Brief writing - it's harder than you think

The biggest problem with brief writing is that people think they're easy to write.

Typical Marketing Department:
"We're going to grab a sandwich. Coming?"
"Sure, give me ten minutes. Just need to get a brief to the Agency".


Typical Client Service Department:
"We're going for sushi. Coming?"
"Sure, give me ten minutes. Just need to get a brief into Traffic".

Great briefs take time. 

A great brief needs to be very, very clear what the resultant output should achieve (note: not what it should look or sound like, but what it's intention is). More than that a great brief must inspire, in fact, catapult, the imagination of your creative teams. It needs to immediately conjure up ideas and angles and possibilities and excitement. 

To do that it needs to be a few simple things:

1. Be Clear.

2. Be Concise.

3. Be Clever.

4. Be Creative.
5. Be Collaborative.

I'm going to unpack these in this blog. I've even drawn you a little video in the proposition section. Take a look. 

Be Clear:

Who do you want to do what as a result of this piece of communication?

There's a bunch of choices in there and the catch-all target market definition usually chucked in a brief is a perfect example of lazy thinking, where no choices have been made at all. It's murky and bloated and will undoubtedly lead to obviously murky and inefficient communication output.

To exquisitely illustrate the point, watch this:

Once you've sorted the "who are we talking to" out, then what do you want them to do...as a result of engaging with this piece of communication.

Answering these questions as a "if-then" approach is helpful. Remember, they may be exposed to a whole lot of things that your brand is saying in a whole lot of channels. However - what's this one going to ask the/expect them/persuade them to do?  This is where separating out marketing objectives from communication objectives is so critical. Example, the key job of a banner ad is most likely not to increase brand awareness.

Obviously if the brief is for the BIG IDEA, and you're not down to the individual elements yet, think even more carefully about what the role of the communication will be. What will success look like? Will it (can it) be measured, if so how, and if not - how will you know it worked?

Be Concise:

Doing all of the above thinking - before you write the brief - helps you become focused in your thinking. And so the communication can be focused, and work in an integrated way with all the other bits of communication in your overall plan. If you want to ask your consumers to do ten things, you must realize that not only are you being lazy, but most consumers are. Ask us to do/think/feel/remember one thing, maybe - just maybe - we'll do it. Ten things, or even three? Sorry, what were you saying again?

A creative brief should be no more than two pages. It should tell a story and should read well. Not like a collection of marketing-speak cut and pasted from the brand plan. 

Be Clever:

Find a truly interesting and motivating and deep-seated reason why people do what they do. And find a way of connecting it to what your brand offers. Where the human truth or insight meets your brand truth or insight is where the magic starts happening. This is going to emerge in your brief as the Proposition (see next point).

An example from a campaign that I loved the moment I saw it (Boom! Great insight driven work always does that - connects with a Boom!), is Sanlam's One Rand Man campaign. The insight is - my words not theirs - that because we don't physically pay with cash, our money doesn't seem real. 

Be Creative:

This is the real thorn in the side. Here's why you really can't bang it out before lunch.

The inspirational bit of the brief hinges on the Proposition. Call it what you like. The Platform. The Single Minded Thought. The Elevator Pitch. The thing most likely to convince our consumer to do/think/feel what we want them to do/think/feel. This builds on the brand's Value Proposition.

Source: Tim Williams

Usually, you can't get to a great proposition unless you have a really good Insight. Because what we want to do with the proposition is create a launch pad for ideas. The insight helps because it allows you a real understanding of consumer motivations and beliefs - the why not the what. (Insights are something that must be done, along with the Brand's Positioning Statement way before you sit down to write the brief).

The proposition requires creative writing. And understandably not every marketer or account manager is a creative writer. So this proposition can and should be written in collaboration with the agency. In agencies, account managers should be creative. But if they're not, then they should bring in a strategist or a copywriter to get that sentence. Because once you've got it - you're off. That's the catapult to a big idea and a seamless, integrated campaign.

