I think in general the best advertising ideas come from the intersection of creativity and commerce.
That means someone who has pressing commercial needs, and someone else who wants to use creativity to help solve the problem, be that in a piece of communication that means something to people, or some other idea.
It's that meeting of different minds that I think leads to interesting work – the commercial imperative on the creative, and the creative challenge to the business. That meeting of minds can be exciting, it can be tempestuous, and can be challenging. But it should lead to a better solution than if either of the two parties had completely their own way.
I think this is why, when you hear about the stories behind great campaigns, there tends to be some personal relationship between the creative person and business person behind it – the boss of the client company, and the creative director or senior creative on the job actually talk to each other.
I think the way that agencies are set-up currently is getting in the way of allowing this to happen on most accounts. The production-line method of creating advertising, which almost all agencies now employ is, I think, the worst way of getting creative solutions. The meeting of minds is never really allowed to happen. The tension or clash is avoided at all costs.
I think this is because agencies are scared of their clients, and many clients seem to believe that everyone must agree with them or there's something wrong with the relationship – by the way, very few owners or CEOs seem to think like this, it's mainly marketing people. I've found that, in general, business founders, owners or CEOs enjoy being challenged.
What we saw happen with Pepsi last week I think is a twisted product of the lack of this kind of relationship, albeit not due to the usual agency or client problems. Here it seems the clients lacked the outside perspective of someone to reign them in or challenge what they wanted to do. But also, on top of that, it seems the people on the client side lacked the commercial imperative themselves, too. From reading quotes from the clients involved, it seems like they were off on some flight of fancy that wasn't rooted in the thing that they make and sell – a fizzy drink – but rather some terrible misunderstanding of their role in their customers' lives and the world. They were like the worst kind of creative, and allowed to go off and indulge themselves.
However, to see the agency world jump gleefully on this is quite unseemly – the Pepsi ad is truly awful, but really only degrees worse than recent agency-made efforts I could mention. I don't think it's that crazy for some clients to be exploring the idea of taking the advertising function in-house – but what is vital if they do, is that their own people are empowered to be as challenging as a creative agency should.
It's a people business, advertising. Putting the right people together and empowering them and listening to them and embracing any resultant tension or challenges will give you the best chance of a great outcome.
Happy trails.
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Some Relationship Advice.... The Obsession With 'The Client Relationship'
The ‘relationship’ is a fashionable topic in advertising at the moment.
When people talk about 'the relationship' in advertising they mean the client/agency relationship.
And they're talking about it for good reason, as the the average tenure rate of agencies is at an all-time low.
In the 1980's the average tenure rate of ad agencies was over 7 years, now it's somewhere between 2 and 3 years.
So something's not right somewhere, I think we can safely say?
The trouble is, they’re trying to solve the symptoms and not attacking the real problem.
The client-agency relationship is about a lot more than just ‘getting along’, having round-table love-ins, or bonding at corporate hospitality events.
That's what these daft 'chemistry meetings' are designed to try to improve.
You need to start with the fundamentals of why the agency and client are working together in the first place.
Ideas, creativity, advertising.
There needs to be a shared, explicit understanding between agency and senior clients of how advertising, and the agency, can best help the client’s business.
That's where all the problems really start, not with personalities.
But it is true that client-agency relationships have been eroded by poor behaviour and bad practices over the years.
But start with the fundamental - the ideas.
Let's remember that the best ideas tend to be created in a working relationship of mutual trust and respect between agency and client.
So it's important to create a platform of stability by working out a financial relationship that can work long-term for both parties.
And make it known that both parties are in it for long-term success, and that you won’t let short-term issues derail the working relationship.
Always stick to promises, provide support and be honest and transparent. Allow each other the space to perform their specialism, respect each other’s opinion and listen to their recommendations.
As a client, it’s likely that you will get much better advertising from your agency if you have a long-term, stable relationship built on mutual trust and respect.
Client and agency don't have to be best buddies, in constant state of happy delirium, and its foolish to try to measure a professional relationship, where debate and disagreement is important, on those kinds of touchy-feely grounds.
They only have to work together enough to get great work, and sometimes it's okay if there are disagreements and debates.
And in the end, well, you'll find that when brilliant work is being done, and it's being successful – everyone tends to get along okay, regardless of personality type.
And that's my relationship advice.
For more pithy challenging of received wisdom, our new book ‘How To Make Better Advertising and Advertising Better – The Manifesto for a New Creative Revolution’ – is available exclusively at the Design Museum.
When people talk about 'the relationship' in advertising they mean the client/agency relationship.
And they're talking about it for good reason, as the the average tenure rate of agencies is at an all-time low.
In the 1980's the average tenure rate of ad agencies was over 7 years, now it's somewhere between 2 and 3 years.
So something's not right somewhere, I think we can safely say?
The trouble is, they’re trying to solve the symptoms and not attacking the real problem.
The client-agency relationship is about a lot more than just ‘getting along’, having round-table love-ins, or bonding at corporate hospitality events.
That's what these daft 'chemistry meetings' are designed to try to improve.
You need to start with the fundamentals of why the agency and client are working together in the first place.
Ideas, creativity, advertising.
There needs to be a shared, explicit understanding between agency and senior clients of how advertising, and the agency, can best help the client’s business.
That's where all the problems really start, not with personalities.
But it is true that client-agency relationships have been eroded by poor behaviour and bad practices over the years.
But start with the fundamental - the ideas.
Let's remember that the best ideas tend to be created in a working relationship of mutual trust and respect between agency and client.
So it's important to create a platform of stability by working out a financial relationship that can work long-term for both parties.
And make it known that both parties are in it for long-term success, and that you won’t let short-term issues derail the working relationship.
Always stick to promises, provide support and be honest and transparent. Allow each other the space to perform their specialism, respect each other’s opinion and listen to their recommendations.
As a client, it’s likely that you will get much better advertising from your agency if you have a long-term, stable relationship built on mutual trust and respect.
Client and agency don't have to be best buddies, in constant state of happy delirium, and its foolish to try to measure a professional relationship, where debate and disagreement is important, on those kinds of touchy-feely grounds.
They only have to work together enough to get great work, and sometimes it's okay if there are disagreements and debates.
And in the end, well, you'll find that when brilliant work is being done, and it's being successful – everyone tends to get along okay, regardless of personality type.
And that's my relationship advice.
For more pithy challenging of received wisdom, our new book ‘How To Make Better Advertising and Advertising Better – The Manifesto for a New Creative Revolution’ – is available exclusively at the Design Museum.
10 Things Clients Can Do To Get Better Advertising
There’s no denying
that there’s currently a lot of gnashing of teeth about the parlous and
desperate state of creativity in advertising right now.
It’s fair to say that
there is awful lot of rubbish work being produced. And an awful lot of “meh” work and an awful lot of wallpaper
work that just goes unnoticed.
All in all, a pretty
depressing state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree.
There is a myriad of
reasons why this might be the case.
It’s hard to do great
work and make it see the light of day. Bloody hard.
However, it ain’t impossible.
Rummaging around in
the advertising blogosphere and speaking to mates in other agencies, I
sometimes get the sense that a sort of fatalism has crept into the business and
that some people have almost given up trying to do great work so convinced are
they that it has almost zero chance of it happening.
I appreciate that
quite often there are some substantial barriers that get in the way of great
creative work. Some might be cultural, some might be personal, some might be
financial. All could be deeply
ingrained.
It’s really easy to
lay the blame at a client’s door.
After all, they’re the ones that ultimately have to approve and pay for
the advertising.
But agencies are also
equally culpable. They’re the ones
actually doing the bloody work in the first place. It’s their responsibility to
ensure it’s as good as it possibly can be, whatever barriers might stand in the
way.
Now, there’s no magic
wand that can be picked up and waved by clients to ensure that the Holy Grail
of great creative work is found when answering every brief.
But I believe that
there are some fundamental principles that, if followed and adhered to by the
big client cheeses commissioning the work, then this will significantly
increase the prospect and likelihood of them being rewarded with great creative
work....
1.
More time.
Within reason, the more time you have to create and produce advertising, the better that advertising will be.
The less time there is,
the greater the possibility that the advertising will be poorly conceived and
poorly executed.
Yes, everybody is under
pressure to move quicker and deliver things faster. Yes, there’s a constant
demand to turn things around at the drop of a hat.
“You need this by yesterday? No problem.”
“You need this by yesterday? No problem.”
That’s the attitude that
needs to change.
Clients need to give
agencies proper, decent time to come up with great ideas.
And agencies need to
try to buy, safeguard and protect this time if they want to do great work.
2.
Only work
with the best possible people
The better and more
talented people there are involved in the creation and approval of the
advertising, the greater the likelihood it is that good work will be the
result.
Sounds obvious,
doesn’t it? Probably because it’s true.
The quality of people
makes a massive difference to the quality of the advertising.
Not all creative
teams, planners, account handlers are created equal.
Very few agencies are
blessed with a high density of talent across the board. And even so-called
“creative” agencies can turn out absolute stinkers.
Quite often, there can
be a systemised streaming approach to who works on what. The “jewel in the crown”, shop window
accounts can often be staffed by the cream of the crop and heavy hitters,
leaving the less glamorous or smaller clients with the runts of the litter.
If I was a client, I’d
demand to know the track record of everyone working on my piece of business.
That’s a sure-fire way of finding out from the start whether great advertising
was a probability or a pipe dream.
3.
