, you really need a meeting and probably a proposal or word document. Use powerpoint if you have visuals you need everyone to look at, or you need some data or charts for everyone to analyse together – but be clear, these are for people to talk about, not a presentation where you mostly talk and people mostly listen
STRUCTURING AND BUILDING IT
Always tell people what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them
People tend to remember only three things from a presentation. Make sure you structure your presentation around the three things you want them to remember, tell them the three things at the start, remind them at the end and spend the bit in the middle convincing them why they should take the three things seriously
Getting to those three things should come from audience analysis. What do you and PHD want out of the presentation? What does the audience you’re presenting to want? There will be clashes of agenda , motivations and world views. Frame your three things around persuading your audience to buy into what you want out of the presentation
Find out as much as you can about the people you are presenting to, make your deck relatable to them. Find a hook, write a film log line for your presentation, based on the key tensions that will be in the room... if you know the biggest client dilemma is getting more budget out of the board, make that the key sub-plot. If you know you have two people in the room with opposing views, make your deck open up the debate
An easy way to win people over is using emotion. We remember how we feel longer than what we’re told. Make them feel something….don’t be afraid to use emotional blackmail
Tell stories, frame your entire presentation as a story with a beginning, middle and end. Think about stuff like this or the Pixar structure,
Use examples to bring the points you’re making to life. People react well to personal stories, so try and use them
Will all this in mind, don’t start with powerpoint, start with a succinct one page wonder – your summary script for the presentation. If you can’t get it down to a page, you haven’t got a tight enough story. Share the one pager with someone else, get buy in from the people internally you need to also.
Once you’re happy with the one pager, you can move to powerpoint. The purpose of powerpoint is to deliver exactly the right slides to deliver your story, always think about the deck as an illustration of what you will be saying, not the actual script.
Use a picture instead of words, bullets - no more than 5 - instead of a paragraph. Never write something people will read instead of listening to you, write something that makes what you will say more powerful.
HOW TO PRESENT
Don’t worry about memorising a script. If you’ve developed your deck as above, you’ll know it all.
Most people (me included) are naturally not great presenters. Great presenters just prepare more.
So, re-hearse. Present to at least one person who doesn’t know the project. Make sure it’s the right length of course. If they get it, so will your audience. Also, the mirror neurons will fire and you’ll see the deck from their point of view and know how to refine it
Practise talking slower than normal. We all talk faster when we present, slow it down
Always stand up, accentuate confident body language. Stand up straight, imagine trying to get your head to touch the ceiling. Open stance – when you act confident, you feel confident.
Shy people like me talk quietly, practise in social situations talking a bit louder. Get your lungs used to working harder, I sing in the shower (seriously) Disney songs so the kids laugh at me.
Always stand to the right of the screen not the left. We read left to right, people will focus on you more if you stand where a sentence might finish
Never pretend to be something you are not. I’m not funny and never pretend to be. Be yourself – the universal rule is find a way to really care about what you are presenting. Your enthusiasm will be infectious. You don’t have to be slick, just look like you care
SOME CUNNING TRICKS
Edit, precis and distil at least three times. Every deck is too long, editing makes you see what is important and what isn’t
It’s a quirk of human nature that the more complex your language, the less seriously people take you. To be seen as totally on top of your game, make everything clear, simple and human. The more jargon you use, the less credible you will seem
Remember the Ikea effect. We tend to like things we feel we have helped create. Insert a mistake in your deck, let your audience correct you and they’ll feel they own in. Include your audience in the deck creation and they’ll support it even more
Only share the numbers and data that matters. If they ask for more, make sure you know what you left out, you’ll look totally ace when you nail it
I'm not the biggest fan of brand consultancies. Of course, some brand agencies are amazing, but they tend to be the exceptions.
When it's good, they make stuff. Rather than charge £1000,000 for changing one word in the positioning statement and then churning out a stream of powerpoint to justify it, the good brand consultancy stuff is usually based on developing a product.
I'm convinced it's because they have no choice but to dig into how people will buy and use whatever they're developing, rather getting caught up with what it means for their identity.
You wouldn't believe the stuff I've 'borrowed' from product development research for comms planning. Loads of primary research on need states, buying behaviour, context and semiotics.
I find it much more useful to think about the connection between what people are doing and what they're motivations, mind-set and general flow is at various points - and what the brand is doing.
Now I don't buy all that talk about using data and stuff to precisely show up at the right place and the right time. That's the route to looking great in terms of cost per impression, but not actually changing much behaviour, or even worse, using a few clicks t look like you've people buy what they were going to do anyway.
New products fill gaps in people's lives, they ad something...functionally and emotionally.
Media, content etc should be doing the same. It might be a traditional message, but increasingly we need to ask what we're doing, not just what we're saying at this point.
Think of some of the great ads (yes ads) people talk about. I find it easier to think about them in terms of a task based proposition rather than a 'message proposition'
For Old Spice - create conversations between men and women about what a real man is.
The Famous Economist Ads sought to celebrate the intelligence of their readers in front of everyone else.
Get the Lego Movie out of child's play and into the adult entertainment world (which ended up as a total ad break made of Lego..brand owners had their ads remade in Lego)
I think task based propositions are more useful these days that 'message propositions'. They unite creative media and 'content'. They make a brand not just say things, they make them do things.
There's a useful quote from Byron Sharp, "The task for marketing is to reduce the window between someone seeing an ad and deciding to buy".
There's much debate about the Ehrenberg Bass stuff, usually by folks with a particular agenda. Lots of folks trying to make things more complicated than they need to be.
But, like most things, the more complex things are made, the more likely they'll go wrong.
This single quote cuts through lots of rubbish on both the side of the brand babblers and the sales promotion merchants. Both are right, both are wrong.
There is no point having incredible distinctive brand communications if there isn't some stuff that nudges people to buy, or at least build some relevance to how, when and where it's bought or consumed.
Just as incentivising people to purchase doesn't mean they'll buy next time of their own accord.
Just as creativity isn't the only thing that builds so called salience and distinctiveness. Donal Trump gets America noticed more these days, not sure that's a good thing. You have to get noticed for the right stuff.
Basically, the more the brand comes to mind in more buying or consuming situations, the bigger it is and the more people buy it. It is that simple.
My advice? Strategy is is this simple and this hard:
Get the brands reason for being known about by as many people as possible, build consistent triggers the brand can own....every piece of communication should be building this
Get known in as many category entry points as possible. Deal with the obvious first....The Old Spice re-launch that pushed the envelope with 'The Man your Man Could Smell Like' dealt with fragrance first, as that's probably the main discriminator for men's shower gels. Just as the brilliant UK Honda work deal in the obvious, it's just it was brilliant- Cog was about the fact we don't want cars to break down, Hate Something Change Something was about the fact some people want diesel engines. The rest is creative magic.
Make sure you're front of mind in consumption situations, buying situations and other related situations. If you can, link them together...look for weaknesses in the purchase journey, focus on that. This one is critical. TV is still the most efficient way to reach the biggest audience and get the best result, but most TV is still watched in the evening. Don't add another channel, or 'non-tv' execution to the mix just to extend reach, when most products are bought during the day, and a huge amount are consumed at this time, get people thinking about your brand when they're most likely to buy it!
I like staying in Premier Inns. This of course is part post rationalisation, as corporate travel budgets rarely anything fancier, but that's not the whole story. You know where you are with a Premier Inn, they all look the same, booking and checking in is pretty standard and you know you will get a comfy bed.
I also like Pret a Manger. You know you'll get a decent porridge on the go for starters.
Even McDonalds has nice reliability. On the go with a hangover, it's salty, stodgy breakfasts take the pain away for a bit.
You've got to hand to Channel 4 and ITV in the UK, as telly fragments, as does all media, there's something to be said for places where you know what you'll be getting, with only a touch of innovation.
Let's be honest, Jacob's Creek Wine is OK and you know what you'll be getting.
There really is nothing wrong with being quietly reliable and just wonder, in a world where is hardly beer anymore, but grapefruit beer made by monks and food needs to be ever more inventive, the stoic, relieble companies that do basics right, or at least make things a little easy to navigate, might just do more than OK.
It doesn't surprise me that there have been some queries on dress code, it's one the most contentious and thought about issues in agency land.
So I got this question:
"I've just started work at one of the most sought after agencies in town as a junior planner. As you can imagine, as a junior planner, I'm not paid a lot, but it seems the dress code for the agency is way out of my league. Not only do I not have a clue what is cool to wear (and I don't want to be seen to be copying everyone else), I just can't afford the stuff. You mention ditching the suits, I reckon a tailor made three piece from Saville Row would be cheaper!! What do I do"
To respond to this question, I'll take you back September 1990, the year I left from secondary school and returned a 'sixth former'. Sixth formers choose to stay and do their 'A Levels' the entry qualifications required for university. As school wasn't compulsory, neither was school uniform.
Naturally, we were all excited to liberated from the tyranny of itchy grey trousers, the school tie and light blue shirts designed with the sole purpose of making you sweat bullets, even in winter when they had the added power of making you simultaneously cold.