Propositions need also to help make the brand distinctive. Why can this brand solve the tension in that insight better than anyone else? This is when a truly differentiated and distinctive product concept helps. But honestly, how many of those do we see?

So the proposition links a universal insight or truth with a brand truth with something that makes your brand distinctive from the competition or category. Note I said distinctive not differentiated. Distinctiveness is critical when we get to the communication part of the proposition. It sets us apart, maybe tonality, maybe because of an underlying purpose, maybe because of a bottle shape. 

Read this wonderful examnple from The Economist: https://brandsandhumour.substack.com/p/those-economist-ads-part-1

The best way to get better at this is to practice. There are a number of obvious examples but a powerful one is Dove. The fact that a brand based on a moisturising soap can help you acknowledge your inner saboteur and encourage self-belief and self-confidence in young women, is nothing short of miraculous.

I find a way to write good propositions is to think of them like headlines. In fact great propositions can be headlines and many end up with tiny tweaks to be payoff lines. How would you write the proposition for this ad?

Human truth: Very few women think they're beautiful (4%).
Brand truth: Dove has a range of everyday beauty products.

So, true to the brand: Dove is a real beauty product
Motivating insight: You are probably more beautiful than you think
Distinctive to the competition: Dove believes in real beauty.

Here are some options (and these take time to write, so you have to try them out until you get to one that sounds like it could create ideas).

Proposition ideas:
With Dove, you know your beauty is real.
Dove helps you be comfortable in your skin.
Dove believes your beauty is within.
Dove - real beauty is more than skin deep.
Dove is a real beauty brand that celebrates real beauty.
Dove wants you to feel more beautiful than you think.

Here's what their VP said:

So "Dove wants you to feel more beautiful than you think" feels quite on-brand and quite creatively liberating doesn't it?

That's probably an easy one, because we know what the output is. I took toothpaste (IMHO a massively undifferentiated and non-distinctive category, except for specialist toothpastes) and here's where I got:

Brand truth: Brand X makes your teeth white and your smile beautiful
Insight: I feel happier if someone smiles at me.
Distinctive: A toothpaste brand that believes in the benefit of smiling.

Proposition attempt: 
Brand X, making the world a happier place, one smile at a time.

I've never worked on a toothpaste brand, but Googling this - smiles are everywhere in toothpaste ads, So that's not distinctive. But it seems that "happiness" could carve a distinctive tonality in the category. Is this Coca Cola's territory? It is close. (Ironically). So we may need to keep working on the line to find the right word. But can you start seeing a campaign around Making the World a Happier Place, a hashtag on Instagram, a Pinterest board, some amazing content possibilities, ads? I can. It has "legs". 

The last piece about "Be Creative" is that you should consider your audience for the brief. The creative team. How can you dramatise the proposition? Where should you do the briefing session? In the boardroom? Or In Real Life somewhere?  Wherever, make it inspiring.

Be Collaborative

As I said at the beginning, briefs are hard to get right. The more heads to bounce ideas off, the better. 

But, this is not a committee. You're asking for clarity and inspiring comment, not "oh and can you add in that we now also close later on Fridays"?

Find people in your organisation that are good with words. Those right brain types. 

And, when you have your briefing session, and in discussion someone creative says "what if we said.....", and comes out with the zinger of propositions, please for the love of great communication, punch the air and say YES that's IT! Instead of "it's not what it says on the brief".

If they feel excited and you feel excited, I promise there's a better chance your consumers will too.

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Adtherapy runs  Exceptional Brief Writing workshops for marketers and agencies.  

The Creative Fitness programme also includes Developing Transformative Insights and other useful tools and techniques to make sure your communication is as good as it should be. 

Email gillian@adtherapy.co.za or call 0832659099 to discuss how we can help you.

You've written your best Brand Plan. Now it's time to write your best brief.

Just like any other strategic process, a brief is about choices. The brief is the roadmap of how to direct the execution of creative materials to achieve the marketing objectives at which you have carefully and strategically arrived.