Involve as
few people as possible in the development and approval process
It’s a truism that too many cooks spoil the
broth. Quite often, they’ll end up
all pissing in the broth and suggesting individual recipes for a new broth that
nobody will ever agree on.
Streamlined teams with direct and immediate
access to key decision-makers will always produce better work than legions of
minions and middle-men scurrying back and forth trying to accommodate the world
and his wife’s point of view.
Beware of dealing with people who only have the
power to say no. For they are often the time-wasting devil.
4.
Don’t
“test” creative work with research.
Research can be a very
useful tool early in any process to help understand strategy and audiences
better.
However, put creative
work in front of the general public as research stimulus and see how quickly it
all turns to shit.
Steve Jobs famously
said customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.
And Henry Ford is
supposed to have said “If I’d have
asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me they wanted a faster
horse”.
This might be a
sweeping generalisation but I remain convinced that the same holds true of
asking people what they think about an advertising idea before it’s actually
been made.
Instinct and judgement
from advertising experts is going to beat the views of eight disinterested
people in a windowless room every time.
5.
Let the
agency creative director be the creative director.
Why keep a dog and
bark yourself?
Most clients clearly
recognise that agencies have a specialism and that they provide them with
something that they can’t do themselves, otherwise they wouldn’t hire them in
the first place.
However, there’s an
unfortunate and distressing trend for a certain breed of client to spend a
disproportionate amount of time and energy fannying around endlessly
challenging the content and detail of agency creative recommendations whilst
making half-baked creative suggestions themselves in an attempt to make the
advertising better.
I’d politely suggest
that these kind of clients should worry less about the colour of trousers that
somebody might wear in their commercial and defer to people with greater
expertise and experience who may know a thing or two and may be able to help
them.
It’s amazing what a
bit of trust and mutual respect can do for a relationship.
The clients that give
their agencies the space, freedom and encouragement to do great work are the
ones that usually get great work.
6.
Make sure
agencies are properly and fairly remunerated.
Pay peanuts and you’ll
get monkeys.
With agency profit
margins increasingly being squeezed, you can bet your bottom dollar [or bet
your only dollar if you’re a tight bastard] that agencies will find a way to
get by on doing the bare minimum rather than going above and beyond.
Cut corners on fees,
production costs, resource and it’ll end up showing in the work that comes
back.
7.
Grow some
balls.
It’s easy to say and
harder to do but clients should take more risks. Too many people are covering their arse and not sticking
their head above the parapet right now.
Sure, there’s no end
of marketing career politicians climbing up the greasy corporate ladder but
it’s often the brave, pioneering clients that don’t play it safe who end up
making a name for themselves in the long run.
8.
Focus on
quality rather than quantity.
Agencies aren’t at
their best when they’re behaving like an advertising factory, churning out multiple
routes upon multiple routes until a client happens to pick one they like.
And what clients say what
they want isn’t necessarily always what they need.
Passion, enthusiasm
and conviction goes a long way in this business. The best work often comes when
an agency believes it’s doing the right thing for a brand.
There’s an immediate
conflict of interest with that viewpoint and a defeatist, conformist approach
that offers up a basket of lots of different ideas in the hope that a client
will pick one they like.
9.
Don’t jump
on the bandwagon.
The sheer act of doing something different to everybody else in your category will get you noticed.
Despite this rather
unspectacular observation, it’s staggering to see how much samey samey bollocks
is going on. It’s almost as if people are actually frightened of standing out
from the pack.
Having a herd
mentality rarely produces great creative work.
Don’t worry about what
everybody else is doing. Just worry about doing something that's right for you and is distinctive from your competitors.
10.
Fun not
fear.
Agencies should be
business partners with their clients, not cowering, servile, obsequious
suppliers.
Relationships
characterised by fear rarely end up consistently producing great creative work.
If your agency and the
people who work on your business feel valued and are having fun rather than
feeling stressed and shit-scared then chances are you’ll end up getting much
better work.
---
These thoughts by no
means provide a universal panacea.
But they’re solid building blocks for anybody genuinely interested in
getting better creative work from their agency.
Be Known For Something...
Have you ever looked at the celebrity pages of a newspaper and thought, Why on earth is that person famous? What have they done?
The pointless celebrity is modern phenomenon. Today you can be famous just for being famous.
But the problem for vacuous celebs is that their popularity can wane just as quickly as it rose.
Real fame comes from being known for something.
People like Prince, Bowie, Hendrix, Jay-Z, Adele, Picasso, Damien Hirst, Banksy, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Orson Welles, Audrey Hepburn - these people were and are famous for a reason.
They are famous for their abilities as musicians, artists, sportsmen, statesmen, scientists and actors.
Their fame isn't fickle, because it's based on what they bring to the world.
It seems to me that, increasingly, marketers and advertising people are happy for their brand to shine briefly into our consciousness like the pointless celeb.
Let's do a funny video, people love that shit - a cute animal or dancing baby, famous puppet or cartoon, or (dare I say it?) a drumming gorilla.
But how about something with a bit of substance that might last longer than tomorrow's freesheet newspaper?
I think people in advertising need to wake up from their lazy views and received wisdom about so-called product parity.
The pointless celebrity is modern phenomenon. Today you can be famous just for being famous.
But the problem for vacuous celebs is that their popularity can wane just as quickly as it rose.
Real fame comes from being known for something.
People like Prince, Bowie, Hendrix, Jay-Z, Adele, Picasso, Damien Hirst, Banksy, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Orson Welles, Audrey Hepburn - these people were and are famous for a reason.
They are famous for their abilities as musicians, artists, sportsmen, statesmen, scientists and actors.
Their fame isn't fickle, because it's based on what they bring to the world.
It seems to me that, increasingly, marketers and advertising people are happy for their brand to shine briefly into our consciousness like the pointless celeb.
Let's do a funny video, people love that shit - a cute animal or dancing baby, famous puppet or cartoon, or (dare I say it?) a drumming gorilla.
But how about something with a bit of substance that might last longer than tomorrow's freesheet newspaper?
I think people in advertising need to wake up from their lazy views and received wisdom about so-called product parity.
There's a pervading, fashionable notion among advertising people that we are at a point of universal product parity in all categories, where there is no discernible or relevant difference between competing products.
This is often used to make the subsequent argument that there’s no useful role for the product in advertising because the only difference is at a brand level.
But the notion of widespread, complete product parity is an exaggeration popularised by people who would rather not be making advertising about products anyway.
They'd rather make make the dancing baby ad anyway.
But if you mention product benefits or qualities out loud in advertising, people will immediately fire back Hey dude, the USP is dead, you just don't get it, do you?
We need to end this constant confusion of USPs, product differences and relevant qualities.
While we are at a stage where the vast majority of products in most categories can be said to ‘work’, the extent to which they work – and the quality of how they are made and perform – is still often different at some level.
The fact is, products do have qualities or benefits that are important to the customer.
They are the very reason the customer buys the product in the first place – to perform a task or fill a need.
They don’t need to be unique (as in the USP), they just have to be relevant to the customer.
And if they are relevant to the customer, then they are very much worth talking about in advertising.
Let's remember that the customer is the most important person in advertising.
Let's remember that the customer is the most important person in advertising.
To be top of mind is extremely important, but the real value is in not just being known, but being known for those qualities that are relevant to the customer.
Be top of mind, but top of mind for a good reason.
Be known for something.
Be famous for something.
All great, successful brands and products are famous for something.
What are you famous for?
Be known for something.
Be famous for something.
All great, successful brands and products are famous for something.
What are you famous for?
Don't Be A Category Clone, Be Distinctive...
 |
| Which is your brand? |
But a large number of brands are consistently bad at this when it comes to advertising. For example, at the moment it’s barely possible to tell the difference between the advertising of different car manufacturers, or of different spirits brands.
Advertising has become plagued by clichés, category norms, comfortable territory and accepted ways of doing things.
Unfortunately for brands who have fallen victim to this, similarity is the road to obscurity (and a huge waste of marketing budget) as they become lost in the crowd.
Finding happy mediums, familiar territory and compromise might keep people happy in meetings, but it often also strips ideas of their power.
What might seem like a safe choice in the confines of a boardroom will most likely be a waste of money when it’s out in the real world.
It's an old cliché, but true, that advertising that feels safe or familiar is actually a quite risky thing to do.
There’s no ‘safety in numbers’ when it comes to advertising. If someone else is doing something similar to what you’re doing, or looks or sounds like you, you’re both in trouble.
Generating and maintaining a distinctive presence in your category will go a long way towards helping your product be the one selected by the customer.
That means more people buying your stuff, by the way.
For more pithy challenging of received wisdom, our new book ‘How To Make Better Advertising and Advertising Better – The Manifesto for a New Creative Revolution’ – is available exclusively at the Design Museum.
Revisited: The Problems With 'Content'
It's one of the top buzzwords of the last couple of years. It seems everyone in marketing and advertising is constantly crapping on about 'content'.
Clearly, it suits agencies and production companies, because they get to make more stuff, and making more stuff earns them more cashola. And what agencies and production companies love more than anything is cashola.
And it suits a lot of clients, because they get to make something that people (theoretically at least) choose to watch. A lot of clients are in love with the idea of people 'loving' their brand (even though the notion of punters loving brands has largely been proved to be nonsense) so the idea of people choosing to watch their stuff seems very attractive. Plus, it seems (on the surface of it) like they will save loads of money on media.
All good right? Errr, right.