All this at the age when young men naturally sweat if an attractive girl moved within 10 metres of them.
So we were all gung ho to express ourselves, joyously wearing what the hell we liked. Only to find freedom was a living hell.
Suddenly, every morning, you had to decide what to wear. The fine balance between looking like an individual and fitting in.
Having to know what was fashionable, avoiding the crushing shame of turning up wearing the same as someone else. The horror of being caught out for wearing the same thing twice in a week.
So much pressure and thought, many of use quickly pined for the bygone days of the school uniform. Sweating through the polyester of your uniform shirt if Gabriella Bentley even threatened to looked at you seemed like nirvana.
I often feel this way about the bygone days of suits in ad agencies (the simplicity, not the sexual tension).
I remember going to an APG training thing in London, when the venerable planning director running the session, (expensively dressed like a poverty stricken skater) commented, "The thing I always notice about the North is that they're still wearing suits". This was 2002 and he was right, the suits still wore suits while the planning types tended to opt for smart jeans or chinos and some sort of suit jacket, with polo shirt usually.
It was blessedly simple.
Then everyone started to wear what the hell they wanted and a Pandora's Box of pain and suffering opened up on us.
Media agencies lasted a few years longer. Even now, you can get away with jeans, brogues the size of ships and a designer suits jacket, if you are 45 or over.
For the rest of us, it's the deliberations over how smart do you go when you see the client, are flip flops acceptable, shorts in high summer and what sort of image you want to put across. And, of course, spending loads of money on garb only agency folk will appreciate, while to everyone else, you look like you dressed in the dark.
In other words, a world without uniforms still forces you to conform, but without the comfort of easy to follow guidelines.
I used to work with Mother and loved the way the creatives all managed to look the same.
Three years ago, walk around Clerkenwell, all you could see was agency people with selvedge jeans turned up so far they were nearly shorts.
So, back to the question of what to do about it if you're in an extreme case, like the author of my question.
This brings us to the Devil Wears Prada (the film never read the book). It's not a classic, apart from the performance from Meryl Streep and the fact the hitherto unknown Emily Blunt stole the film.
Our hero, Andi, joins Runway magazine (Vogue basically) to find she will never fit in unless she loses weight (from thin to emaciated) and starts to wear the gear in the magazines with suitable panache.
By the way, this scene reminds me a many a discussion over two words in a 100 slide powerpoint presentation at work.
Oh, and I've worked for Meryl Streep's character twice. They know who they are.
Anyway.
After fighting the inevitable for a bit, like a racing cyclist in the 1990's trying to win without EPO, she gives in, loses a few pounds ad starts to rock the latest styles....and of course sees her star ride within the office.
If this doesn't look like the drip of folks walking into Mother then I don't know what does.
Of course, our hero eventually realises she has lost her identity and what she really cares about, ditches the wardrobe and leaves for a very different kind of publisher - always knowing she came so close to being seduced forever by the dark side.
My correspondent faces a similar dilemma. Clothes send out social signals, they always do. Not just on a personal level, they say something about the organisation. What you wear represents you and your employer, it's a fact, get used to it.
If you work at a place where you're under pressure to look amazing, or achingly obscurely cool, you know it will have a certain kind of culture. Probably, it will have a certain kind of work - usually, sometimes great, more often than not, up it's own arse. But always, always, a place people will die to work for.
That's for some, not for all.
Others will have some sort of uniform, sometimes more relaxed, sometimes it really is 'be yourself' we don't care. These places do great work, have a deeper relationship with the client because they care more about the actual relationship, rather than intimidating clients into buying what they're told.
This is for some, not all.
So, clothes, totally tangled up in identity on a personal and corporate level really matter. If you can find an overlap between your attitude to clothes and your employer's, you'll most likely find a cultural fit too. If they don't blend, get the hell out before it's too late.
Or at last until you've done enough time and got some 'cool work' on your CV - just don't stay too long to forget you're only pretending.
Back to the cycling metaphor, Lance Armstrong only started taking drugs when he realised everyone else was, we all know what happened next.
One more thought - the more you try to look different, the more you usually ending up looking like everyone else .
It might surprise you that people have asked one or two questions about it. This worries me, I didn't think of them myself, they are merely the sum total of years of observing what really goes on.
I thought I would nevertheless publish some elaborations I have shared based on requests for clarification here and there.
Today we'll focus on Rule 30. Getting out the bubble. Someone asked how they were supposed to do this when they are chained to their desk and also required to support their thinking with 'established' forms of research....you know, primary surveys, Google Trends or TGI and Touchpoints.
The response to this begins with a sad truth about a close friend and the breakdown a the person's relationship with their girlfriend. The individual got the job of his dreams, you would want to work there, everyone does. He soon found that the new employer new this, and demanded the highest commitment and work ethic. 14 hour days in other words. He didn't mind, it was fun, it was stimulating. But a year later, the love of his life left him. She liked the income he was bringing in, she didn't mind seeing a lot less of him, she was quite a catch, very independent, lots of hobbies, lots of friends. One of those girls you hate because she was stunning AND searingly clever and interesting.
She left him because he was boring. Just doing his job made him a one trick pony, he ended up having nothing to talk about apart from work. Dull, dull, dull.
This is what happens with clients, and indeed agency employers. Clients like you to make them think, to look like you're one step ahead of them. Planners need the right to be in the room, creatives can do strategy, so can media buyers, even suits.... as well as their proper jobs.
A planner is there to do two things:
Make the original, new stuff safe to buy
Share interesting stuff no one has thought of (grounded in truth of course)
Like my friend, if you can't keep things interesting, or make the interesting easy to get to grips with, you are not needed.
Now let's look at that in more detail, based on the question.
First, if you're chained to your desk, and I mean you haven't time to wander around a shopping mall once a month, or chat to people you've never met on the tube, or read stuff only slightly connected to the day job and the client business, or just reading their annual report...then get out while you can, or manage your time better. Otherwise you won't be chained to your desk anyway, you'll be fired.
Second, once you create some time, and you have some proper insight from the real wold, the trick is to THEN apply it to some of the accepted tools - use TGI, touchpoints or some survey, or street interviews to make what you've discovered easily digestible. The real craft of planners isn't to simply find a strategy, or insight nugget, it's to make it easy to buy for clients who don't like taking risks.
In other words, the real craft isn't about insight, it's about how you tell the story.
Which brings me to another relationship. The one with my 5 year old, Star Wars loving daughter. She's a little headstrong, I need to make her WANT to do things. How?
I read "How brands grow" as it was something mentioned in your blog and have a question. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I didn't understand what the implications are from a communication perspective and wanted to understand what your take away was. I currently work on a brand where the laws in his book serve as a bible. When we have conversations around this topic, I can't help but feel the clients and I have different interpretations of what the laws mean from a communications perspective. Take the idea of reaching light buyers. The clients interpret that as having a message that can resonate with everyone (literally) while, I still feel it's important for a brand to have a clear POV in order to provoke consideration.
Another thing we debate over is distinctiveness vs differentiation. Can you please help me understand the difference based on your understanding? It seems we use these terms interchangeably. Isn't distinctiveness based on a differentiation? I'm confused"
The response (this is my view, please form your own!!!!!!):
Got to agree, don't take any marketing book as law. However, stuff in here is really useful, it's how you apply it!
For me, the book is saying:
Reach as many people as you can afford, because growth comes from lighter buyers
Keep on reaching them, folks are not very loyal and forget brands very quickly
The role of advertising is simply salience - get the brand to be the first one that comes to mind in buying situations
That means from an execution perspective, the worse thing you can do is produce formulaic advertising because no one will remember it
It also means make it stir the emotions, they get the brand encoded into the memory better than 'rational messaging'
It's more than that, you need to make the brand distinctive.
Sharpe says most people can't tell you why the brand they buy is different, but I don't buy that, they just can't articulate something that is instinctive and about how something feels. Nike FEELS different to Adidas, just as Apple feels different to Samsung. That's why media like TV is still so efficient, it provokes emotional response best.
Sharpe says be distinctive which I get, basically, don't mess around with 'differentiation' especially rational stuff, just make your brand and product stand out
You should read the follow up book, there's some really useful stuff on building salience. Because simply standing out is waste of time, every piece of advertising needs to get people to think of the brand in as many entry points into the category as they can - remove reasons not to buy and create new reasons to buy. Sometimes that's because the brand is uncool, sometimes they think it's overpriced, sometimes it's a fizzy drink they don't think of consuming at lunchtime.
I agree with the client that you should try and make the communication appeal to as many people as possible. That means if you sell soap powder, it's a massive audience of anyone who is the 'main shopper'. If its golf, it's only relevance to middle class men...and increasingly women. Once thing Sharpe does really well is dispel the myth of segmentation. If you look at what makes people different, you'll find it, but equally, most people care about the same things and are never as different as you think. Even in this age of fragmented media, Star Wars s still a massive hit, in the UK the media that does the best numbers are the big TV channels. Just make sure the brand has something new and interesting to say about something about the category people are interested in.