A brief is not just an instruction for work to be done, it's a strategic and creative document, meant to summarise effectively the task at hand in a way that inspires great creative output.

I shouldn't have to remind you of this, but the reason you should want (in fact, insist on) great creative work is simply because it works harder and better. The IPA and researcher Peter Field recently updated their research on the effectiveness of creativity: "the findings revealed a direct correlation between strong advertising creativity and business success, and that high levels of creativity make advertising campaigns some 12 times more efficient at increasing a brand’s market share".

Briefs are hard to write, and even harder if they are not underpinned by good strategic thinking upfront. Mark Ritson bemoans the state of brief-writing and unpacks most of the common problems (strategy being confused with tactics is a biggy, or even worse going into a briefing with no discernible strategy at all, hoping the agency will magically identify one during the creative process, here. 

The Better Briefs research that Ritson references acknowledges that most marketers admit to finding them difficult to write, and in fact not even experience seems to make them easier, but in spite of that many marketers in fact think they're rather good at them. Not so the recipients of the briefs. The research showcases the astonishing divide between the author and commissioner of the work, the marketer, and those that need to interpret the brief and deliver, the agency.

So, what does a good brief need to make it good?

The key attributes of briefs should be Clarity, Brevity and Fertility. You probably have a standard briefing template, and you just have to fill it in before lunch, right? Wrong! Templates may have the right boxes but the hardest part of writing the brief is deciding what goes into those boxes, and what gets left out.

Did you see the size of the brief in the Stop Sign video above? And did you see the chaos that followed? And the resultant confused and jumbled output?

Sadly, many briefs are problematic - they don't articulate the problem carefully enough , they have too many - or too vague - objectives, their target audience is indistinct, there is no insight into the consumers' behaviour, no clear idea of the behaviour change required and no jump off point for how to bring the brand benefit to life. More than that, most of them are wishful (and dare I say it, sometimes rather arrogant) thinking.

Many briefs use the From - To, or the Get - To - By, format, which are both useful. In essence, your consumers are at Point A, and you would like them to be at Point B. What are the messages that would persuade them to change their behaviour, at what stages in their decision making journey should you interact with them, and how?

But a strong area of insight is identifying what might get in the way of them simply doing what you want them to do, following your instructions like sheep? What is the brand hurdle, or tension between Point A and B? Even if you managed to get them to change their minds about their beliefs about the brand, might there be an obstacle that stills stands in their way?

By adding that into your brief, you will acknowledge that you consumers too have choices. And maybe you're not one of them. Yet.

Other top tips:

1. Really truly drill down into the objective - what is the problem or opportunity that communications can solve or achieve? Why are you doing this? To acquire new customers, or retain existing ones? What are the measures of success and how best will you achieve them? My favourite example of this is Sainsbury's "Try something New Today" campaign - it's an old example but an exceptional one in terms of setting clear objectives. All they needed to achieve a massive growth target (+£2.5 billion over three years) was to ask their existing customers to spend an additional £1.14 each time they shopped. Watch the case study of this campaign here . There's a lot that works in it, but take a moment to marvel at the simplicity and clarity of the objective, and how it clearly directed the creative and media strategy.

2. Be clear who your core audience is. Famous for his Volkswagen ads, copywriter Bob Levenson said, "I always started by writing Dear Charlie, like writing to a friend. And then I would say what I had to say, and at the end I would cross out Dear Charlie, and I was all right." If your creative team can't imagine who they are speaking to, what will they say and how will they say it?

Dear Charlie...

3. Insight, shminsight. It's such a bandied about term, but it's worth digging for.

Simply put, you want to understand the sometimes hidden motivations that drive behaviour. Actually no, you NEED to.  Consumer insights are little secrets hidden beneath the surface, that explain the underlying behaviours, motivations, pain points and emotions of your consumers. Although they are sometimes quite generic, they are always truthful and a really powerful one will immediately generate an emotional reaction - a laugh, a smile, a tear, a sense of - oh yes, that's me.

