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.

The Value of Craft

Let's talk about craft.

Not all advertising is created equal.

The quality of creative craft makes a huge difference to the effectiveness of advertising. The valuable skills of great writing, art direction, design, typography and film direction are the things that can turn the mundane into the fascinating, or turn the ordinary into the unmissable.

They can be the difference between the unsuccessful and the successful – between a campaign that fails to reach its targets, and one that adds real long-term value to a client’s business.

That’s why you can have two campaigns with the same strategy, where one fails and one succeeds.

The difference is how well that strategy is brought to life.

The same thing can be written blandly, or it can be written in a way that connects with you or moves you on a human level.

The same thought can be communicated in a way that’s easy to miss, or put forward in such a powerful way that it will stay with you long after you see it.

And that’s why, even in this era of meticulously planned and heavily scrutinised marketing, creativity and creative craft are still the skills most valuable to business when it comes to advertising.

Make sure that you have skilled and talented writers, art directors, typographers, photographers, directors, editors and sound designers working on your advertising – and allow them to use
those talents. 

Because even if what you are doing is right, it will live or die, fail or succeed, by the way that you do it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call craft.

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.

An Absolute Commercial Necessity

Advertising that surprises, entertains or provokes a reaction is much more likely to be noticed and remembered.

That’s certainly not to say these things should be the sole aim of advertising. It’s not good enough to be entertaining just for entertainment’s sake, or shocking just for shock value.

The surprise, entertainment or provocation needs to serve a purpose – it has to be there to make the benefit of the product and the brand more noticeable and memorable.

This should be a guiding principle behind the development and direction of advertising ideas.

This is becoming increasingly important as we are bombarded with more advertising and information than ever before, and we are becoming ever more adept at screening out any uninteresting and irrelevant noise.

Sadly, most current advertising falls into the category of dull, irrelevant or uninteresting.

Clients and agencies often agonise over their strategy, but then package it up in bland or formulaic advertising that completely passes the viewer by. 

This means that making your advertising surprising, thought-provoking, interesting or entertaining (in a way that makes the product benefit and brand more noticeable and memorable) is not a stylistic or indulgent choice, as it is so often portrayed.

It is an absolute commercial necessity.

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.

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.

Painful Proof That Advertising People Have Lost Touch With The Public

The events of the last few days - the EU referendum in the UK and the subsequent fall-out - have been an amazing spectacle.

To be in the UK at this time is to be present and aware as history is being made, and to be a spectator and participator as all kind of human behaviour are laid bare in front of us.

I want to avoid as much as possible the central political issue (that's not really a subject for this blog) and focus on something that is – and that is the reaction of people in the advertising and marketing world to the vote to leave the EU.

The reaction of people in the advertising industry to the result was extremely telling.

There was complete shock and much outrage that the vote had gone the way it had. There was disbelief in the result - absolute surprise that so many people had voted 'out'.

And, even more interestingly, a complete disdain and contempt for those people, too.

Through media like facebook and twitter, it became clear that most advertising people were not among the 17½ million people who voted to leave the EU.

And not only that, throughout the day they became increasingly critical and insulting about those people.

They simply could not believe, and could not understand why so many people had voted 'out'. They must all be racist, or stupid, or have been hoodwinked, or fallen for the lies of the leave campaigners, was the overriding response.

This soon led to the demonising of the old, and labelling all of the out voters as some racist underbelly of the country.

It's one thing to disagree with people's views.

Another thing to violently disagree.

Another again to insult people who hold the view.

Another further to be completely taken by surprise that there might be over half of the country who, for whatever reason, hold that view.

But then it's another thing completely to not even attempt to understand why people hold that view.

And this from a group of people who are handsomely paid to supposedly understand the wo/man-in-the-street.

Let's go back a week.

In the run-up to the referendum, it was clear to us that the vote was going to be close. Although the polls were calling a narrow victory for Remain, we weren't convinced. We could see a vote where 'Leave' gets more votes than people were expecting. (Or 'OUT' as it was more often called in the real world).

We felt there was a huge groundswell of dissatisfaction out there.

That, rightly or wrongly, there was a huge amount of people who felt like their views and opinions hadn't been taken seriously, who had real concerns about the country, issues like immigration and its effects, and about the influence of the EU over the UK.