I tend to find going out and talking to real people soon shows you most brands are talking to pen portraits and miss what people really care about. For example, you can't move for soft drinks brands in the UK talking about low sugar and health...and forgetting that they are bought because they are supposed to be a treat and taste nice....and they like them with food, especially these days as people are drinking alcohol less. I've found they are drunk on an evening more and more by young people out and about and also gaming at home, or watching telly, I can't name one soft drinks brand with am interesting point of view on the evening routine.
Also, we're seeing more and brands getting bought on peer recommendation. That's another reason to target mass media and provoke conversation, getting talked about sells, I wonder if targeting conversations and the intersections between people is getting more useful that targeting 'people'.
A short answer to distinctiveness v differentiation is that distinctiveness means you target getting remembered for anything at all costs, even talking about generic stuff in a way no one else does. Differentiation means something clearly unique to the brand. in many cases, something folks don't care about. People are looking for short cuts in choosing stuff, simply having heard of you and feeling good about in many cases is a great start.
That's why building up ownable assets is so important. Visual symbols, emotional territory and triggers. Take alcohol. Nearly every beer brand talks about masculinity. Stella Artois grounds this in ownable french sophistication, despite being from Belgium, a chalice to drink it in and white, grey and red colour palettes. Heineken is green, about being a capable male, discovery, football and possible one bloke being at the centre of the party.
All fizzy soft drinks are about refreshment. Coke is about making you happier, Pepsi is about enhancing the moment, IRN BRU in the UK is about fortification and so on...............
When is the last time the advice you gave a client turned our perfectly in the end? Seriously.
Of course, if you're in the shifting brand health scores business, I guess you might answer pretty recent and very frequently. But about the job we are supposed to be doing? Transforming business?
We're very sure of ourselves most of the time, I've seen many cases when agency folks berate clients who 'just don't get it'. Sometimes that's genuine belief in some great thinking or work, sometimes it's clients not buying into the usual questionable evidence from the industry.
Like the IPA Databank taken as the be all and end all, when the research base is tiny next to all the campaigns that really happen...and fail or. For example, would you put your own money on outspending equivalent market share, with supposed guarantee it will pay back? Based on evidence from a pool of case studies that the authors strongly believed worked. What about the massive budgets on campaigns that didn't?
I think the Byron Sharpe stuff is fantastic, but a brand I work on has grown 10% this year because current buyers are purchasing a lot more frequently. Penetration is not always the only game in town. We've built penetration with an NPD launch it's true, but the volume and value are dwarfed by people buying the core product more. Guidelines are great, but many 'iron laws' are a lot more bendy than we think.
Just as someone I know wrote an awards paper recently where they made the data look like loyalty had built growth, when in this case it was recruiting new buyers, because 'disrupting' conventional wisdom always plays well with judges.
Which brings me to my left leg.
Shaven, as is normal for cycling types, but with a persistent niggle in the hamstring and sometimes knee that is only just going away after six months. I've done some decent miles and put some okay power down, but lost a big training block overall.
I have also gone through three physios. Each an expert, each totally confident in their expertise. After years of hard sports stuff, I know my way around the human body, but still desperately wanting a problem solved and totally at the mercy of 'experts' is a sobering experience for someone who earns a living giving advice to people.
And each physio gave different advice. The first made it worse. The second made no difference, while on correct diagnosis of the core issue, the third has cracked it (thinking about brand stuff, the first two identified symptoms, not the core driving problem, sound familiar!!!???).
It's like that being a client. Pounded by confident advice by experts with no room for being wrong, being admitting you don't know it all shows weakness and in our macho culture where loudmouths tend to do best, this isn't allowed.
In a pitch, you'll get three agencies with three different solutions, all totally sure they're right. You'll even get 'partner agencies' arguing in front of the client.
Advertising and stuff is not an exact science. Science isn't an exact science either, not just physios, the best physics minds in the world can't agree what the fundamental basis of reality is. In fact, no one knows why you get a headache.
Look, I bet you're good. I bet you're smart and rigorous and all the rest of it. But from now on, when I'm advising clients using my so called 'expertise' I'll be remembering how it felt to desperately want my physio to help me and how crushed I felt when the advice was so wrong.
And angry.
We've all been to the doctors, we know how it feels to be patronised by someone with knowledge in a field we haven't.
Or even worse if you've moved house in the UK and had to pay a solicitor wads of cash for making your life harder, you'll know what it feels like being helpless in the hands of a charlatan.
The more we remember how that feels, the better we'll all be.
(of course, there are clients who self diagnose and just order the agency to apply the medicine. That's a very, very different story)
Years ago I worked on a pitch for a car brand. The main idea we came up with was 'the brand that makes you feel more'.
It came from the observation that modern middle class men were pretty jaded, with oversupply of stimulation on all fronts, they had become 'numb'.
Thought, and still do, this is an open goal and not just for men, as we're all more stimulated than ever, but do little that's real.
A was re-watching Life on Mars recently (UK version!). A man who comes back from a purgatory set in the 1970's for police. Eventually he wakes from the coma that put him there, but prefers the 1970's version because in real world, he realises he 'feels nothing'. Certainly compared to the simpler, but more visceral 1970's life where experiences are real and not 'simulated'.
He kills himself to feel alive.
That's the real need behind the rise of more extreme sports for both genders - the need to feel something, for flow etc in a jaded, distracted world.
Basic premise, most acts or shopping, especially in the supermarket are fundamentally social and mostly an act of love.
Think about the main shopper, rushing around the aisles. The list has been carefully put together mostly thinking about others. Not just what the kids like, increasingly tough love, what is good for them. There's the pressure to deliver much loved familiarity but also variation, surprise and delight.
It can be argued that budget pressured families are MORE materialistic than luxury laden well off folks, it's they who fret over stuff like children's birthday parties - the right birthday outfit and gift matter more when you can barely afford them. Just as brand cereal can be seen as much bigger sign of loving your children than 'compromising' on own label. It's why people with the least earning power tend to display the biggest logos...and tend to be the most snobby.
It's there in clothes shopping. Even those who claim to buy to please themselves are picturing a series of social situations and what the clothes might convey. Few men get that women dress for other women, and this points to the fact that many women are closer to their friends than their male partners - are at least share very different things.
Would be interesting to do a study on online shopping, but I suspect the same sort of principles apply. Might bring up even more importance to integrating social media with shopping.
It's less to do with taste and smell and more about as, as yet, hard to define third set of receptors that are mostly about touch. We don't taste chilli as much as feel it, our mouths think they are feeling actual heat.
Which brings me to my beloved tea, where the astringent properties of the tannins work on the 'feel' senses, not just the taste ones.
I always knew tea was better than coffee, now I have proof.
Also. in a shameless segue into brand stuff, this is how really good brands work. Above the obvious stuff that folks report in research, the best brands just feel better - an indescribable 'feel sense' which is where I struggle with Byron Sharpe.
When folks can't describe what's different about their claimed favourite brand, it's not as he claims just because they don't really have a preference, it's because they can't really describe a vague fuzzy feeling. It's just feels better. Or it doesn't.
Just like most of use can't describe why we really like chilli. We just do.
Back in 2003 I was at an APG lecture that was pretty compelling. It was basically a call to arms for a role for good planning in the modern age.
Except that modern age looks a bit antiquated. Talk was of websites and blogs as the future. Facebook was mostly unheard off, no one had smartphones (although people were talking about the death of TV and the end of paid for ads, some things never change I guess).
The premise was that if you go back to the time of Henry Ford and his 'you can have any colour as long as it's black' it was easy for the advertiser. We had, if anything under-supply. One commercial TV channel in the UK, lack of choice on the supermarket shelf, bored people looking for novelty. Planning media and advertising was easy - reach people on the obvious channels, tell them a product benefit, mix in a little emotion. You're done.
Fast forward to 2003 and were already making too much stuff. Multiples of the same thing on supermarket shelves, hundreds of TV channels. Roughly 3,000 ad messages fired at the average person per day.
A call for smartness to become the brand that got noticed and wanted in the avalanche of advertising.
Now let's go to the present day. Not just even more hundreds of TV channels, video consumption on every device you can think of, gaming overtaking film and TV as entertainment in some quarters, dark social leading to a whole generation finally able to block out brands and prying adults very soon. Precision advertising with programmatic, re-targeting and stuff that is beginning to wear thing with the recent Google scandal, the estimate that programmatic reaches perhaps 1/3 of the supposed paid inventory and the dumbness of re-targeting that sees you being served as ad for the thing you bought an hour ago.
Then there is ability to buy whatever you want wherever you want, where spontaneity might matter more than creating a slow burn of long term desire, where people can decide on what to buy based on each other rather than an authority, where we're making so much stuff, real and virtual that realness of paper and the need for mindfulness mean colouring books for grown ups are big business.
And yet the response from most advertising and brand advice suppliers is to try and re-badge the past without learning from. The same hollow arguments on what a brand model might look like these days, when business has changed so much, perhaps the golden rule of building a strong brand and then adding scale might actually be going into reverse. Where advertorials are re hashed as Native and somehow it's cool to be ashamed that you have something great to sell and pretend not to be advertising at all, where agencies fight over roles by re-branding advertising as content, where the need to fuse media planning and creative planning (not as different as folks might think is lost as agencies compete over 'comms planning' media agencies invent 'ideation teams' and creative agencies invent stuff like Media Arts so they can force the media agencies to go back to putting an 'x' on a schedule.