The real power of the insight is when the insight (or human truth) OVERLAPS with the brand benefit. That's the sweet spot.

I am a fan of the Venn diagram when trying to extract insights - use two or three circles and see where you overlap. When you hit the intersection between the brand and the human motivation in the category, you hit truly powerful territory.

One of my favourite examples is the Always Like a Girl campaign. Or the Sanlam One Rand Man campaign. Making up stuff for insights (ie not basing them on actual observations & data), and leaving them in space that is too generic, is where things get fluffy.

How does that motivation that you've identified link unlock brand growth?

Think Omo's "Dirt is Good". "The campaign had resonance because it addressed the inherent tension between moms’ controlling instincts (visá-vis dirt) and their desire for their children to be free to grow and develop through play. Moms found the message relevant, meaningful, and evocative. Before this campaign, it could be argued that most moms (and most makers of laundry detergent) thought of dirt as the enemy, but this big idea made us think about dirt in a very different way. It made us think of dirt as an ally in our children’s development." The idea was not only disruptive, it was based on a universal insight, so was able to resonate (with a few regional tweaks) across the world.

The Book Of Dirt, a recent execution off the long running idea, 'Dirt is Good'.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/67406467/OMO-The-Book-of-Dirt

3. The Proposition. The Single Minded Proposition. The Value Proposition. The Single Minded Thought. Call it what you like. Howard Ibach who writes books on Briefs and Propositions, says that a well written proposition is "the best kept secret for transforming our brand'. 

He describes it well here: 

"in an academic world, a positioning articulates the competitive added value of a brand. It is defined vs competition, whereas a value proposition defines what the brand brings to its audience and is consumer-driven. Some people define value proposition with the claim e.g Airbnb's proposition is “feel at home anywhere in the world”, whereas it's positioning could be the anti-hotel brand". 

The proposition is the springboard for the creative - it sums up what the benefit is, in a neat sexy sentence. Remember the job of the brief is to inspire great creativity - this is what does it. (Or doesn't.) 

An example: 'Snickers makes you, you again'. (Watch Mark Ritson's Effies Case study here . Venn diagrams are useful here too. When you read the proposition for AirBnB or Snickers, can you imagine a campaign? If you can - it's got "fertility": ideas will come easily, and will spread across multiple channels. That's what you're aiming for.

My Venn diagram, based on info from the Effies case (link above).

Of course there are other things to put in your brief - tonality, reasons to believe, deadlines, budget and so on. I like to try not to be prescriptive in terms of media channels when briefing for a campaign, because the idea can also inform the media choices. Usually though, you have an idea of which channels to go into, and these can also be helpful to the creative teams. What can be useful is to understand the process a consumer goes through in terms of decision making, and where you should be talking to them at what stage of their decision process. Whilst you might have the where to talk to consumers sorted, please always allow the creative team the freedom to come up with the how. I love to think about how boring a Train Safety campaign could have been if the client had been prescriptive - instead of this one.

So - good luck! Have fun with it. Remember the target audience for your brief is the Creative Team. Be inspiring. Bring it to life with a face to face briefing that brings the proposition to life. 

Please, please don't email the brief without discussion. Sometimes, when confronted with your hard toiled brief, a creative team or strategist will ask some questions that you hadn't thought of. Use this opportunity to improve your brief. 

[Note to marketers: very often an agency will write a BUILD on your brief, called the Creative Brief. Why? It interprets your 'marketingese' into inspiring nuggets that can help the creative teams deliver great ideas. It's a really good idea for you to sign off this brief - most agencies will build on your first proposition - they will make it sexier and more juicy - that's what they do. BUT if you don't sign it off, there may be a subtle direction change that you did not envisage, and it's definitely something to agree on before the creative development process begins. Also, think how excited you will be to see the outcome?] 