It felt to us like people were underestimating the number of these people – and underestimating their desire to vote in this referendum. And that turnout would be very high amongst those who felt like this, because of the emotion felt about these issues.

This was something that was consistently overlooked by remain campaigners, pundits and political commentators alike during the run-up to the referendum – that for a huge number of people, this was an emotional issue as well as a practical one. And that this was something that existed even before the leave campaigners harnessed it.

Of course none of this is rocket science. It just comes from looking around you at the real world, listening to what people are saying, reading what they say on Facebook, etc. Listening to friends and family on the subject.

But, the overriding reaction of most advertising people to the result seems like further evidence that they are living in their own bubble. A world of people like them, which they struggle to see past.

Worse still, they have so little awareness of the world beyond their bubble, that they are absolutely shocked and stunned when the evidence of its existence stares them in the face, their only reaction is to lash out at it.

One of the most ironic things about the whole affair is the number of planners, traditionally those in the agency tasked primarily with the official role of understanding the consumer, who were on the frontline of the disbelief and insults.

And on top of that, the utter craziness of seeing those people who have been banging on for ages about consumers making emotional decisions and not rational ones, then decrying those 17½ million Leave voters for not carefully analysing the economic ramifications of leaving the EU, and making a choice based on what they feel.

I suspect Alanis Morissette is currently penning a new version of her greatest hit even as I write this.

The problem of advertising having become too much of a polite, middle-class place with not enough diversity has been well documented, not least in our own recently published book [plug: HERE].

Not only is it primarily staffed by similar people from similar backgrounds, who think similar things, but it appears that they are becoming more and more insular, with a diminishing understanding of the real world.

How many of the adfolk of Soho and East London do a weekly big shop at a Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Lidl or Aldi?

I can't imagine it's many. And that's just a flippant example. How many really know the daily lives, worries, concerns, priorities and motivations of normal people?

They are living in their own rarified world. And this is not helping clients.

You can see examples of it all over: adfolk increasingly going on about "Consumers needing brands to have a purpose",  or "Consumers having relationships with brands".

Yes, consumers need a brand to have a purpose exactly like they care about whether someone's little Lila or Finn will be able to spend summer in the Dordogne without mummy having any admin headaches.

It is ad-world, rarified nonsense.

It seems very appropriate that, at the same time that half of advertising was sucking champagne from the corporate trough in Cannes, 72.2 percent of the UK – the second highest turnout in a national vote since 1950 – were braving the torrential rain to make their voices heard.

There's no substitute for being from and living in the real world. You can't fake it by doing a research group in a regional chain hotel every few months.

Advertising people have lost touch with the real world.

It's about time we burst their bubble.

Brave New Heights Reached On The Cannes Pinnacle of Excrement

I've been on a self-imposed semi-retirement from criticising creative awards on this this blog.

Not because I've changed my mind, but just because they seem to be getting worse and it appears nothing can stop the rot.

And to be honest, I've got better things to do.

As shit as all creative awards seem to have become, the pinnacle of excrement is the Cannes Lions festival. And still it seems there is little point in criticising even that, because I genuinely believe there is nothing on Earth that would shame the participants.

When you look at what is going on over there, from the work that gets 'awarded', to the incessant rivers of waffle and bullshit, the self-serving forums and back-slapping cronyism, it feels like if people aren't ashamed to be part of that, then nothing anyone could say would affect them in any way.

But then it sinks to such new depths that I feel compelled to briefly pop out of the aforementioned semi-retirement.

In previous years we've seen work (that shall remain nameless) that's clearly awards-glitter-scam win big gongs. But this year has beaten even that. I'm not going to put up the work here, I can't stand it, and I refuse to give it any more oxygen (I'm sure you've seen anyway. I'm sure).

But now two pieces of work, one a scam charity app, and another a piece of offensive, low-grade frat humour, have won awards over there. Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, it proves you wrong.

I can't think of anything that more accurately represents how shit the ad industry has become than the Cannes Festival.

It is at once the worst of the industry, and its best representation.

If you're over there in any capacity, you're complicit in the utter shameless horror-show of it all.

You're part of the problem.

Sorry.