You might say the future looks bleak. But I say that's wrong.
In a market where where there's too much stuff, brands, agencies, channels, theories, process and everything else. Where no one knows what they're doing. With some ignoring to the learnings of the past, from pioneers like Stephen King, Gossage, and yes Rosser Reeves, or even modern folks like John Steele. While others fail to embrace change, new challenges and new opportunities thrown up by culture.
This market has never been more ready for folks who can marry invention with best practice. Blend logic and emotion. Borrow from the new and old. Planners I mean.
There's so much adwank (and digiwank to be even more precise) flying around, sheer common sense can take you very far.
But there's also so much trying to cling to the past that re-inventing the familiar can be perhaps more propelling.
It's human nature to be contradictory. We cling to the familiar while going ga ga for novelty. The sweet spot perhaps has always been innovation done in a way that looks safe.
Or safe in a way that looks interesting.
Either way, it was a time for planners in 2003, perhaps that time is even more ripe now.
I think it's exciting to be around in advertising these days.
Advertising, let's be proud of that word. That would be a nice start.
Meetings are tough, especially if you're a little shy like I am. Let's face it,this industry (and western business culture at large) seems to gravitate to the confident, eloquent charismatic type, no matter how inadequate their logic or ideas might be.
As always, it's not about the best ideas, it's about people wanting to buy them from you.
There is a way to cut through these situations though. It's the killer question, quietly asked when there is an eventual pause.
One of the best is simply 'What is this brand actually for'. Used to maximum effect in brand babbler meetings, where you've got folks prattling esoteric theory and four page manifestos. The dual nature of this question allows you expose the fact that most brand babblers don't really know how people USE a product, what it means to them or anything like that. Of course, brands having a wider cultural enthusiasm or emotional role is important, but it's got to be linked to the bloody real world. Even if there is real need to define the emotional, cultural territory, it's amazing how many people can't get that down a sentence. I don't mean brand onions, I mean a compression of lots of brand potential, purpose, possibility and genuine human need. For example, all the lovely old Spice Work came from 'Old Spice Gets You Experience'.
An alternative to this, if you've the ugly twin the emotional 'brand babbler' is the rational product benefit peddler. Ask them, 'What business are we really in?'. It's a bit common, but still useful to open the conversation.
Another one that's common, but amazingly not common enough, which is a killer in all agency meetings where there is some squabbling over comms strategy is simply, 'What is the objective?'. This works really well also, when you have creative folks and ad tweaking planners who have crafted a strategy that's really about ground breaking advertising, but won't deal with any fundamental issues that are stopping people buying. Works well when people are trying to fix a brand rather than a business.
Another version is 'What problem are solving here?' This works really well when a strategy type has been exposed too late to a project and a mountain of brilliant work has been done that you can see straight away is all wrong. Works amazingly well when you're in a meeting where the lead agency is a digital agency, a PR agency or, dare Is say it, a media agency. Respectively, clicks, column inches or CPM are not objectives, they're hygiene factors. That goes for creative agencies too - recall, persuasion scores, cut-through etc are things you just do.
This question can also save you from yourself. Instead of blundering into a projecting you haven't thought about enough yet, or falling for your own preconceptions of what the answer should be, this gives you time to think and other the best possible chance of explaining.
What's the budget? Should be the first question that gets asked, but rarely us.
A real killer when it comes to reviewing content (stuff you choose to watch rather than ads you have to watch or block to get media cheaper,) ideas to spark co-creation, or amazingly high effort tasks to enter promotional competitions, fantastical experiential stuff, is simply, "Would you do it? Would you be interested". Because 90% of the time you couldn't be bothered and nor would anyone else. People in advertising like to think they work in art, cinema or Apple. We don't, we work in advertising. It's really hard to 'not do advertising' and make people care.
These are the killer ones for me. There are others, many are variations of the above, and a score or more tactical ones for a variety of situations.
Another reason to ask questions by the way, rather than telling folks what you think, is that you might the one who is totally in the wrong.
Put more sneakily, when you may on the side of correctness, it's far easier to drill holes in the logic of someone who speaks first, rather than sticking your neck out.
This where some questions that are not questions can help.
Unfairly compress what they said,"So is what your saying that...."
Pick out one flaw in mostly sound point to overturn the whole thing, "Could you help understand the one thing unclear on.."
Or even go all out and go head on,"Could help me understand why is is that (insert you're thinking and compare it to theirs, then ask why it's different).
of course I'm not wholly recommending the cunning routes. I still think the best way to success is to be nice and honest where you can. But sometimes you simply can't bring a knife to a gun fight.
Always tricky this, especially in the days when clients like to work with a collective of different specialists. There is no such thing as handbook, but the unwritten rules are legion.
Under no circumstances should you offer a direct opinion on a partner agency's work in a client meeting, even if they are not there. If the work is really bad, you don't ever say how bad it is, not only might the client have talked to agency already and really like it, meaning you're criticising the client, you can be rest assured said agency will take their beating with good grace, then wait for the precise opportunity to return the favour with a very sharp knife in the back. If it's really good, you still have the client problem where they might secretly hate it......and if the client likes it, don't make then love it too much, you have your own work you want them to like too. If a client asks you direct, if it's awful, damn it with faint praise. If it's great, find a weakness in it, sow a seed of doubt in the client's mind by picking a small element of the work and praising it...but in way that gives the client second thoughts. Same strategy really,"Really like the bravery of the casting". "Great the media plan is sticking by YouTube despite the recent news on safety".
Do people favours. If you want people to do stuff for you, do something for them first. Works in everyday life, works in agency life. Work out what the partner agency really wants, work out how you can help. Just make sure it's something they really want that's neither here nor there to you. You would be amazed if you work in a media agency how much data the creative agency hasn't got. Creative agency types don't realise how bored media planners are, that's why they try and muscle in on creative work, it's because it's far more interesting that deciding where to put the 'x' on an Excel spreadsheet - throw them bone to make them feel they're involved in the creative process...etc, etc.
Give it a new name if you want to do a land-grab. There's a blur these days between what agency does what. Officially, that's to do with required new approaches thanks to changes in consumer behaviour. In reality, agencies have been really good at re-branding bits of media and creative so they can steal it from partner agencies. For example, no one does creative work apart from the creative agency, and no one fills up the 'paid media' apart from the ad or digital agency. So media folks hit on the idea of 'content'. From this comes new species like 'content partnerships', or stuff which doesn't quite feel like 'paid for ads'. Content is totally up for grabs. Just like 'advertorials' used to be done by the ad agency, but 'native' content can be done by anyone. It's like 'media planning' is done by the media agency, but 'communications planning' can be done by anyone. Communications planning can also be a new name for brand planning, so suddenly, leading strategy can be done by anyone, depending on what you call and it and what you think the new name means. There's even more exotic agency processes like 'Media Arts' or 'The Demand Chain' which are just genius - no one has a clue what on earth these things are so you can use them to grab any part of the client budget you like. 'Digital strategy' is another of these. Because digital strategy is really a part of overall strategy, it can be done by anyone and be a powerful tool to steal as much client business and you can. Just like 'anything between the consumer and brand is media, so we have the right to have a point of view on everything'. If you're bored just doing 'media' make media mean something else.
Let them Run Out of Steam All agency meetings are like watching children play football, they just can't help themselves chase the ball. Everybody wants to talk first, usually cutting against each other, building to passive aggressive verbal dodgeball. Eventually everyone runs out of steam, or forgets what they were talking about. This is where you step in with a dose of intelligent common sense.
But Timing is Everything Of course, sometimes you are up against some brilliant operators. if you're not careful, they'll deftly control the agenda, always moving it on before there is any real conclusion, in order to post rationalise the whole meeting later. For this kind of slippery beast you need to have one killer point to make, and one alone. You'll have to interrupt, but you can only interrupt once. Start it with, "What I'd like to understand is.....". Or even better, "Who wants a coffee". Before anyone has a chance to kick off again, post drink, jump in with, "I've been thinking about that last point and......" No agency folk can resist coffee..............
Always supply excellent tea and coffee. The above point means you need to pay people the respect of having stuff folks want to drink. That doesn't mean the space age Ipad coffee machines at places like Twitter, not does it mean a £1,000 espresso maker, or even offering lattes. Tea made in warmed pot, ideally with Yorkshire Tea. Coffee made with freshly ground beans, served in a french press. You can tell a lot about people by how they make drinks, and if they serve biscuits. It's worth treating people well, because when you have all sorts of people on your patch, you can have lots of little conversations, the stuff that actually gets stuff done. Some of that is getting a little extra time with the client, but there is more...........