[Note to agencies: if your client signs off the proposition on the creative brief, you will an almost 100% chance of your work being bought first time round. It's a win-win!]

The brief is the first step in the creative process - get it wrong, or make it boring, and it sets up a world of pain, confusion and ineffective work. In fact, the Better Brief research found that 33% of every markeing budget is wasted on poor briefs and misdirected work! And no-one needs more of that. (Get the full report here.)

Now, go be great.

And of course - if you need help, call me.

Head over to our Brief Therapy page to see how we can help you (we run Creative Fitness training workshops on brief writing and we can mentor or help you write the briefs in other ways, like getting to grips with insights or finetuning your proposition). Email me at gillian@adtherapy.co.za with your questions or what you think would help your team.

Better Client-Agency relationships lead to better Commercial Creativity. And that's a good thing.

Some time back I wrote a blog based on a report called "A is for Alliances", published by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), in the UK. (Images below are from the report. Download it here)

In it, they provide real justification for the age old saying that Clients get the agencies they deserve.

Aprais, a renowned Business Relationship Management Consultancy, reckons that there is as much as a 37% differential in the quality of creative output between poor and good client-agency relationships.

Unless you've been under a rock you know already that better creative is a better business building tool - more effective, more efficient, better ROI. (If you're still unconvinced, please read The Case for Creativity. Again, if need be).

So adding the Apprais research and The Case for Creativity findings together, we get a simple equation:

Good relationship = good work = better results.

Scientifically proven, even!

My mantra when I started Adtherapy ten years ago was similar:

Better skills = better relationships = better results.

How I got to this piece of intuitive brilliance? By working back from the great campaigns I'd been involved with, and realising there was always a strong client-agency partnership behind them. And when I unpacked what was at the root of those partnerships, it was obvious. Skills. Other things too - chemistry, culture compatibility, bravery, fun. But skills meant that each party respected each other and had confidence in each other. That  'trust' thing.

One of my clients told me that she would jump off a mountain, that our Executive Creative Director was like her parachute; that was the extent to which she trusted him (and us). The work we did for her got her death threats and nearly got her fired, but catapulted their business into the stratosphere, so she knew what 'brave' meant.

What drives successful Client-Agency partnerships?

The IPA has come up with 4 basic drivers of good partnerships. They are:

1. Transparent and effective approval processes
2. Mutually agreed and maintained timing plans
3. Honest and open briefings with clear business objectives, budget, timing and brand guidelines
4. Respectful and collaborative behaviours built on shared goals and rewards.

So simple. And yet, and yet, and yet...

• Many briefs are terrible. Lacking in information, too long, no clear thinking, prescriptive, pedantic, clumsy, no insight.
• Many times the business objectives and the brand objectives are muddled and are not clear.
• Consumer understanding is limited and basic or super surface-level.
• These horrible briefs are often emailed; not even presented in person.
• Agency sometimes questions the briefs, but this creates a disharmony - "why are they being so argumentative"?
• Deadlines bear no resemblance to reality - they are imposed from the outside in, because of an internal deadline.
• Then the work that comes back is used as a guide to what the client team doesn't want, doesn't like.
• There are few evaluation skills, few skills that help in giving constructive feedback. B.t.w. - "it makes me want to vomit" is not a good one.
• Approvals become about second guessing the bigger boss, and then the next bigger boss, because many of the corporate marketing teams operate in a culture of fear and 'what would s/he like'?
• And would you believe it, because of all of this to-ing and fro-ing, deadlines are missed.
• And the agency is "useless".

Many of these marketers and agencies willingly submit to relationship audits, every month, twice a year, whatever, to 'measure the relationship'. Issues are raised, concerns are flagged. Until the next audit, when the same issues are raised and concerns are flagged.

What to do? *wrings her hands*

Back to Adtherapy maths formula.

Better skills = better relationships = better results.