All good right? Errr, right.
There are two not inconsiderable issues with content:
1 – Why on earth would someone choose to watch it?
2 – So someone watched it. Now what?
So, issue 1. The minute that you decide to make something that relies on people choosing to watch it, you're in competition with everything in the world that someone might choose to watch instead. You're in the content business. I don't make the rules, that's just how it is. If you're asking me to choose to watch your one minute, two minute, or god forbid, thirty minute piece, why should I choose to spend my time doing that rather than watch something that Pixar made, or that HBO commissioned, or an old episode of South park, or a video of a cat playing the piano? Why should I, why will I, watch it? Does it have some vital information that I cannot live without? Is it more entertaining than the best that TV companies, film companies and various talented ne'er-do-wells can muster? If you can answer this question well, you're a huge step in the right direction. If you're answer goes something like "Er... because there's a cat in it..." or contains the words "Hack" or "Tips" you might be in trouble already. A lot of agencies get around this fundamental problem through the practice of 'seeding'. What seeding really is is paying for opportunities for people to watch the content. This very common. When you are seeing brand videos suggested to you on youtube, for example, you are seeing a paid for space. So when an agency boasts about the five million views that its latest piece of content for brand X gathered, more often then not, those view were bought, yes, just the same as if they were bought on TV. Except that on TV no one brags because the audience actually watched the ad, that's taken for granted. And it's not quite the same, because TV is a linear format – if you start watching a commercial, it's more than likely that you'll see the end of it. Whereas, as I'm sure you'll recognise from your own behaviour, with content, you don't always finish watching what you start watching.
So that's issue 1. Quite a biggie. I'm not saying it's impossible to achieve natural, organic large viewing figures, but you have to have the answers to those questions. And they have to be good answers.
On to issue 2. So we got people to watch your content. Now what? The problem comes because largely to make the content watchable (see point 1) the makers tend to leave out things that viewers don't like (or that they think viewers don't like), like commercial messages, products, reasons to buy, strong role for the product or service, strong branding or attribution etc. and just make something that is entertaining. Now, even though that's the case, many of these pieces still aren't up to the level of broadcast content, but we'll leave that to one side. So someone watches your content that doesn't really relate strongly back to why they might choose to buy or use your product or service. What happens next? Are you hoping that because they watched it, they are going to like you more? And that liking you more is going to make them hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for your product? I've got some bad news for you. Studies show that people's buying habits are not strongly influenced by their attitude towards your brand, rather it happens the other way around – people's attitudes are more shaped by what they buy. So what exactly is the value of that amazing kitten video or dancing baby film that you got them to watch?
And that's issue 2. Where does your content fit into the process of buying decisions that your customer makes? Be honest, and don't be tempted to kid yourself.
When brands become producers of content, there is a tendency to measure success by how many people watched it. But as we've seen, these views can be bought, and the value of those views is up for debate. So often the number of views is simply a proxy measurement, it measures something that is not necessarily of any actual use or relevance to the business, or proof of effectiveness.
And it makes brands and companies become obsessed with things that they don't need to become obsessed about. As the manufacturer of loo roll you should be obsessed about making good loo roll and being good value, and making sure that people know this. As a brand of chocolate bar you should be concerned with being a good chocolate bar and making sure that customers know why. The last thing you should be spending your time obsessing about is ratings. There are whole established giant industries full of highly-paid experts built purely and single-mindedly on the rabid pursuit of better ratings, and working out how to get more viewers. There are very few movie producers or TV comedy writers being distracted from their primary purpose by worrying about how to make a four-ply roll or a more velvety chocolate.
Of course, as with anything, there are the brilliant exceptions. And they are hypnotically impressive when they happen. They, in fact, keep the cycle going. Like the weekend golfer who keeps coming back because of the one great shot they hit every round. A hundred brands commission content based on the one brilliant exception.
The problem is, of course, that everyone promises the brilliant exception, and everyone imagines that their particular piece of content is going to be the brilliant exception.
Content is the height of fashion right now. And in marketing, something being en vogue is a rarely a good reason alone to do it (often quite the opposite). But, if you're tempted, for God's sake make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open, and that someone, somewhere, has good answers to these two points.
First Published on this blog 27.01.15
So that's issue 1. Quite a biggie. I'm not saying it's impossible to achieve natural, organic large viewing figures, but you have to have the answers to those questions. And they have to be good answers.
On to issue 2. So we got people to watch your content. Now what? The problem comes because largely to make the content watchable (see point 1) the makers tend to leave out things that viewers don't like (or that they think viewers don't like), like commercial messages, products, reasons to buy, strong role for the product or service, strong branding or attribution etc. and just make something that is entertaining. Now, even though that's the case, many of these pieces still aren't up to the level of broadcast content, but we'll leave that to one side. So someone watches your content that doesn't really relate strongly back to why they might choose to buy or use your product or service. What happens next? Are you hoping that because they watched it, they are going to like you more? And that liking you more is going to make them hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for your product? I've got some bad news for you. Studies show that people's buying habits are not strongly influenced by their attitude towards your brand, rather it happens the other way around – people's attitudes are more shaped by what they buy. So what exactly is the value of that amazing kitten video or dancing baby film that you got them to watch?
And that's issue 2. Where does your content fit into the process of buying decisions that your customer makes? Be honest, and don't be tempted to kid yourself.
When brands become producers of content, there is a tendency to measure success by how many people watched it. But as we've seen, these views can be bought, and the value of those views is up for debate. So often the number of views is simply a proxy measurement, it measures something that is not necessarily of any actual use or relevance to the business, or proof of effectiveness.
And it makes brands and companies become obsessed with things that they don't need to become obsessed about. As the manufacturer of loo roll you should be obsessed about making good loo roll and being good value, and making sure that people know this. As a brand of chocolate bar you should be concerned with being a good chocolate bar and making sure that customers know why. The last thing you should be spending your time obsessing about is ratings. There are whole established giant industries full of highly-paid experts built purely and single-mindedly on the rabid pursuit of better ratings, and working out how to get more viewers. There are very few movie producers or TV comedy writers being distracted from their primary purpose by worrying about how to make a four-ply roll or a more velvety chocolate.
Of course, as with anything, there are the brilliant exceptions. And they are hypnotically impressive when they happen. They, in fact, keep the cycle going. Like the weekend golfer who keeps coming back because of the one great shot they hit every round. A hundred brands commission content based on the one brilliant exception.
The problem is, of course, that everyone promises the brilliant exception, and everyone imagines that their particular piece of content is going to be the brilliant exception.
Content is the height of fashion right now. And in marketing, something being en vogue is a rarely a good reason alone to do it (often quite the opposite). But, if you're tempted, for God's sake make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open, and that someone, somewhere, has good answers to these two points.
First Published on this blog 27.01.15
Advertising Doesn't Have To Deceive The Customer
There are rules to make sure that advertising is truthful. If you make a fake claim or say something untrue in your advertising, more than likely it will, quite rightly, be banned.
You can't say this car will go 200 miles per hour, if it can't. And you can't say this chocolate bar is good for you, if it isn't. This is a good thing I think we can all agree.
So let's put that to one side for minute. What I'm concerned with is the other kind of deception employed every day in the advertising all around us.
That deception is lack of truth, lack of honesty.
Advertisers and agencies are obsessed with not talking about the thing that is the subject of the advertising.
And that's in spite of the impressive history of advertising that is based on the truth of products, for example, the original Beetle campaign, 90's Guinness advertising, the original Avis campaign (and the Hertz campaign that went up against it) just off the top of my head. Great advertising.
Clearly there is great potential in starting with the product and the reality of it, and how people use it, choose it, what their relationship with it is.
But too much contemporary advertising chooses to ignore the truth, and build entire approaches on avoiding it..
Why talk about you product when you can use your advertising for some unrelated social crusade - deception.
Why talk about the product when you can just do some ads with dancing animals, singing babies or a combination of both, in the hope it will make people like you. Deception.
Advertising has become an exercise in avoiding the subject. If were a person it would be a bad politician on Question Time.
Like many current politicians, agencies and marketers seem more concerned about the facile, about a thin facade of image, rather than anything of substance.
So little advertising out there in the real world seems to have anything of substance, truth or relevance to say.
Agencies have jumped on the revelation that humans make largely emotional decisions, and they have largely decided that that gives them licence to make advertising devoid of any point or truth.
They are confusing cause and effect. Just because you put an emotional story or message in your ad does not mean the consumer will feel emotional about you or your product. And it does not follow from that that when making an instinctive decision, the customer will choose you.
What this research tells us is that people tend to make instinctive decisions - they don't process competing facts in every decision. But that doesn't mean that facts or rational points play no part in leading up to that instinctive decision.
For example, someone may want a Mercedes over an Audi because of some hard to define feeling about the message of success or status that it might convey about them to others. But that notion has been built up over years of input, not just through advertising, but everything in life. The people they've seen driving a Mercedes, films, TV, friends. Why do the people who influence what you think about a Mercedes, drive a Mercedes? Why did they choose a Mercedes in the first place? What has, over the years, contributed to Mercedes having attained this status in the minds of many people?
Ad people and marketers are not asking the right questions.
They are just pushing emotional messages and emotional decisions together, because they both have the word emotion in them.
In their current approaches, ad agency people and clients are largely conflating three things that are in all probability not related here; an emerging understanding of human decision-making, their own desire to make advertising that feels more 'clever' and less salesy, and a mistaken notion that people's purchase behaviour is based on attitudes towards brands.