Many conversations, less meetings. Let's be clear, due to much of the above, very little gets done in all agency meetings. If you're lucky, a few things get agreed. In fact, there is usually an unspoken pact to make sure little gets done or agreed. Just like the back room skulduggery that decides most government policy, in any country, like 'sofa government' in the Tony Blair era here in the UK, 'sofa planning' is where things really get decided. Like the inner cabal of most governments, most inter agency groups have a shadowy group who really decide things. In many cases, this group does not include representatives from every agency, indeed, this happens rarely. It is critical you get yourself into this inner circle. Another reasons to watch not just the workings of the meetings, but the flow of how things get communicated and signed off in between. Signed off plans, budgets and whatever sometimes seem to 'emerge'. Only after the event do you find out about a critical call with a client. This means careful forensic work to understand where these alliances lie. Then decipher the means to break into this invisible world. Mostly, that means being not only exceptionally talented and sensible, it also means observing most of the above rules and 'not being a dick'. Then you'll suddenly find yourself having a chat over coffee on the way back to the tube, or chatting in a taxi and, in five minutes, agreeing what wasn't concluded in four hours of agenda points. Sometimes you'll find the secret society really doesn't want new members and it's all sewn up though, this is when you need to pull in the 'do people a favour rule'.
Don't get emotional. Psychologists have long known that people make every different decisions when they are emotionally stimulated. Pure arousal makes us do all sorts of stuff and there is a breed of flirty agency suit who is brilliant and making you feel like the only person in the world (either sex I hasten to add). Next thing you know, you've surrendered your budget for some madcap awards chasing caper, or being roped in to delivering bad news to the client that's only bad news to the partner agency, until now that is. There's the brilliant clever planner whom the client loves who calls for a catch up - you're pathetically grateful to be treated as an equal and come off the call you've given away all sorts of thinking and secrets, in exchange for knowing what the caller had for lunch. Just as there are partner agencies (hi Mother) who trade on being quite good, but mostly one being very very cool. Like the characters in The Devil Wears Prada, this means being rude to everyone. It's very easy to get annoyed at people who stare out of the window when you're talking, or deliberately goad you, but you make the very worse decisions when you are angry. And end up looking stupid.
Learn the Lingo. Marketing speak is a disease. However, like the common cold, it isn't curable, only the healthiest can mostly stave it off. Every agency group has it's own language and codes. Don't say a bloody thing until you've sat in few meetings and worked it out. The really good groups, and clients, can't be bothered with this, and you'll find the babblers are outside of the 'cabal'. However, in the less righteous groups, the babble happens in the meetings and the common sense only commences in the cabal. Know which is which.
Write the Contact Report. No one likes doing this. But the smart agency knows what was agreed in meeting didn't happen unless it's captured in the contact report. You can't change the outcome of a meeting but you can bend it to your will with careful writing. History is written by the winners, but with contact reports, you can win by writing the history.
Trust No One. Don't expect anyone to do what they promised to do, even if they're name is against an action the contact report. Don't expect them to get it right, just expect them to blame you when it goes tits up. So politely do people a favour and make sure they're doing what they promised. Take the initiative.
Clients are not parents. Squabbling kids are bad at home. Clients can't be bothered to deal with warring agencies. Secretly they quite like some competition, but only if it keeps everyone on their game. No matter how much you hate each other's guts, no matter how much you've fallen out, never EVER let the client see it. Just like they don't expect to organise projects and make sure stuff happens between meetings.
Love your lead agency. Being lead agency is a double edged sword. Yes, you get more fee and decide the overall shape of the campaign, but it's also down to you to make other agencies play nicely and make everything happens. It also means that if you decide everything, you get blamed when it all goes wrong. So sometimes just be grateful to be a junior partner, be told what to do,take your fee and move on with your life. What doesn't work is trying to take the lead when it's not your agreed role. Not only will you fall out with the folks who have a closer client relationship that you, if it goes wrong, it's your fault and you didn't get paid for the additional responsibility.
Be Patient. If you fancy being lead agency, but you're not, play the long game. Only if the lead agency are there because of great results rather than relationships (hi Mother). No matter how good they are, eventually they'll mess up. The nice people who people like, usually survive this, the hipper Devil Wears Prada folks get fired.It's another reason to not rise to inter agency rudeness, if you are not owed any favours, if no one wants you to do well, one false move and you're out. If people are brilliant AND lovely though, I can't and won't help you....we need nice people to do well in this business, enjoy working with nice people that are probably teaching you something...........
Steal generously. I learned more working with partner agencies than I ever did internally. That's nothing against the people I've worked for (mostly) it's rather that when you go into situations not just wanting to win and believing everyone else to be inferior, you pick up all sorts of knowledge, approaches and bits of insight from a wider mix of folks. I'm not very clever and have recycled a presentation from a certain partner agency from a few years ago at least once a year. They know this and enjoy the fact it's done some good.The thinking is my own, the approach is theirs. Let them steal from you too, be generous with your ideas, eventually you'll find them quoting you in meetings and stuff, even better, people they know will want to hire you.
Do the table push-back. Sometimes you are dealing with bell ends. No matter how you try to help, they push on regardless. Let them hang themselves with the rope you've given them. Body language here is essential. If you know the client will violently hate what they're presenting, as soon as they start on the intro, get all of your team, and hopefully your other partners, so push away from the table and all sit back. Be as still as gnomes. The client will get you wanted no part of this, but were too grown up to make a bun fight of it. This is especially true of new agencies that want to make their mark (see point 7 about cabals) - make sure you're not that new agency. If you see the 'push-back' when you're talking, it's time to over do the favours bit.
Never ever change another agency's deck. In many cases, one agency will sort the slides on a joint agency presentation. Don't change a thing, it's just the way it is.
Pay. On all agency nights out, always get your round. Never be the one to go home first, unless you know drinking will make you lose your cool (see point 8) Take your turn buying lunch, take your turn to host too, it's worth it (see point 6)
Be nice, life really is too short.
It's not fair, toughen the hell up. Your best ideas will get cast aside in the final all agency plan. You'll have to surrender budget to some over thought madcap idea. You'll have been saying the same thing for weeks, then in walks the creative director from another agency on a one off visit, who says the same thing and then it gets bought. Or the media agency brings in someone from Channel 4 and you find your script destroyed in favour of 'content'. Like any uneasy alliance, no one wins completely, sometimes you lose. The best you can hope for, is that by being patient, even handed, self aware and just that little bit sneaky, you mostly win most of the time by trying to help everyone mostly win most of the time. In other words, it's rarely fair, get used to it. It's easy to get frustrated, it's easy to lose your cool. It's hard to play a longer, game, but that's the secret.
If you like food, you'd love my eldest sister. She's one of those people who can look at a few leftovers in the fridge and turn them into an experience to make your tastebuds weep with joy. She never used recipes, even for precise baking, she just makes it up as she goes along.
Or at least it looks that way.
Just like Roger Federer's tennis looks fluid, intuitive and effortless, when it's the result of hours and hours of relentless practice, to the point when he doesn't really think about his forehand, his footwork or his service action, it just happens.
It's the same with my sister. Do you remember Matilda? The precocious Roald Dahl little girl who had read Dickens' back catalogue by the age of four? My eldest sister used to sneak out of bed at 5am and make a chocolate cake before everyone got up at the age of five. Years and years of learning the subtlety of how ingredients work together, the chemistry that makes a sauce thicken at a precise point, knowing when a steak is precisely medium rare. She's got it all stored in her brain and, with all that rigourous knowledge there, all the techniques and natural as breathing, she can invent at will.
Planning is like that really. When I started out I was told it takes five years to really get to grips to working on strategy with confidence, be that media, brand, comms or anything else (and are they really that seperate or is this fed by agencies with different fees to justify?). Seven years to find your own distinctive voice.
Because there is just too much to know and absorb, to many connections to make. Not just the pivotal observation that unites category, brand, product (yes, they are not the same thing), customers and culture...and that's hard enough.
The really good strategy unites the sensibilities of what the client tends to buy, the agenda behind their business as a whole, the agency direction and 'brand' (it's there like it or not), the characteristics of the suits, the kind of work the creative team tends to do and how they like to be briefed, the motivations of partner agencies, the buying preferences of the investment teams in the media agency, what deals have been made, the fact you can't touch Google for a few months right now.
Then there is the really excellent strategy that brings in all that reading and reference you ceaselessly do. Anthropology, psychology, reference from all sorts of cultural touchpoints. For example, you might now that only 2% of UK people believe health claims made by food brands, but then it's worth knowing that humans never believe facts unless you make them emotionally want to believe it - and if you are targeting teenagers, you're more likely to persuade them if you acknowledge they are most influenced by the most popular kid in class, which them makes sense of engaging with Vloggers...as long as you know young folks watch far more TV than YouTube, so you'll need to use them in mainstream media.
You get the picture.
In other words, while creative thinking techniques etc are great to help you get ideas, it all boils down to hard work unfortunately. Doing this for long enough to get to a point where you're always thinking without thinking.
Which is also why my sister finds it hard to share recipes, she's got to a point where she can't explain it, she just does it.
That's actually the point of strategy templates, briefing forms and powerpoint type stuff. Unlike my sister, a planner isn't any good just coming with business building thinking, they need to not explain it to other folks, they need to make them desperate to bring it to life.