What to do? Put the skills in place to make it work. Then, get some Partnership Principles in place. And move forward happily - or don't. You may both be wrong for each other. Acknowledge it and move on instead of perpetuating an unsuccessful relationship.

What are Partnership Principles?

The work done in the IPA exercise highlighted the concept of a Relationship Contract. Agencies and clients have lengthy legal contracts (which are often not signed because they spend so much time bouncing between lawyers) and detailed fee agreements but no real contract on how to work together. An example from Avis and DDB from the 1960's shows us how it's done.

From A is For Alliances, IPA

To get you started, you could consider the advice given by Gotz Ulmer, Executive Creative Director at Germany's best agency, Jung von Matt. He said they have three simple rules for working with clients. They ask:

1. Are we making money?
2. Are we doing great work?
3. Are we having fun?

If they can't answer 'Yes' to at least 2, then it's not the right agency-client partnership for them. 

Then make sure you and your client have the right skills.

What are these magical skills, I hear you cry? Interestingly, I believe the same set of skills is required by both parties at the coalface - namely the agency account manager/strategist team, and the brand/marketing manager. They are the fulcrum of the relationship and need to manage up, manage resources, manage conflict and manage the risk.

Some of the skills are 'hard', some are 'soft'. This is not a complete list, but here are some:

• Hard: Brand strategy, positioning, segmentation, consumer behaviour, real insights, writing exceptional briefs, evaluating creative, integrated media options (including digital), budget management.
• Soft: Giving constructive feedback, being inspiring, managing conflict in a positive way, selling up the organisation, effective communication, body language, building teams, presenting well.

Honestly, if you are managing clients , or are managing an agency relationship without being super skilled in these areas, you are wasting other people's time and money. 

The whole point of having an agency is that they are able to bring to the business a degree of commercial creativity that will drive your business forward. A little like the man with the ladder in this picture:

Work together well, and both your businesses will thrive. Work together badly, and both your businesses will suffer. Or at least not do as well as they could. And you will get the advertising, and the agency, you deserve.
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Adtherapy is premised on helping agencies and marketers work better together to develop better quality creative output, because it is better for business. We have numerous training options from Creative Fitness for marketers to Account Leadership for agencies, to a fully fledged suite of modules for up-skilling marketing teams in our new Business Marketing Academy. And we consult too!  

Browse our offerings on  www.adtherapy.co.za, or www.businessmarketingacademy.guru or email me on gillian@adtherapy.co.za or talk to me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. Or just stop me in the street.

(Ladder man image courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net by JessaPhorn)

Would your brief for a SuperBowl ad be different from how you usually brief?

Every year I adapt a post I've written over the years asking what makes a brief for a Super Bowl ad different from the briefs we usually write, everyday briefs?

Here are my thoughts in a 2017 world.

If writing creative briefs is hard then writing great creative briefs is extremely difficult.

The main problems are a lack of clarity of thought and an inspiring proposition. These arise because sometimes the brief-writer isn't clear why they're really asking for this piece of communication, or what they really want to say, or who they really want to say it to. But, most of all they don't know why anyone should believe them.

So they write briefs that offer their creative teams, and their consumers', too many choices. Then they use the creative offering to whittle down to what they think they should say.
"Actually, that wasn't really what I had in mind... What I think we really should be saying, maybe, is ....."

Of course it's not always that bad. Some creative briefs are perfect.

But every year, the Super Bowl ad-fest inspires me to ask this question:

How does a Super Bowl Ad Brief differ from the Common Client Ad Brief?

And, with so many eyes on these ads, why is that some just don't hit the mark, some are bad, and some are amazing?

In 2013, when I first wrote an article on this question, I picked up a quote from a Bloomberg's Business Week article entitled : "Game on: SuperBowl ads are already playing online". It was from David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO North America,  who "advises keeping an ad simple and honest. “It should also be an easy, reductionist message,” says Lubars. “You’re getting a canvas that 120 million people will see. You have to go where nobody has gone before. The ad has to be single-minded, relevant, funny, and emotional. If it’s done right, $4 million* (for a 30 - sec spot) is a bargain. I would say 90 percent of the people running ads are wasting their money.” (* now $5million)

So back to my question. Is the brief for BIG work different from your common and garden version?