This is the current confusion of cause and effect. It's right old mess, to put it mildly.
And it's leading to more and more of this facile, and in many ways, deceitful, advertising.
But, the thing that people in the business always seem to forget is that people are smarter than you think.
They know when they're being patronised. They know when a brand is being disingenuous. They know when a brand is being facile and avoiding saying anything of substance. They know when an ad makes no sense, and has no point.
People are smart.
If advertising people and marketers were a bit smarter themselves, they might remember that advertising based on truth is pretty powerful stuff.
You can't say this car will go 200 miles per hour, if it can't. And you can't say this chocolate bar is good for you, if it isn't. This is a good thing I think we can all agree.
So let's put that to one side for minute. What I'm concerned with is the other kind of deception employed every day in the advertising all around us.
That deception is lack of truth, lack of honesty.
Advertisers and agencies are obsessed with not talking about the thing that is the subject of the advertising.
And that's in spite of the impressive history of advertising that is based on the truth of products, for example, the original Beetle campaign, 90's Guinness advertising, the original Avis campaign (and the Hertz campaign that went up against it) just off the top of my head. Great advertising.
Clearly there is great potential in starting with the product and the reality of it, and how people use it, choose it, what their relationship with it is.
But too much contemporary advertising chooses to ignore the truth, and build entire approaches on avoiding it..
Why talk about you product when you can use your advertising for some unrelated social crusade - deception.
Why talk about the product when you can just do some ads with dancing animals, singing babies or a combination of both, in the hope it will make people like you. Deception.
Advertising has become an exercise in avoiding the subject. If were a person it would be a bad politician on Question Time.
Like many current politicians, agencies and marketers seem more concerned about the facile, about a thin facade of image, rather than anything of substance.
So little advertising out there in the real world seems to have anything of substance, truth or relevance to say.
Agencies have jumped on the revelation that humans make largely emotional decisions, and they have largely decided that that gives them licence to make advertising devoid of any point or truth.
They are confusing cause and effect. Just because you put an emotional story or message in your ad does not mean the consumer will feel emotional about you or your product. And it does not follow from that that when making an instinctive decision, the customer will choose you.
What this research tells us is that people tend to make instinctive decisions - they don't process competing facts in every decision. But that doesn't mean that facts or rational points play no part in leading up to that instinctive decision.
For example, someone may want a Mercedes over an Audi because of some hard to define feeling about the message of success or status that it might convey about them to others. But that notion has been built up over years of input, not just through advertising, but everything in life. The people they've seen driving a Mercedes, films, TV, friends. Why do the people who influence what you think about a Mercedes, drive a Mercedes? Why did they choose a Mercedes in the first place? What has, over the years, contributed to Mercedes having attained this status in the minds of many people?
Ad people and marketers are not asking the right questions.
They are just pushing emotional messages and emotional decisions together, because they both have the word emotion in them.
In their current approaches, ad agency people and clients are largely conflating three things that are in all probability not related here; an emerging understanding of human decision-making, their own desire to make advertising that feels more 'clever' and less salesy, and a mistaken notion that people's purchase behaviour is based on attitudes towards brands.
This is the current confusion of cause and effect. It's right old mess, to put it mildly.
And it's leading to more and more of this facile, and in many ways, deceitful, advertising.
But, the thing that people in the business always seem to forget is that people are smarter than you think.
They know when they're being patronised. They know when a brand is being disingenuous. They know when a brand is being facile and avoiding saying anything of substance. They know when an ad makes no sense, and has no point.
People are smart.
If advertising people and marketers were a bit smarter themselves, they might remember that advertising based on truth is pretty powerful stuff.
Buy This Book
We had the pleasure of meeting up with Bob Ad Contrarian Hoffman for a cheeky beer last night. So this seems like as good a time as any to remind you (if you haven't already) to get yourself a copy of his latest book Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey. If you work in advertising or marketing, it's essential reading really, as it is a glaring reminder to not get caught up in the deluded bubble of the industry and expect behaviour and attitudes that simply don't exist out in the real world. And it's funny. Do yourself a favour, buy it here.
Let Us Help You Define Your Brand Porpoise
If there's one thing we've learned about marketing and advertising over the last few years, it's that there are no shades of grey or nuances of approach when it comes to marketing – at any one time there is only one right way to do things, and everything else is old-fashioned, or dying. Now, this blind absolutism may seem extremely stupid, but hey, who are we to judge? Once a new fad starts to snowball, everyone wants to get in on the act. Pages and pages of copy are written and published daily by the marketing press on the fad, blog posts from eminent marketing twonks, tweets and hashtags aplently follow, plus, obviously a couple of people do speaking tours, and write books about it. Maybe you'll even get a whole conference dedicated to it, with people tweeting the sage advice about the fad. The aim, obviously being to work towards the moment when every brand in the world is doing exactly the same thing all the time. What a utopia!
Well, recently we have cottoned on to the fact that it is now impossible to be a brand in 2015 without having a porpoise. Yes, forget having a good product that people might want to buy, or a better service than your competitor. Forget solving a problem for the customer, in fact fire all of your product development staff, your engineers, fuck it, lay off the entire workforce – all you need to succeed is a porpoise. And that porpoise doesn't even have to be related to what your product or service is – you just need any old porpoise.
But why take a chance with your porpoise, when we can help you define your perfect brand porpoise with our unique Porpoise Definement Methodologizer (TM obviously)? We can find the perfect porpoise for your brand. But don't take our word for it – here are a few we've already done (everyone loves a case study don't they? Even if they might have been perfectly relevant solutions for the particular brand in question, but of fuck-all relevance to anyone else – if it worked for one client once, well surely it's right for every client in every category, right? That's the beauty of blind absolutism utopia!).
Here's the brand porpoise we recently found for airbnb...
It's name is Cuddles. Since we found airbnb's porpoise, things have really taken off for them. They don't have to worry about boring things like cost and convenience, or choice. They have cuddles.
Here's another brand porpoise, this time one we found for uber-cool taxi-driver disemploymentizing service Uber...
Uber's brand porpoise is a friendly little porpoise called Flipper. Now don't write in saying that Flipper is an unimaginative name – that just shows how little you understand about blind absolutism utopia. The point isn't to be original, the point is to just have a porpoise. And what a beauty it is!
Now don't be fooled into thinking that a brand porpoise is just for fancy-crazy new tech startups. No. Remember. It is right for everyone. Every brand. To demonstrate this, here are two brand porpoises (yes, that is the correct plural, sadly) that we found for functional, supermarket products. Here you can see them side-by-side, as you might in any supermarket aisle...
Now, before you write in and say Hold on, won't this be a tad confusing for the poor old punter? Two completely different brands, with quite different products that each have different functional qualities having what appear to be quite similar porpoises? We'll stop you there. Maybe you just don't get it yet? It doesn't matter. Every brand, to be successful these days, needs a porpoise. Don't argue. It says so in that marketing article online, and in that new book by that trendy bloke, and in loads of tweets and conference speeches. However, obviously defining or finding your brand porpoise isn't easy. Obviously. Obviously it takes a LOT of work, charts, presentations, worshops, away-days, idea-storms and brainsplooges to define a brand porpoise – all of which we cancharge you through the nose for help you with.
And it pays to go to the experts. Take this for example...
To the untrained eye, that might look like a potential brand porpoise. But no. That is just a common-or-garden aquatic mammal. Don't make this mistake or your brand is destined to languish in the backwaters of the brand ocean for the next century. Come to us and we'll burn through hundreds of costly man-hours over the next twelve to eighteen months which our holding company accountants will give us hefty bonuses for help you work out exactly the right brand porpoise you your brand. And we'll maintain and feed it...
This is a picture of us feeding Coco-Cola's brand porpoise. Their porpoise is called Happiness. A bit twee, granted, but you know, whenthey're paying you this much it works, it works, right? This is where having an expert agency on-hand is vital – because a lot of people think that brand porpoises eat fish. In fact, a brand porpoise feeds on delusion. We have to keep them well-fed with delusion, with a bit of healthy misinterpretation on the side. We do a lot of research to make sure we have all the delusion we need to keep your brand porpoise looking great. Some silly people used to think that Coca-Cola's massive success was due to them being available on every street corner, constantly advertised to reinforce association with refreshment and taste, highly distinctive and having worked its way into becoming a product intertwined with American popular culture. But they could not be more wrong. Obviously their success is based on Happiness, their friendly brand porpoise.
To help people understand, we have – obviously – created a diagram: The Anatomy Of A Brand Porpoise...
Please feel free to use this in your next meeting.
Don't get left behind.
Don't be a dinosaur.
Don't be different to any other brand.
Don't get caught with some stinky relevant dolphin.
Get yourself a brand porpoise.
We can help.
Well, recently we have cottoned on to the fact that it is now impossible to be a brand in 2015 without having a porpoise. Yes, forget having a good product that people might want to buy, or a better service than your competitor. Forget solving a problem for the customer, in fact fire all of your product development staff, your engineers, fuck it, lay off the entire workforce – all you need to succeed is a porpoise. And that porpoise doesn't even have to be related to what your product or service is – you just need any old porpoise.
But why take a chance with your porpoise, when we can help you define your perfect brand porpoise with our unique Porpoise Definement Methodologizer (TM obviously)? We can find the perfect porpoise for your brand. But don't take our word for it – here are a few we've already done (everyone loves a case study don't they? Even if they might have been perfectly relevant solutions for the particular brand in question, but of fuck-all relevance to anyone else – if it worked for one client once, well surely it's right for every client in every category, right? That's the beauty of blind absolutism utopia!).