Churchill once said his best spontaneous quips had been worked on days, maybe weeks before. It's like I'm afraid, creative thinking and breakthrough ideas are not about sitting on beanbags drinking coffee and having a lovely time. Genius is bloody, rigorous hard work and years of training.
I read The Path recently. It's worth a look, basically a summary of Chinese philosophy and what it means for us today.
Confucious etc.
Some things to think about:
Every generation thinks they're special. Today's West thinks it came first with experiments on freedom of thought and self determination. We were not. This has a lot of relevance for the day job, where everyone thinks everything is newer and better and so different to years gone by. Well, you can call it Native of you want, back in the day, we called them 'Advertorials'.
Humans don't make that many decisions alone. Most of how we behave depends on how we interact with others, most of our habits and those things we say are 'just the way we are' came from the result on interactions with folks at a particular point in our lives. So don't research the person, research the connections between people. If you want to change behaviour, change the interactions.
We think of ourselves, brands too, as fixed objects, some sort of innate self and identity. We have this thing about being authentic and 'finding ourselves'. Just as you mess with the brand onion at your peril. But actually you make your own luck, you construct your identity every single day, subtly altering with the sheer density of events and interactions. Which means you can control your own destiny if you focus on the very small and look at changing that. Just as a brand needs to evolve over time, in way that's only noticed if one bothers to look back. You don't realise the Coke can has changed massively over the last 30 years until you look back to how it was.
Physicists today are increasingly convinced that particles don't really 'exist' until they interact with something else. We are made up therefore of trillions of sub-atomic interactions. Turns out, it's useful to think about that in general life as well as brands.
It's less useful to think of yourself of the brand you work on as a fixed 'thing' but rather an evolving picture made of thousands, millions of interactions with other people.
Moves on the boring 'brand as person' metaphor maybe, to brand as 'as human interactions'.
I found out last week there is such as thing as iceberg watching as a job. There is a funded, shadowy collective, paid to monitor the world's icebergs for anything about to cause a Titanic-esque shipping catastrophe etc.
I don't know how many catastrophes they've averted, but that's sort of the point, if they do their job, we shouldn't know they exist.
It's like the unsung heroes in agency world. Production, traffic, operations. In media world, there's Ad Ops and sometimes the corner of the insight team that does nothing but TGI runs, Touchpoints Google Trends.
Like the cycling soigneurs, or the aforementioned iceberg watchers, without these folks things would just crumble, but you only appreciate them when they're no longer there, or notice them when things go wrong.
This Video of a Do Lectures talk is well worth your attention.
Basically, it's about the merits of building a company you don't want to sell.
It's obviously worth it if you are thinking of starting an agency, from those 'what if' conversations you have with people you trust and like, to getting serious and looking for a business loan.
When you look at the best independent outfits, one thing that always stands out is how much they genuinely love what they're doing. The money comes of course, but it comes by a focus on being relentlessly great (and having a decent financial director) rather than thinking about when you'll sell. Many of these places sell on to successors rather than BDA's (big dumb agencies).
When you look at the best offices in larger groups, they tend to love it too, rather than just the corporate dollar or the vanilla proprietary process. They toes the line of course, they do the numbers, but enthusiasm drives rather than money. Consequently, they're not short of a couple of quid.
As long as, that is, there are some grown ups in the mix as well. An FD who is both mindful of the bottom line and the overall direction of the organisation is a very valuable asset indeed.
When you start taking on pitches because the Eye of Sauron in Morder demands you reach your income target come what may, or you start selling clients stuff they don't need, or you have to fall in line with the group and keep your staff to income ratio precise, it's a slippery slope. Purely money based decisions tend to cost you in the long term. It's funny, when the industry is busy persuading clients to invest in long term metrics and not just clicks and quarterly results, just how short term we can be ourselves.
It's important when you work out what kind of place you want to work at too. Some brilliant agencies work the longest hours, maybe because the people there like it too much and don't get enough work like balance. It depends on what you want. If you want to do the best work of your life, this kind of place should be for you.
Other places tend to be human and focus on the people AND the work - I include my place in this. Especially good for people a little bit older or if you're thinking of being a parent. Just maybe, it's good for decent agency folk, if you only do advertising 24/7 your not likely to be able to chime with the hearts and minds of the customers you're paid to influence.
To be honest, it's amazing how much a task can expand to fill whatever the culture deems to be a working day. Just as it's amazing how much bollocks agencies can put into their client presentations to justify an over-inflated fee, or paper over the fact that every presentation is the same because the question is something like 'How do we make this Disruptive?' 'Have we had the five Media Arts Conversations yet' or 'What's the Demand Chain'.
Of course, some people like to be be in politics, diplomacy or the civil service, rather than advertising. If so, corporate focused organisations might be for you!
I saw a workshop structure recently from a creative agency.
It was nice and simple which was a good start.
The premise was based on the accepted wisdom that people don’t respond to advertising anymore. Let’s gloss over that shall we?
On one hand, the argument went, we’re seeing brands grandstanding – you know, big event advertising that grabs the attention like it or not.
Like what Sony seem to be doing with colour again, all these years after they gave up trying to replicate balls. Or the Cadbury Gorilla.
Both pieces of advertising worked of course, that’s why folks in marketing go on about them now. At least Sony is based on a product truth, although any brand could talk about the colour quality of their telly. Cadbury was about making people feel the brand benefit…joy, but I doubt anyone understood this apart from the folks who had to write the awards.
On the other hand, we’re seeing brands going all ‘native’. Busy infiltrating editorial, getting into the timeline without getting noticed too much…and therefore, not really being remembered too much. So the workshop structure was based on marrying what the brand was about to what people care about….getting noticed but in way people would be bothered about.
Are we really in a world when it’s a proprietary process to make sure you convey something about the brand but reward the audience in some way? When did repackaging common sense become so pervasive? You’ll get ‘talking head’ planners in the press talking about ‘adding to what folks care about’. Too right.
That shouldn’t be news. This is not innovative thinking.
Surely. It should be standard that if you’re doing a sponsorship of football, make sure you’re adding to the experience of football. I you’re paying to reach people on Facebook, respect and add to that context.
If you’re interrupting peoples’ evening telly with an ad, make it worthwhile. That starts with admitting you’re selling something and then making it rewarding enough to appreciate the experience.
Yes, sometimes infiltrating the culture is the right thing to do. But really, it’s about infiltrating the heart to infiltrate the head. So often, common sense gets maligned in the service of a soundbite. Right now, folks are publicly disagreeing with lots of Byron Sharpe stuff. Which is great, received wisdom is the enemy.
But not when it’s based on twisting the words, or even worse, just not getting it. For example, I read about a war between Sharpe’s arguments for ‘salience’ v ‘brand love’. The premise was that salience is simply getting noticed through populism and getting noticed, being distinctive, ‘grandstanding’.
When Sharpe himself has shown that salience is about getting in the head in as many reasons to buy the category as you can. It’s just that you don’t get in the head if you don’t get noticed, and you don’t get in the head if you don’t activate the emotions, which get recalled for longer.
It’s just that love is a crap catch all for being remembered for provoking an emotional reaction that is relevant for what the business needs to achieve.
One thing I don’t agree with Mr Sharpe is this…. He reckons folks can’t tell you why the brands they buy are different. Too right. I can’t tell you why my wife is different, but she leaves a precise emotional imprint on me that feels like no one else. Nike feels different to Adidas, even if few people can say quite how or why.
Ladies and gents, I give you the dear departed David Abbot. The best copywriter who said, ‘Say something about the product in a way that cannot be missed’.
Sometimes you’re task is to be more in tune with the lives of your buyers. Sometimes you’re task is to educate them. Sometimes your task is to get as many people talking about you as you can. But it’s always to create an intangible feeling and be relevant.
Don't you just love it when clever people come up with new buzz words.
Like 'post-truth'.
Facts in politics and wider life matter less and less. Trump lied, Farage lied, Boris lied.
But the think is, George Osborne lied with his 'emergency budget', or at best, over-claimed. As did most economists who predicted an immediate, catastrophic recession.
Hillary did some questionable stuff with emails, however this fact was used and distorted.
So yes, it's true that Facebook probably helped people see untruths and believe them for facts.
But boil it all down and it's really simple. If 2017 was some sort of tipping point, it's only this:
Technology has heightened a constant truth. Facts are never enough, you need to make people want to believe them and you need to make it simple.
Post truth isn't a thing, it's just made not bothering to persuade people next to impossible.
We believe people like us more than others, is just that modern media has created a more closed echo chamber.
If you can tap into a real tension, need, enthusiasm or anger in a credible way, it's the most powerful thing you can do. Corbyn, Trump, Farage, Sanders, all different, all captured the imagination of people so angry and frustrated, that anyone who sounded like they were doing something about it and talked like them (even a billionnaire, Old Etonian and Stockbroker) would be believed and loved, no matter what the detail.
This blog doesn't do politics, which is why it's pointed out white lies from opposing 'sides'. I just want you to take this away:
If you work on a brand, as always, emotion and culture far outweigh facts.
