The Intersection

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.

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.

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.”  

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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.

Don't Be A Category Clone, Be Distinctive...

Which is your brand?

Something we've observed over the years is that to have the best chance of success, brands should be highly distinctive in their category. This is borne out by Byron Sharp's findings (which you can read in his excellent book How Brands Grow), being distinctive in the category makes it easier for potential customers to notice your brand, remember you, and then recognise you and select you when they come to buy.

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.

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

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.