Here's the brand porpoise we recently found for airbnb...
It's name is Cuddles. Since we found airbnb's porpoise, things have really taken off for them. They don't have to worry about boring things like cost and convenience, or choice. They have cuddles.
Here's another brand porpoise, this time one we found for uber-cool taxi-driver disemploymentizing service Uber...
Uber's brand porpoise is a friendly little porpoise called Flipper. Now don't write in saying that Flipper is an unimaginative name – that just shows how little you understand about blind absolutism utopia. The point isn't to be original, the point is to just have a porpoise. And what a beauty it is!
Now don't be fooled into thinking that a brand porpoise is just for fancy-crazy new tech startups. No. Remember. It is right for everyone. Every brand. To demonstrate this, here are two brand porpoises (yes, that is the correct plural, sadly) that we found for functional, supermarket products. Here you can see them side-by-side, as you might in any supermarket aisle...
Now, before you write in and say Hold on, won't this be a tad confusing for the poor old punter? Two completely different brands, with quite different products that each have different functional qualities having what appear to be quite similar porpoises? We'll stop you there. Maybe you just don't get it yet? It doesn't matter. Every brand, to be successful these days, needs a porpoise. Don't argue. It says so in that marketing article online, and in that new book by that trendy bloke, and in loads of tweets and conference speeches. However, obviously defining or finding your brand porpoise isn't easy. Obviously. Obviously it takes a LOT of work, charts, presentations, worshops, away-days, idea-storms and brainsplooges to define a brand porpoise – all of which we can
And it pays to go to the experts. Take this for example...
To the untrained eye, that might look like a potential brand porpoise. But no. That is just a common-or-garden aquatic mammal. Don't make this mistake or your brand is destined to languish in the backwaters of the brand ocean for the next century. Come to us and we'll b
This is a picture of us feeding Coco-Cola's brand porpoise. Their porpoise is called Happiness. A bit twee, granted, but you know, when
To help people understand, we have – obviously – created a diagram: The Anatomy Of A Brand Porpoise...
Please feel free to use this in your next meeting.
Don't get left behind.
Don't be a dinosaur.
Don't be different to any other brand.
Don't get caught with some stinky relevant dolphin.
Get yourself a brand porpoise.
We can help.
Hey Marketing Martians – Buy this Book
Make sure you aren't one of marketing's Martians. Get yourself a copy of Bob Hoffman's new book Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey. And then read it. You're probably familiar with Bob from his brilliant Ad Contrarian blog. This book collects together some of his best writing and thoughts from the blog, his speaking, and other articles, under the title theme of calling out the delusional thinking of modern marketers and ad folk, and their disconnection from the real world. This is one of the biggest reasons why the world of advertising and marketing has got itself in such a mess, and so it's great to see it called out with such aplomb. And it's funny. Get yourself a copy here.
Should I Use A QR Code? A Helpful Flow Chart
Good advice. Found in one of our clients' offices recently...
Ego
Look at us.
This is our vision.
This is our purpose.
At [brand], we believe...
We'll tell you how to live your life.
We'll tell you what you're doing wrong.
We'll tell you what wrong with society.
We are a brand.
And we're not afraid to overestimate our importance.
Sausages.
This is our vision.
This is our purpose.
At [brand], we believe...
We'll tell you how to live your life.
We'll tell you what you're doing wrong.
We'll tell you what wrong with society.
We are a brand.
And we're not afraid to overestimate our importance.
Sausages.
The Problem With Marketing During The Election Campaign Is Really The Big Problem With All Contemporary Marketing And Advertising
Over on the Marketing website, Craig Mawdsley has written an excellent article on how the political parties' adoption of marketing thinking and approaches during the election campaigns has been a failure: Why Marketing Ruined The Election.
He asserts that the political parties are wrong to think of themselves as brands, and adopt over-simplified slogans and positions. And I agree completely with him. We talked about this a little in our post Brand Bullshit Week a few weeks ago:
Let me put it this way, twenty years ago advertising seemed to really help the parties and the election campaigns, the techniques and crafts of communication helped these ideologies communicate with power and simplicity the problems they were trying to solve or their point of view.
What's changed isn't that the parties are wrong to turn to marketing or advertising for help. It's that marketing and advertising are currently in a right fucking state.
Contemporary marketing and advertising thinking has evolved into something completely facile and woolly. It thinks that everything is about brand, it thinks everything is a brand problem, and it places way too much emphasis on what people feel, and has completely lost the substance of what it is saying.
Everything isn't about brand. Everything isn't a brand problem.
Marketing has completely lost touch with the customer, and with business.
It's in no man's land.
The business makes a product or provides a service - mostly based on a good idea of what people want or need.
And the customer buys (or doesn't buy) this product, based on a number of factors depending on the category, but largely on whether they think it will fulfil their need.
And then in the middle comes marketing and advertising - who so often feel completely cut-off from that above dynamic - in fact many people working in advertising don't even see themselves as part of that process. Marketing sees itself almost as a separate 'industry' – whereas obviously in reality they are part of a shoe company, or toothpaste company, or company that builds cars.
They have their own set of beliefs and their own world which seems increasingly divorced form the reality of the punter, the product and the business.
This is why so much advertising seems facile and moronic, this why boards, chief execs and FDs are increasingly frustrated with marketing and with advertising agencies.
And it's why you can end up with advertising and campaigns that half the time you have no idea either what they were advertising or what the point of them was. Thirty seconds of fluff with a logo stuck on the end. A moronic slogan and giant packshot. Another cute animal or movie rip-off.
And it's why current marketing and advertising thinking is no use to the political parties.
It's facade and fluff, image and polish. It's all dressing, and no meat.
It's probably not a bad moment to mention that we have a book coming out in a few weeks that attempts to offer a solution: How To Make Better Advertising And Advertising Better (The Manifesto For A New Creative Revolution). Keep your eye out for it.
He asserts that the political parties are wrong to think of themselves as brands, and adopt over-simplified slogans and positions. And I agree completely with him. We talked about this a little in our post Brand Bullshit Week a few weeks ago:
Conflating political parties and consumer brands is fucking nuts. Idiotic. Thinking of political parties as brands is the kind of shit that has got politics into the horrible state that it's in. They are ideologies, the approaches of which, people can genuinely (and violently) agree or disagree with. The idea that people have the same kind of relationship with political parties as they do with a brand of sandwich spread is beyond fantasy. This idea that 'everything is a brand' and everything a brand problem, is a moronic plague on our times.But I think what we're getting close to here is something else, something that should be deeply worrying for anyone who commissions or works in advertising. The problem with political parties adopting marketing and advertising approaches is really the problem with where advertising and marketing currently finds itself.
Let me put it this way, twenty years ago advertising seemed to really help the parties and the election campaigns, the techniques and crafts of communication helped these ideologies communicate with power and simplicity the problems they were trying to solve or their point of view.
What's changed isn't that the parties are wrong to turn to marketing or advertising for help. It's that marketing and advertising are currently in a right fucking state.
Contemporary marketing and advertising thinking has evolved into something completely facile and woolly. It thinks that everything is about brand, it thinks everything is a brand problem, and it places way too much emphasis on what people feel, and has completely lost the substance of what it is saying.
Everything isn't about brand. Everything isn't a brand problem.
Marketing has completely lost touch with the customer, and with business.
It's in no man's land.
The business makes a product or provides a service - mostly based on a good idea of what people want or need.
And the customer buys (or doesn't buy) this product, based on a number of factors depending on the category, but largely on whether they think it will fulfil their need.
And then in the middle comes marketing and advertising - who so often feel completely cut-off from that above dynamic - in fact many people working in advertising don't even see themselves as part of that process. Marketing sees itself almost as a separate 'industry' – whereas obviously in reality they are part of a shoe company, or toothpaste company, or company that builds cars.
They have their own set of beliefs and their own world which seems increasingly divorced form the reality of the punter, the product and the business.
This is why so much advertising seems facile and moronic, this why boards, chief execs and FDs are increasingly frustrated with marketing and with advertising agencies.
And it's why you can end up with advertising and campaigns that half the time you have no idea either what they were advertising or what the point of them was. Thirty seconds of fluff with a logo stuck on the end. A moronic slogan and giant packshot. Another cute animal or movie rip-off.
And it's why current marketing and advertising thinking is no use to the political parties.
It's facade and fluff, image and polish. It's all dressing, and no meat.
It's probably not a bad moment to mention that we have a book coming out in a few weeks that attempts to offer a solution: How To Make Better Advertising And Advertising Better (The Manifesto For A New Creative Revolution). Keep your eye out for it.
TellUsYourStoryItis
One of the most wretched diseases of current advertising and marketing is the highly contagious TellUsYourStoryItis.
This is the condition where deluded marketers and advertising types expect normal people to share their story or experiences of using the product - or even some tenuously related activity.
Suffice it to say that these things are generally extremely unsuccessful. That's because they are based on a deluded notion – that normal people care as much about brands and products as marketing types do.
Well sorry to say, they don't. The notion of people having an emotional attachment to brands that influences their buying decisions has been largely disproved.
But this doesn't seem to stop marketers and agencies from imagining that people have nothing better to do than share their story about bleach or apples.