They always have, it's just that, more than ever, you need to make people like you if they're going to listen.
But don't try and bullshit anyone either, no one will want to believe a brand they way they want to believe Trump, what we do just isn't important enough.
And, as always, go out and meet your audience, there has never been more risk you'll mistake them as people that think like you do.
I'll never forget a comment from former boss in 2008. "I like recessions, it means you can squeeze more out your people".
I'll let you decide on the moral implications of that comment.
But from a more practical perspective, while young people feel they have a strong work ethic, the pay and predictability of working in any kind of agency means it's just not the attraction it once was.
You have to be sure you like working with colourful, you have to like variety and not want to know precisely what you're doing this afternoon, let alone tomorrow. And, as The Rules State, you have to toughen up. Feedback is freely given, deadlines and changes of direction mean there will be out of hours working and stress, that's the job, that's the way it is.
So it needs to be as fun, interesting and fulfilling as possible.
Not made harder.
It's also the job of management to make sure their people are happy, that there is no unnecessary stress and people are allowed to flourish in their own way.
That wasn't the case with this boss and the organisation, which is why it's crawling into obsolescence. It was a place where your face had to fit, where the only way of doing things was One Way, and working 12 hour days was a badge of pride and a way to get acceptance, rather than an admission of not being efficient.
That won't cut it today, and, underneath the rubbish about the death of advertising etc, is why many creative agencies are not the robust species they used to be....they only get to hire one kind of person, the kind mad enough to give up their lives for work. That kind of person is rarer and rarer, and not that good at creativity, as ideas come from drawing new connections between a mind full of experiences and references, not trying a new variety of the same approach.
It's something folks in cycling use a lot, where you micro manage the detail, so lots of little changes add up to a whole lot of difference.
It's kind of like Pointillism of you like your metaphors - where the school of painting led by Pisarro etc created a style of painting where the imagery is created by painstakingly building up a series of dots (centuries before pixels).
I had this kind of thing going on when I was swimming, you would not believe the difference pointing your hand down, keeping it nice and stiff, makes when your hand enters the water on the freestyle stroke.
But it can work in reverse. I've had all sorts of problems in my knee after cycling thousands of miles with seat set forward about 10 mm too far. No impact over a few miles, but over the time, a little has become lot and the resulting left glute weakness (in relation to the right) has caused all sorts of problems. 10 mm, that's all.
Now, I'll talk to you about a little discussion I had with a creative over a press ad a few years back. I wouldn't back down over three minor points with the headline and the copy. Because it didn't make watertight sense.
The response I got was, "But people don't analyse ads the way we do, it doesn't matter". I was a bit shocked, as I have grown up with good creatives who pick up work, tear it to bits and shake it around until nothing loose falls out.
But anyway, he actually proved my point. People don't spend time with ads, if they don't feel right, they won't bother to work out why, they'll move on.
But I let it go. It was the first developed execution in a campaign. When they tried to work up the other scamps, they got into all sorts of mess, those little loose threads became gaping holes.
This is why best in class comms planning is essential. It's not good having amazing big ideas, if you haven't worked out what you need to do to bring them to life - the barriers to making it work, the key things that need to happen. Look at this to see what I mean http://www.slideshare.net/juliancole/what-is-comms-planning
It's why another way to get good ideas is to have lots of observations about things, then look for the links and try and recombine them. Ideas are really recombinations of existing stuff. Big flashes of insight are hard, but hard work is actually easier.
I'm saying that big ideas are fine, but we should celebrate the people who make them actually work and make sure everything is watertight before we go too far.
Otherwise a little hole can become a gaping chasm.
I guess I'm saying the big ideas people are essential, but so are the details folk that br
My little children are getting into Star Wars. For someone who was brought up in the 70s and 80s this is an intense joy.
To misquote a couple of lines from Fever Pitch, there isn't anything that many people have loved for over thirty years as consistently as some people my age have loved Star Wars.
If anyone needs to learn how to earn disproportionate attention and measure of loyalty from people, looking at Star Wars is actually a good place to start. Both in terms of what to do do, and what not. Not to mention the things you shouldn't bother to attempt.
Create something totally jaw-droppingly different - the moment in a New Hope when the Star Destroyer first thunders onto the screen is not something they were ever able to repeat. The sheer shock and awe of it completely captured the imagination. It's the same with advertising these days, your first job is to get noticed.
But don't think you'll ever create a Star Destroyer moment. An Old Spice guy comes around once a blue moon. In fact, so does a Star Destroyer moment. Movies that really succeed seer themselves in the collective psyche. Ads that succeed manage to get noticed and remembered for something.
But stand on the shoulders of giants - George Lucas was smart and borrowed from World War 2 dog fights, Darth Vader's suits was based on Samurai armour.
But if you don't engage the heart, forget it - arguably, there was more action, more effects, more everything in the 'prequels' but they're hated by most original fans because they forgot to put any relatable humanity, let alone a sense of humour.
Never forget what you do best - because it was the characters that people loved. not just the shock and awe. The original characters were funny, has real relationships, you had Han Solo with a twinkle in his eye and feisty Princess Leia. Always build from what buyers already like about you, don't try and make it what YOU want it to be. A certain hair care brand I worked on desperately wanted people to love them as a fashion icon, when actually they loved as a brand that really understood women. By associating themselves with stick thin, sulky models they just put people off! If you are a brand and you lose your way, it's so much harder to come back. People were willing Star Wars to be good, no one REALLY wants a brand to reclaim it's former glory. That wasn't the case for WISPA before you mention it by the way, that was just a meme that took on a life of it's own.
But challenge your audience - The Empire Strikes Back threw the first film back in our faces and let the bad guys in, not to mention the ultimate curve ball and created one of the biggest entertainment surprises ever -"Luke, I am your father".
Keep your core but move with the times - JJ Abrams maybe went a bit too far with this. On top of very human characters, some great humour and icons like the Falcon, X Wings Tie fighters and whatever, you still got the unknown character on desert planet thrown into a quest by accident. You got the planer sized weapon they had to destroy at the end. But then again, you had the strong female lead to reflect how we live today, the vulnerable conflicted male lead, even the sad older characters reflecting on loss and what might have been.
Don't be afraid to leave space for the audience - let's be clear, people want to work out who Rey's parents are, they don't want to work out what your ad is about, but the best work still let's the audience translate and work out stuff a little bit. We don't like culture spoon-fed anymore. No one really knew if Darth Vader was a robot or what in the first film, certainly in the first hour. It's more so these days - who the hell is Snoke? Where did Rey come from? How did Ren convert? La di dah.
Create different levels for different buyers. I have never read a Star Wars book, but I'm interested enough to have found out the background on Palpatine's origins. Others have read hundreds of books, commented on forums, gone to conventions. Most of the money comes from a long tail of people who just watch the films and buy a few toys for their kids. Other kids will only use Star Wars characters on Disney Infinity. I don't totally buy the Byron Sharpe stuff that growth just comes from light buyers and that it's weak awareness. I also think it's about intense emotion that gets encoded into the memory - triggers that come up from the subconscious at the right time. You can get people to buy more if their frequency is really low, if you build emotional presence. I can't tell you really why Nike is different, but I can tell you it feels different and has come from years of emotional build up. Anyway, in both cases, aim for mass popularity, but enable folks to go further. In the case of the Force Awakens, the geeks (and semi geeks) went to the first showing and that sense of 'the hardcore fans like it, so it must be good enough to bother' meant the rest followed. Most brands simply feel okay to buy, much of that these days comes from seeing other people buying and following suit.
Respect your audience. Let's be honest, lots of children liked the prequels, many liked Jar Jar Binks, but the overall discourse was that they weren't any good. George didn't care,"This is the story I want to tell". Sometimes when they say they want a faster horse, well, you should listen.
Remove reasons not to buy. Star Wars rebels the cartoon is great, my kids loves it (to Evie the new movie is 'Star Wars Rebels the Force Awakens). The latest Clone Wars series is amazing, and amazingly builds on the prequels. In both cases you've got Darth Maul, who fans actually loved. Star Wars doing TV well should have been a no brainer, the increased revenue, the increased presence. Just as McDonalds needed to do salads and chicken to defend against health foods and KFC. Just as soft drinks need to diversify into sugar free and more adult versions to keep market share.
If you haven't read John Steele's Perfect Pitch yet, you should. It's really good and there is something to learn for everyone.
But it has a fatal flaw, as do most marketing type books, it exists in the land of perfect.Or at least the land where you have three months and unlimited research budget. He's candid that process is a myth, and the killer idea comes out of the ether at some point.
But still, it's to get real. In a follow on from The Rules, here's the rules of pitching (tongue in cheek and of course).
An obvious one is get the detail right. You'll find typos in here, as usual, as you'll see from the lack of posting, I'm dead busy (pitching!).