Or is the work different because maybe  the agencies recognise that this is THE brief and assign their best teams to work on it? But even that doesn't always deliver great work. 

Even if the Super Bowl Ad brief is perceived by the agencies to be much cooler and high-stakes with more chance of creative risk-taking than the average Client Brief, then why do some of the Super Bowl ads come out boring, done-before, irrelevant and imminently forgettable?

It seems that the enormous viewership might have something to do with it. Possibly a bit of stage fright and a trying-too-hard aspect? Or a client wanting to cover all their bases to justify the enormous spend?

My two cents worth would be that there's too much playing to the masses and too much losing sight of the one person that actually counts - the person who may do something, buy something, think something, as a result of your ad. 

Is there a different approach to writing the brief for communication that will be watched, and analysed, and talked about, by millions?

The usual Client Ad Brief claims to want to be original, single minded, relevant and emotionally engaging, right? So what's the big difference? Truthfully, having never seen a Super Bowl brief, I have no idea.

Here are some ads that I thought were interesting.

A few ads I thought hit the mark are Budweiser Immigrant ad (totally coincidentally spot-on from a political consciousness point of view), the 84 Lumber ad (ditto, very topical and bound to polarize both ways, they also gained huge traction from being "censored"), the Kia ad with the inimitable tree-hugging Melissa McCarthy and the Hyundai live shoot ad living up to its promise of making things better, and showcasing tech in all its storytelling magic. I also loved It's a 10 Hair care, for being hilariously political while strongly selling their brand benefit.

All these are fresh, single-minded, and totally relevant. They all hit an emotional chord. One is funny, one is deeply chilling, one makes you want to cry and one makes you laugh. They speak to the truth of their brand message. And all of them address, in totally different ways, an interesting insight. The Kia ad for me tapped into an interesting insight: being an eco-warrior is hard, but you can still do your bit by driving a Kia Nitro: the target consumer cal still do her bit to save the planet without going full eco-warrior. 


These ads have managed to create an ongoing dialogue, online, offline, in people's hearts and minds, about what their message. 

And the interesting shift this year, coincidentally or not, is the political nature of the messages. There was an apparent rejection of the right wing shift in American values and the need for big brands to continue to honor diversity. 

This ad for Airbnb is case in point - based on a really strong insight and business challenge. I would have guessed that the message was aimed as much as consumers as Airbnb hosts.

Interesting side story: the ad space was bought on Thursday and shot on Thursday night (using Airbnb people as actors).  Reading this article though, the ad claims that Airbnb "was using the Super Bowl to highlight its commitment to provide short-term housing for 100,000 people in need over the next five years, including for refugees, victims of natural disasters and aid workers."  


I'm not sure it achieved that, although CEO Brian Chesky tweeted additional information.

There were many more, and many more opinions. Watch them all here

Whether the ads were a hit or a miss, here's what I like to imagine sets a Super Bowl brief apart form a common Creative Brief:

1. The client (and agency) are aiming for GREAT. You have a much better chance of getting there if you aim for it, than if you don't.
2. It's presumably agreed upfront that the ad has to be entertaining with exceptional production values (with budget allowed for) - great advice for the Common Brief to borrow from.
3. The ad aims to be memorable, relevant and engaging. Tick, tick and tick.
4. It simply has to be distinctive. And talk-able, and shareable. And that means some brave decisions need to be made in the approvals process.
5. The message has to be totally singleminded.
6. Time has been invested in mining a really strong insight about the consumers motivations or beliefs in the category. 
7. The brand has a strong point of view, which may or may not please everybody.
8. A powerful proposition and very clear brand positioning are the cornerstones.

Maybe we should treat each ad brief like a Super Bowl brief and see what happens to the work?