Some mischievous soul has put together a tumblr of these bonkers campaigns – Tell Us Your Story – have a look through if want a laugh at someone else's expense – or if you're ever tempted to do one of these campaigns yourself treat it as a warning.
See also Brian's Open Letter To All Of Advertising And Marketing
This is the condition where deluded marketers and advertising types expect normal people to share their story or experiences of using the product - or even some tenuously related activity.
Suffice it to say that these things are generally extremely unsuccessful. That's because they are based on a deluded notion – that normal people care as much about brands and products as marketing types do.
Well sorry to say, they don't. The notion of people having an emotional attachment to brands that influences their buying decisions has been largely disproved.
But this doesn't seem to stop marketers and agencies from imagining that people have nothing better to do than share their story about bleach or apples.
Some mischievous soul has put together a tumblr of these bonkers campaigns – Tell Us Your Story – have a look through if want a laugh at someone else's expense – or if you're ever tempted to do one of these campaigns yourself treat it as a warning.
See also Brian's Open Letter To All Of Advertising And Marketing
Building Real Brands: The Difference Between Building A House, And Painting A Picture Of A House.
The latest in our best of the blog series...
Much of advertising and marketing has developed into the study of brands. But are marketers and advertising people over-obsessing about brands?
That's possibly a controversial statement I realise, the kind of statement that is often met with You just don't get it or pitying shakes of the head. Because obsession with brand is the 21st century advertising and marketing business.
But whilst I totally agree that a 'strong brand' - a brand with positive associations and that people trust or believe in - is important, I'm not so sure I agree with the current thinking of how they are built.
Marketing and advertising people, and 'brand consultants' increasingly measure things like the above; trust, positive associations, etc. - the kinds of things that cumulatively tend to be known as 'brand saliency'. That might be a useful barometer of where the brand is at, but it's only one half of the story.
People outside of marketing departments in client companies understandably get twitchy when those things become the sole measure of marketing or advertising success. After all, they're used to measuring things like growth, profit margin, market share and 'gasp' - sales.
The trouble is, when people become over-obsessed with the measures of brand saliency and related soft measures, these are then often subsequently taken to be the 'end game' - brand saliency becomes the ultimate aim, rather than a useful barometer. Brand saliency becomes what people call a 'false proxy' - something we can measure, but that in itself isn't actually success.
What do I mean by that? Well, good advertising and marketing people are well aware that strong brand saliency and business success tend to go hand-in-hand. There is a strong correlation between brands with a strong image and positive associations, and brands that are commercially successful and strong in their category.
The big mistake being made by marketing, advertising and branding professionals is in the blanket assumption that the brand saliency was the cause of the business success, and not simply a correlation.
That is to say - doing well the things that build commercial success, also tends to build alongside it a strong brand. While there are exceptions to this line of thinking on both sides (brands with strong saliency that go out of business, and brands with poor saliency that are commercially successful) in the era of the cult of brand, the assumption and belief from marketing, advertising and branding professionals is that this purely happens one-way - that strong brand saliency causes commercial success. But I'm not so sure it always happens that way around.
So what happens next in their line of thinking is, these people have decided that to build a commercially strong brand, you need to use your advertising to build saliency. And if you want good saliency measures as results, you put in stimulus designed to increase them. So the obsession becomes with 'brand' and its attributes, personality, emotions, trust - the soft measures.
Today, most branding experts and advertising experts alike will tell you that your marketing and advertising budget should be spent building these things. But in effect they are often just 'gaming' the system of measurement ("Yay, look our saliency is great!"). Not actually brand building.
Unfortunately this a very 21st century type of problem. Much like a lot of current popular culture, it's all about facade and light on the substance. But whilst it's fine for a modern pop star or slebriddy to have a fleeting, mayfly-like moment in the sun, we expect the money we spend on building a brand to have a lasting, commercial effect.
Just like vacuous celebrities, building a brand 'outside-in', image first, isn't very robust. And just like celebrities, those with some actual substance and robust foundations (in the case of celebrities, read 'talent') at their heart will outlast and endure.
The 21st century approach to brand building is like the wannabe pop star who, noting that Tina Turner wears high heels and a sparkly dress, spends all their time at the mall, working on their outfit.
In this industry we spend a vast amount of time studying successful brands. When you look at the strongest and most enduring brands, it's clear that most have what we would consider to be strong brand saliency.
But what is often dangerously overlooked in this era of the cult-of-brand, is that their success has often been built over time by people buying, and continuing to buy – and use, and be satisfied with, that brand's product or service.
And that, in turn, that good saliency we can observe and measure in those successful brands, has been generated by that continued purchase, use of, and satisfaction with, those brands' products and services.
Those are very robust foundations. And often, when we observe the saliency of these brands, we don't realise that that saliency wasn't created by the things we now call 'brand building', it was built by promising and delivering something of substance.
It's easy to overlook the fact that often the marketing and advertising that built those strong brands was used to communicate why people would benefit from the product or service of that brand, and reminding them to use it.
To (badly) paraphrase Bob Hoffman, people grow to 'love' those brands because they buy those brands' products (and are satisfied with them), they don't buy their products because they love the brand.
So when you take a step back, we might ask ourselves if where marketing and advertising people are going wrong, is that they have the causes and effects mixed up.
That in a world where all categories and products are different, where reasons and impetus for buying are different - complex combinations of rational and emotional reasons - that the blanket assumption that the best way to build strong brands, is by using the advertising for brand-building - attitude pieces, rebrands and emotional, please-like-us brand-led advertising, is possibly a little naive. And maybe, an extremely bad use of a lot of valuable budgets.
That, in effect, it's like the difference between building a house out of bricks, mortar, wood and nails – or painting a picture of a house.
In advertising agencies of the 21st century, people seem to be spending an awful lot of money painting pictures.
Maybe those advertising budgets should be used to actually build instead?
First published 29.01.2014
Much of advertising and marketing has developed into the study of brands. But are marketers and advertising people over-obsessing about brands?
That's possibly a controversial statement I realise, the kind of statement that is often met with You just don't get it or pitying shakes of the head. Because obsession with brand is the 21st century advertising and marketing business.
But whilst I totally agree that a 'strong brand' - a brand with positive associations and that people trust or believe in - is important, I'm not so sure I agree with the current thinking of how they are built.
Marketing and advertising people, and 'brand consultants' increasingly measure things like the above; trust, positive associations, etc. - the kinds of things that cumulatively tend to be known as 'brand saliency'. That might be a useful barometer of where the brand is at, but it's only one half of the story.
People outside of marketing departments in client companies understandably get twitchy when those things become the sole measure of marketing or advertising success. After all, they're used to measuring things like growth, profit margin, market share and 'gasp' - sales.
The trouble is, when people become over-obsessed with the measures of brand saliency and related soft measures, these are then often subsequently taken to be the 'end game' - brand saliency becomes the ultimate aim, rather than a useful barometer. Brand saliency becomes what people call a 'false proxy' - something we can measure, but that in itself isn't actually success.
What do I mean by that? Well, good advertising and marketing people are well aware that strong brand saliency and business success tend to go hand-in-hand. There is a strong correlation between brands with a strong image and positive associations, and brands that are commercially successful and strong in their category.
The big mistake being made by marketing, advertising and branding professionals is in the blanket assumption that the brand saliency was the cause of the business success, and not simply a correlation.
That is to say - doing well the things that build commercial success, also tends to build alongside it a strong brand. While there are exceptions to this line of thinking on both sides (brands with strong saliency that go out of business, and brands with poor saliency that are commercially successful) in the era of the cult of brand, the assumption and belief from marketing, advertising and branding professionals is that this purely happens one-way - that strong brand saliency causes commercial success. But I'm not so sure it always happens that way around.
So what happens next in their line of thinking is, these people have decided that to build a commercially strong brand, you need to use your advertising to build saliency. And if you want good saliency measures as results, you put in stimulus designed to increase them. So the obsession becomes with 'brand' and its attributes, personality, emotions, trust - the soft measures.
Today, most branding experts and advertising experts alike will tell you that your marketing and advertising budget should be spent building these things. But in effect they are often just 'gaming' the system of measurement ("Yay, look our saliency is great!"). Not actually brand building.
Unfortunately this a very 21st century type of problem. Much like a lot of current popular culture, it's all about facade and light on the substance. But whilst it's fine for a modern pop star or slebriddy to have a fleeting, mayfly-like moment in the sun, we expect the money we spend on building a brand to have a lasting, commercial effect.
Just like vacuous celebrities, building a brand 'outside-in', image first, isn't very robust. And just like celebrities, those with some actual substance and robust foundations (in the case of celebrities, read 'talent') at their heart will outlast and endure.
The 21st century approach to brand building is like the wannabe pop star who, noting that Tina Turner wears high heels and a sparkly dress, spends all their time at the mall, working on their outfit.
In this industry we spend a vast amount of time studying successful brands. When you look at the strongest and most enduring brands, it's clear that most have what we would consider to be strong brand saliency.
But what is often dangerously overlooked in this era of the cult-of-brand, is that their success has often been built over time by people buying, and continuing to buy – and use, and be satisfied with, that brand's product or service.
And that, in turn, that good saliency we can observe and measure in those successful brands, has been generated by that continued purchase, use of, and satisfaction with, those brands' products and services.
Those are very robust foundations. And often, when we observe the saliency of these brands, we don't realise that that saliency wasn't created by the things we now call 'brand building', it was built by promising and delivering something of substance.