Don't finish 'the deck' until the latest moment possible. It doesn't matter how long you have to do the pitch, you'll still be fiddling with powerpoint at midnight the night before. There are two possible reasons. The first is the most common, no one really does much of value on a pitch until the moment (a couple of days before mostly) when you realise you've done nothing of value and you're screwed unless you pull a couple of all nighters. The other, extremely devious, is that some bright spark knows that the more time, plus the more people, available for tinkering with a deck, the more it will suffer death of a thousand cuts and end up nothing like it should have..until someone changes it all back at 11.48pm. That's right, you're here at the witching hour because you're totally disorganised, or you are more cunning than a fox and understand the destructive nature of constant meddling.
Read the bloody brief. Let's be clear, pitch briefs are not worth the paper they're written on. Usually ten pages long, you'll think the only thing of worth is the box at the end titled 'budget'. Your first instinct will be to ignore the brief, but this is the road to abject failure. Someone has spent hours writing something with some killer information and then tried to be really helpful and giving you acres of more detail - burying the real brief by accident. It's a bit that quote from Sliding Doors,"I'm not going to tell you what I want, but I reserve the right to eviscerate you if don't get it".
Planners get the pizza. When the actual work starts, two days prior to the pitch, there will be one individuals who everyone hates the most. Yep, it's the strategist. After two weeks failing to get an internal brief signed off, thanks to 'input' from the usual pitch committee and the fact no one liked the first three drafts, everyone is blaming you for hell they're currently living. What's making it worse is the fact you don't have much to do now. You've interfered in the creative a bit, or really annoyed the TV planners by asking for a groovy spot partnership they really don't want to do. You've even managed to do your strategy charts in 5 slides without a single graph. So now you're twiddling your thumbs, watching everyone work. So get the pizza in, it's the only thing that can save your relationships. Unless you win the pitch that is.
Make yourself teflon. You might be 'a team' but when you lose someone will get the blame. Make sure it isn't you. This the only use of senior agency folk. At the right time that is. Show them the strategy as late as possible, leave in a glaring error, let them correct you and think they thought of the whole thing themselves. Show them the deck as late as possible, with another error. Same tactic. The response of the whole team can then be "The CEO signed off on the whole thing". Of course, the CEO will say they took a helicopter view and didn't look at the detail. So you'll need a Plan B. Step forward the internal workshop......
Use the internal workshop defensively (time for the dark arts of planning) . This is the planners best chance of avoiding the firing line if things go wrong and being the golden child if you win. We all work in agencies now where planning isn't a job title, we're all planners apparently. So do an internal strategy workshop. Don't bother doing any strategy work first, just go through the brief and some early thoughts. If you do some thinking, everyone will shoot it down, because we're all planners now. So draw out all the bad thinking, write a strategy that's good and make it look like it came from the session...and pick the fall guy who will have 'nailed the big thinking' if you lose the pitch. If you win, take credit for everything. Win, win.
Find out how boring you are. The problem with all those internal reviews and rehearsals is that you're preaching to the converted. The kind of people that are happy to listen to someone talking about brand onions v wheels for twenty minutes, the kind who love to chat about the difference between a bottom up plan or top down. This is not your client. Present to your Mum, wife, partner whatever, or at least someone who isn't involved, see if they get it, how bored they are and how you sound in your head while you're doing it. Trust me, you'll make it shorter and cut out a mountain of rubbish.
Everyone does the same stuff. Everyone does store visits, every one does some extra research. Everyone is pretty good at what they do. All the agency decks will be variations on the same theme. How on earth will get their attention and win them over? Start by making it shorter. Don't create the deck that makes you really clever, start with the story that will win hearts and minds.
Winning can mean losing. Sometimes you're so desperate to win, you'll promise the earth. sometimes there are clients that get taken in by a glitzy presentation. Just remember, they'll expect you to follow through, and when you let them down, they won't forgive you. There are plenty of agencies who are great at winning pitches but rubbish at keeping clients. Don't be one of them.
Bribery always fails in the end. There's always an agency that will undercut the other. Some will even do it for free for a year or something. Imagine the respect people will have for people who value what they do so little they're afraid of charging for it. It's not even worth the brief glow of PR - not when you lose it and it makes a bigger splash then.
Ignore every other pitch you've done. Look, it's hard enough managing the conflicting enthusiasms of the pitch team, when folks inevitably start firing presentations from the past that went okay, it really isn't helpful. What worked there will not work here. Different client, different organisation, different team. And, let's face it, it won't have been the 'deck' what won it, it will have been some chemistry between the team and the client and massive piece of luck. One pitch I was part of was successful purely because we picked a fantastic piece of music for the TV.
Don't get too full of yourself. That's right, most pitches are a lottery. So don't get all excited when you win and don't throw around your big win on the next pitch, it will count for next to nothing,
Leave stuff out. If you want to create a conversation on the day (and you should) leave out the data or the evidence. Just tell them how it is and when they pull you up on it, thank them for asking you and proceed to discuss the facts you have remembered, or noted down. They'll think you know what you're talking about, and won't be numbed by graph after graph. Win, win.
Shut the hell up. You're throwing your best stuff at folks. You want to impress them. You're nervous. So you talk fast, project with confidence and leave no time for people to keep up. Leave space for your big points. Leave space for conversation. Try and create it.
Never press for feedback. I lost a pitch because we pressed the kind of organisation for their early thoughts at the end of the meeting. They hadn't any chance to collect their thoughts. Three people were complimentary and gave general pointers about what they liked. Someone else spend 10 minutes going through a ton of small points, stuff he was saying for something to say, he got every else talking, they got more and more negative and you could see them talking themselves out working with us in front of your eyes.
Avoid tissue meetings. They're the devil. What fool invented these? Probably someone who hated agencies. You have to turn up with a half baked set of ideas, plans, concepts, strategic directions. You can't go full gas, or you'll have nothing to reveal on the big day. You can't show nothing, or they'll be underwhelmed. Somehow you need to reveal stuff and also keep it back. While giving yourself the chance of getting a bum steer and getting it wrong from a client who will change their mind, even worse, you're making yourself to the work too early, now, not only have you ages for meddling CEO's and the like to change lots of stuff, you've given the client the chance - because loads of tissue sessions don't have the organ grinder, just the monkey. Same with Q&A sessions. If you're not meeting the authority to buy, don't bother.
Pick a team that like each other. Hopefully you can put together a group of people that get along . Harder than it sounds in some places I know (and accept no one will like the planner). Clients buy teams, if they get a good vibe,it can outweigh everything else. If you can't get a bunch of people together that don't despise each other, rehearse to death so it looks like they do.
Ban the CEO who says 'enjoy it' . As the troops go off into battle, there is always some fool who will say, "Just enjoy it". If you enjoy a pitch presentation, you're either insane or complacent, probably both. It's stressful, it's pressured, you need to be on top of your game. It is many things, enjoyable is not one of them.
Always go to the pub after. It's just what you do. Remember you're short of sleep and knackered, the drink will go to your head. There's nothing worse than winning pitch and then getting fired for telling your bosses what you really think of them because you drank your beer too quick.
Observe correct casting. Every pitch needs a pitch leader, someone who can make decisions, a benign dictator - not someone who can only dictate. The people who actually implement stuff - the creative folks, the TV buyer for example, make sure they have to go. These people can be quite glacial, especially when they know the pressure is on you. Tell them they're coming and they'll melt like warm Nutella, and also work that little bit harder. Now isn't the time to be nice thought, if someone can't present, don't let them come.
No bullet points. You don't want them to read stuff, you want them to be looking at you and your team. Charts should illustrate what you're saying, not get in the way.
Lots of pictures, less words. Pitches are done by committee.You will argue over words, even A WORD. It's harder to dismiss a picture that can carry a few general points.
No one cares about the agenda. Don't bother with one.
Make sure you can work the laptop. You'd be surprised.
Let's face it, communications briefs are very brand biased.
I like this questioning I saw:
"The brand will be a very small part of the target customers' lives. What's the rest of it like?"
"Where does the brand fit in? Where could the brand fit in?"
At least it's realistic about the role of brands. But it doesn't really reflect how people buy stuff, or that's what I think.
People still buy products, brands are a much values short-cut to choosing. But people care about them much less than we tend to think.
I'm not going to beat anyone around the head with Byron Sharpe, but let's just dwell on the fact that most buyers couldn't tell you why the brand they buy is different and buy others anyway.
I think the focal point of any brief is knowing how or why people buy the category. What goes through their mind when they're buying it?
For example. if you're selling cars, are you selling sports cars? If so, you need to know how people who are not buyers view the product and brand. A sports car is mostly a badge, you need to know what that badge says to others.
While an MPV buyer is probably looking for a trade off between space and something that doesn't feel like a bus to drive. They'll divide between those who don't give a monkeys what others think and those that don't want to look like they've 'given up' on life beyond parenting.
With sportscars, you'll probably be looking for 'positive wastage' and getting the product in front of folks who won't buy but will judge.
With MPV's you're talking to the practical person a lot more. Maybe.
If you're selling soft drinks, brands are huge of course, but belief in taste, increasingly sugar levels and what it might go with (food for example) matter also. You can have a well loved soft drinks brand with sales falling because folks believe it will make them fat and think the sugar free option tastes rubbish.
So maybe briefs and stuff should be a little less brand obsessed.
"What's the business problem"
"What does that look like from a buyer perspective"
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