It's easy to overlook the fact that often the marketing and advertising that built those strong brands was used to communicate why people would benefit from the product or service of that brand, and reminding them to use it.
To (badly) paraphrase Bob Hoffman, people grow to 'love' those brands because they buy those brands' products (and are satisfied with them), they don't buy their products because they love the brand.
So when you take a step back, we might ask ourselves if where marketing and advertising people are going wrong, is that they have the causes and effects mixed up.
That in a world where all categories and products are different, where reasons and impetus for buying are different - complex combinations of rational and emotional reasons - that the blanket assumption that the best way to build strong brands, is by using the advertising for brand-building - attitude pieces, rebrands and emotional, please-like-us brand-led advertising, is possibly a little naive. And maybe, an extremely bad use of a lot of valuable budgets.
That, in effect, it's like the difference between building a house out of bricks, mortar, wood and nails – or painting a picture of a house.
In advertising agencies of the 21st century, people seem to be spending an awful lot of money painting pictures.
Maybe those advertising budgets should be used to actually build instead?
First published 29.01.2014
Are Professionals Killing Marketing And Advertising?
Today Marketing Magazine published a good article by Craig Mawdsley about over-professionalism in marketing getting in the way of creating great advertising, a subject we agree with, but believe isn't just confined to marketing departments, but agencies as well. So we thought it would be a good day to reprise our post on the subject...
I was following some chatter on the old internet earlier, instigated by Armando Iannucci asking "Has politics actually come to an end? I'm serious. Does it work any more?".
Someone replied "What's Poisoned politics is the professionalisation, people going into politics for life. It's not normal." Someone else added "Politics has replaced government - politicians who know how to play the game, but no idea how to make things actually work".
I think there is some scary truth in that. Governments used to be made up of principled individuals who had a vision for how to make life better, and how to get there. But now it seems like the debate is more important than the subject being debated. Being seen to do the right thing is more important than doing the right thing.
I don't think that it's a problem exclusive to politics.
We live in the era of professionals. You can see it in business, in organisations like the FA and, unfortunately, in advertising and marketing.
When I first came into advertising, people who had studied marketing at college or university were few and far between. Almost every marketing person you met had come up through the organisation, and ended up there because they were good at it. Generally they had a great grasp on the realities of their business.
Now, almost every marketer you meet is some kind of marketing graduate. They are trained in theory, charts, diagrams, powerpoint.
I remember the hilarity when we saw our first Brand Onion - what a crock we all thought. But it was the exception. Now every brand has a brand onion. Or a pyramid, or a doughnut.
When we used to present work, you looked for a visceral reaction in the client. An understanding of why something would work.
Now, you just sense a series of check-boxes being mentally ticked off.
But this isn't just confined to the client side. Oh, no. Agencies used to be the stamping ground of interesting, lively dangerous free-thinkers and do-ers.
Agencies are now largely staffed by advertising's version of corporate drones. Advertising civil servants.
And people who have played it safe are at the top of the business. They have smarmed and politicked their way there, they kept their heads down and made the right moves. They didn't upset people, they didn't take risks, they just greased their way up the pole. They keep the holding company happy.
How someone can be professional in the field of advertising I have no idea. The best advertising comes from people who walk in every morning with no idea how they ended up there, and no idea how they came up with their last good idea. And if youdo approach something in some organised, structured process, I guarantee the result will look like exactly that.
We got an email the other day from some young person who said their life's ambition was to be an account manager. Fuck me. Poor bastards.
It's not just confined to the accounts side. Never has the ad industry's creative departments been inhabited by such a professional, organised, uninspiring lot. Who are these people who decided at age 17 that they wanted to be a creative? They scare the living shit out of me. This isn't like being a doctor you know, you can't learn it at college. What life experience and lively thinking has someone to offer who has been training themselves in the business of being a creative for the last five years?
I had one of those pointless internet exchanges with a creative the other day, because they wouldn't accept that there might be another formula to creating good advertising other than the one they were taught on their ad course.
In the end you have bow out of these things and allow them the last word, after all, as someone much more funny than I once said "The problem with arguing with stupid people is that they drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience'.
And to be fair, they weren't stupid, far from it. They were just a product of a world where professionalism, knowing how, doing it right, going by the rules, playing by the book, are encouraged.
We live in the era of professionals in advertising.
But, and I know I've asked this question before.
If people now are so much better trained, clued-up - professional - then how come almost all advertising is absolute crap?
The answer... No matter how hard you try, you can't professionalise your way to great advertising.
First published 15.5.13
I was following some chatter on the old internet earlier, instigated by Armando Iannucci asking "Has politics actually come to an end? I'm serious. Does it work any more?".
Someone replied "What's Poisoned politics is the professionalisation, people going into politics for life. It's not normal." Someone else added "Politics has replaced government - politicians who know how to play the game, but no idea how to make things actually work".
I think there is some scary truth in that. Governments used to be made up of principled individuals who had a vision for how to make life better, and how to get there. But now it seems like the debate is more important than the subject being debated. Being seen to do the right thing is more important than doing the right thing.
I don't think that it's a problem exclusive to politics.
We live in the era of professionals. You can see it in business, in organisations like the FA and, unfortunately, in advertising and marketing.
When I first came into advertising, people who had studied marketing at college or university were few and far between. Almost every marketing person you met had come up through the organisation, and ended up there because they were good at it. Generally they had a great grasp on the realities of their business.
Now, almost every marketer you meet is some kind of marketing graduate. They are trained in theory, charts, diagrams, powerpoint.
I remember the hilarity when we saw our first Brand Onion - what a crock we all thought. But it was the exception. Now every brand has a brand onion. Or a pyramid, or a doughnut.
When we used to present work, you looked for a visceral reaction in the client. An understanding of why something would work.
Now, you just sense a series of check-boxes being mentally ticked off.
But this isn't just confined to the client side. Oh, no. Agencies used to be the stamping ground of interesting, lively dangerous free-thinkers and do-ers.
Agencies are now largely staffed by advertising's version of corporate drones. Advertising civil servants.
And people who have played it safe are at the top of the business. They have smarmed and politicked their way there, they kept their heads down and made the right moves. They didn't upset people, they didn't take risks, they just greased their way up the pole. They keep the holding company happy.
How someone can be professional in the field of advertising I have no idea. The best advertising comes from people who walk in every morning with no idea how they ended up there, and no idea how they came up with their last good idea. And if youdo approach something in some organised, structured process, I guarantee the result will look like exactly that.
We got an email the other day from some young person who said their life's ambition was to be an account manager. Fuck me. Poor bastards.
It's not just confined to the accounts side. Never has the ad industry's creative departments been inhabited by such a professional, organised, uninspiring lot. Who are these people who decided at age 17 that they wanted to be a creative? They scare the living shit out of me. This isn't like being a doctor you know, you can't learn it at college. What life experience and lively thinking has someone to offer who has been training themselves in the business of being a creative for the last five years?
I had one of those pointless internet exchanges with a creative the other day, because they wouldn't accept that there might be another formula to creating good advertising other than the one they were taught on their ad course.
In the end you have bow out of these things and allow them the last word, after all, as someone much more funny than I once said "The problem with arguing with stupid people is that they drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience'.
And to be fair, they weren't stupid, far from it. They were just a product of a world where professionalism, knowing how, doing it right, going by the rules, playing by the book, are encouraged.
We live in the era of professionals in advertising.
But, and I know I've asked this question before.
If people now are so much better trained, clued-up - professional - then how come almost all advertising is absolute crap?
The answer... No matter how hard you try, you can't professionalise your way to great advertising.
First published 15.5.13
Brand Bullshit Week
An up and down week for brand bullshit this week. On the upside, Bob Hoffman takes the brand bullshitters to task in two excellent consecutive posts, the second of which brilliantly eviscerates Kevin Roberts' complete misunderstanding of what has made Apple successful. On the downside, we find a national newspaper mindlessly regurgitating a thinly-veiled agency promotion in the guise of misguided brand-nonsense survey. There's so much wrong with that survey, the premise behind it, and the assertions made on the back of it, it could easily absorb most of my day pulling it apart. So I won't. But here are just three quick bullet points:
- The whole premise of people 'loving' or 'hating' brands, and that in turn influencing their buying behaviour, is completely misguided. It's this very start point that's leading to so much bullshit and wasted money in advertising. If you are tempted to disagree with this point (and I suspect many in advertising and marketing might) why not treat yourself to a little read of some of Professor Byron Sharp's work.
- Conflating political parties and consumer brands is fucking nuts. Idiotic. Thinking of political parties as brands is the kind of shit that has got politics into the horrible state that it's in. They are ideologies, the approaches of which, people can genuinely (and violently) agree or disagree with. The idea that people have the same kind of relationship with political parties as they do with a brand of sandwich spread is beyond fantasy. This idea that 'everything is a brand' and everything a brand problem, is a moronic plague on our times.
- Let's just take the headline 'hated brand' (not including political parties) - Marmite. For christ's sake, do these people understand nothing? At least Marmite themselves, and their agency thankfully understand people's relationship with their product. The publishers of this survey clearly don't. People's 'relationship' (if you'll excuse the word) with Marmite is with the spread, the product, Marmite. Not the brand. Some people like the taste of it, some people dislike the taste of it. I really dislike it (I'd be in the 'hate' part of Marmite's excellent advertising slogan), I feel neither here or there about the 'brand'. In fact I don't mind it. They appear to know their product, and their advertising normally has charm and wit, and doesn't treat me like a moron. I'm fine with the 'brand' Marmite. I will never buy the product however, because I don't like it.
I'm going to stop myself there for my own sanity (and I have work to do). All I will say is, if you're a business owner or a marketing person, and your agency thinks that people's buying behaviour is influenced by their attitude towards your brand, and their solution is (inevitably) some brand advertising - for the love of god, get yourself a new agency, pronto.
- The whole premise of people 'loving' or 'hating' brands, and that in turn influencing their buying behaviour, is completely misguided. It's this very start point that's leading to so much bullshit and wasted money in advertising. If you are tempted to disagree with this point (and I suspect many in advertising and marketing might) why not treat yourself to a little read of some of Professor Byron Sharp's work.
- Conflating political parties and consumer brands is fucking nuts. Idiotic. Thinking of political parties as brands is the kind of shit that has got politics into the horrible state that it's in. They are ideologies, the approaches of which, people can genuinely (and violently) agree or disagree with. The idea that people have the same kind of relationship with political parties as they do with a brand of sandwich spread is beyond fantasy. This idea that 'everything is a brand' and everything a brand problem, is a moronic plague on our times.
- Let's just take the headline 'hated brand' (not including political parties) - Marmite. For christ's sake, do these people understand nothing? At least Marmite themselves, and their agency thankfully understand people's relationship with their product. The publishers of this survey clearly don't. People's 'relationship' (if you'll excuse the word) with Marmite is with the spread, the product, Marmite. Not the brand. Some people like the taste of it, some people dislike the taste of it. I really dislike it (I'd be in the 'hate' part of Marmite's excellent advertising slogan), I feel neither here or there about the 'brand'. In fact I don't mind it. They appear to know their product, and their advertising normally has charm and wit, and doesn't treat me like a moron. I'm fine with the 'brand' Marmite. I will never buy the product however, because I don't like it.
I'm going to stop myself there for my own sanity (and I have work to do). All I will say is, if you're a business owner or a marketing person, and your agency thinks that people's buying behaviour is influenced by their attitude towards your brand, and their solution is (inevitably) some brand advertising - for the love of god, get yourself a new agency, pronto.
The Problems With Content
It's one of the top buzzwords of the last couple of years. It seems everyone in marketing and advertising is constantly crapping on about 'content'.
Clearly, it suits agencies and production companies, because they get to make more stuff, and making more stuff earns them more cashola. And what agencies and production companies love more than anything is cashola.
And it suits a lot of clients, because they get to make something that people (theoretically at least) choose to watch. A lot of clients are in love with the idea of people 'loving' their brand (even though the notion of punters loving brands has largely been proved to be nonsense) so the idea of people choosing to watch their stuff seems very attractive. Plus, it seems (on the surface of it) like they will save loads of money on media.
All good right? Errr, right.
All good right? Errr, right.
There are two not inconsiderable issues with content:
1 – Why on earth would someone choose to watch it?
2 – So someone watched it. Now what?
So, issue 1. The minute that you decide to make something that relies on people choosing to watch it, you're in competition with everything in the world that someone might choose to watch instead. You're in the content business. I don't make the rules, that's just how it is. If you're asking me to choose to watch your one minute, two minute, or god forbid, thirty minute piece, why should I choose to spend my time doing that rather than watch something that Pixar made, or that HBO commissioned, or an old episode of South park, or a video of a cat playing the piano? Why should I, why will I, watch it? Does it have some vital information that I cannot live without? Is it more entertaining than the best that TV companies, film companies and various talented ne'er-do-wells can muster? If you can answer this question well, you're a huge step in the right direction. If you're answer goes something like "Er... because there's a cat in it..." or contains the words "Hack" or "Tips" you might be in trouble already. A lot of agencies get around this fundamental problem through the practice of 'seeding'. What seeding really is is paying for opportunities for people to watch the content. This very common. When you are seeing brand videos suggested to you on youtube, for example, you are seeing a paid for space. So when an agency boasts about the five million views that its latest piece of content for brand X gathered, more often then not, those view were bought, yes, just the same as if they were bought on TV. Except that on TV no one brags because the audience actually watched the ad, that's taken for granted. And it's not quite the same, because TV is a linear format – if you start watching a commercial, it's more than likely that you'll see the end of it. Whereas, as I'm sure you'll recognise from your own behaviour, with content, you don't always finish watching what you start watching.
So that's issue 1. Quite a biggie. I'm not saying it's impossible to achieve natural, organic large viewing figures, but you have to have the answers to those questions. And they have to be good answers.
On to issue 2. So we got people to watch your content. Now what? The problem comes because largely to make the content watchable (see point 1) the makers tend to leave out things that viewers don't like (or that they think viewers don't like), like commercial messages, products, reasons to buy, strong role for the product or service, strong branding or attribution etc. and just make something that is entertaining. Now, even though that's the case, many of these pieces still aren't up to the level of broadcast content, but we'll leave that to one side. So someone watches your content that doesn't really relate strongly back to why they might choose to buy or use your product or service. What happens next? Are you hoping that because they watched it, they are going to like you more? And that liking you more is going to make them hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for your product? I've got some bad news for you. Studies show that people's buying habits are not strongly influenced by their attitude towards your brand, rather it happens the other way around – people's attitudes are more shaped by what they buy. So what exactly is the value of that amazing kitten video or dancing baby film that you got them to watch?
And that's issue 2. Where does your content fit into the process of buying decisions that your customer makes? Be honest, and don't be tempted to kid yourself.
When brands become producers of content, there is a tendency to measure success by how many people watched it. But as we've seen, these views can be bought, and the value of those views is up for debate. So often the number of views is simply a proxy measurement, it measures something that is not necessarily of any actual use or relevance to the business, or proof of effectiveness.
And it makes brands and companies become obsessed with things that they don't need to become obsessed about. As the manufacturer of loo roll you should be obsessed about making good loo roll and being good value, and making sure that people know this. As a brand of chocolate bar you should be concerned with being a good chocolate bar and making sure that customers know why. The last thing you should be spending your time obsessing about is ratings. There are whole established giant industries full of highly-paid experts built purely and single-mindedly on the rabid pursuit of better ratings, and working out how to get more viewers. There are very few movie producers or TV comedy writers being distracted from their primary purpose by worrying about how to make a four-ply roll or a more velvety chocolate.
Of course, as with anything, there are the brilliant exceptions. And they are hypnotically impressive when they happen. They, in fact, keep the cycle going. Like the weekend golfer who keeps coming back because of the one great shot they hit every round. A hundred brands commission content based on the one brilliant exception.
The problem is, of course, that everyone promises the brilliant exception, and everyone imagines that their particular piece of content is going to be the brilliant exception.
Content is the height of fashion right now. And in marketing, something being en vogue is a rarely a good reason alone to do it (often quite the opposite). But, if you're tempted, for God's sake make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open, and that someone, somewhere, has good answers to these two points.
So that's issue 1. Quite a biggie. I'm not saying it's impossible to achieve natural, organic large viewing figures, but you have to have the answers to those questions. And they have to be good answers.
On to issue 2. So we got people to watch your content. Now what? The problem comes because largely to make the content watchable (see point 1) the makers tend to leave out things that viewers don't like (or that they think viewers don't like), like commercial messages, products, reasons to buy, strong role for the product or service, strong branding or attribution etc. and just make something that is entertaining. Now, even though that's the case, many of these pieces still aren't up to the level of broadcast content, but we'll leave that to one side. So someone watches your content that doesn't really relate strongly back to why they might choose to buy or use your product or service. What happens next? Are you hoping that because they watched it, they are going to like you more? And that liking you more is going to make them hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for your product? I've got some bad news for you. Studies show that people's buying habits are not strongly influenced by their attitude towards your brand, rather it happens the other way around – people's attitudes are more shaped by what they buy. So what exactly is the value of that amazing kitten video or dancing baby film that you got them to watch?
And that's issue 2. Where does your content fit into the process of buying decisions that your customer makes? Be honest, and don't be tempted to kid yourself.
When brands become producers of content, there is a tendency to measure success by how many people watched it. But as we've seen, these views can be bought, and the value of those views is up for debate. So often the number of views is simply a proxy measurement, it measures something that is not necessarily of any actual use or relevance to the business, or proof of effectiveness.
And it makes brands and companies become obsessed with things that they don't need to become obsessed about. As the manufacturer of loo roll you should be obsessed about making good loo roll and being good value, and making sure that people know this. As a brand of chocolate bar you should be concerned with being a good chocolate bar and making sure that customers know why. The last thing you should be spending your time obsessing about is ratings. There are whole established giant industries full of highly-paid experts built purely and single-mindedly on the rabid pursuit of better ratings, and working out how to get more viewers. There are very few movie producers or TV comedy writers being distracted from their primary purpose by worrying about how to make a four-ply roll or a more velvety chocolate.
Of course, as with anything, there are the brilliant exceptions. And they are hypnotically impressive when they happen. They, in fact, keep the cycle going. Like the weekend golfer who keeps coming back because of the one great shot they hit every round. A hundred brands commission content based on the one brilliant exception.
The problem is, of course, that everyone promises the brilliant exception, and everyone imagines that their particular piece of content is going to be the brilliant exception.
Content is the height of fashion right now. And in marketing, something being en vogue is a rarely a good reason alone to do it (often quite the opposite). But, if you're tempted, for God's sake make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open, and that someone, somewhere, has good answers to these two points.
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