The Cannes Festival is over. Is the winning work any good?

Well, what a relief that the endless stream of sun-dappled beach and cafe pictures, with the obligatory cocktail or glass of pink Chateau Quleque-chose in the foreground, are over. Back to the real world for the lot of you.

Pic Courtesy Arlene Donnenburg. 

Not that I'm envious at all. I managed to save my South African Rands, and still watched some great seminars from the comfort of my heated office in freezing Cape Town. And I didn't have a hangover once.

So given that I was a virtual voyeur of the Festivale, which used to be called the International Advertising Festival and now is known as the somewhat loftier International festival of Creativity, I have a few learnings, observations, musings, mutterings.

The first is the mobile is where it will be, and the developing world has the most opportunity. Watch Keith Weed from Unilever's views here

The second is that ideas still matter. More than ever.

The third is that the name should revert to the Festival of Advertising, not Festival of Creativity. Just because it's a 3-D billboard, or a prosthetic arm, or an App that looks after your kids on the beach doesn't mean that somehow it's stopped being advertising. 

MegaFon's MegaFaces Billboard at the Sochi Olympics

This is not a festival for pure creative, because that would then encompass art, and graffiti and music and film and books and a whole bunch of other creative pursuits. This is creativity in service of business. It's creativity that is helping brands grow. And that, in my humble view, is called Advertising.

Of course Sir John Hegarty said it best - listen to his view on this point here.

Another point is that many of the winners were familiar work, already. Both the Grand Prix Winners for Film had already been seen many times; in the case of Volvo Trucks  over 73 million times.  Fourth learning: great work gets shared. Great work is amplified. T'was ever thus, but so much more powerful today.

But for my fifth and I think most interesting learning, back to my headline. An article in the USA Today had this headline "Incredibly Unusual Ads take Top Cannes Awards".

Which got me thinking - why are they unusual? Awards shows are always controversial, but unusual? Are the winners any good?

And that's the beauty of Cannes. 

Whatever the festival is called. Because it forces those of us in the pursuit of great advertising to challenge our notions of what great looks like. And to share in the choices of experienced judging panels. And to ponder and wonder what they saw in those pieces, and why the mood of the winners feels quite different to the winners last year. And whether we personally think they're good or great.

And that's the greatest learning of all. Everyone in the business of marketing communication needs to constantly review, question, discuss, have a point of view. Watch the seminars. Learn. Listen. Grow. That's the practice needed to constantly get better at this.

Btw, the journalist of the "Unusual Ads win Cannes" story, quotes:

Harvey Nichols Christmas Campaign

The Harvey Nichols "Sorry I Spent It on Myself" campaign focuses on people who buy their loved ones inexpensive holiday gifts, such as rubber bands and paper clips that come in Harvey Nichols-branded packaging, so they can spend more on themselves. 

The retailer actually sold the cheap, unusual presents featured in its ad — and sold out in just under three days.

Harvey Nichols' advertising approach was "brave" and "flew in the face of convention around holiday advertising," said film jury member Pete Favat, who is the chief creative officer at ad agency Deutsch LA, in Los Angeles. "For a retailer to take their highest-selling season and do something like this is remarkably bold."

Brave, bold, convention-breaking, successful. Those have always been hallmarks of great advertising. So not really unusual at all. The only unusual bit is that so few marketers will make this type of work.

To summarise.

My brain is full. My heart is inspired. Onwards brave warriors. Do your best. Because in the end, everybody wins.

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Adtherapy is a consulting and advertising skills-building company that is on a quest to #ridtheworldofbadadvertising

Contact Gillian on gillian@adtherapy.co.za if you want to join the quest, or want some advice on how to make better advertising.Or you can follow, chat on Twitter @grightford@grightford

What Do Ad Agencies Actually Sell?

In our workshop on The Business of Advertising, I usually start by explaining the basic principles of business. Any business. 

You are able to produce something, which you think has some value to someone. It is somehow different from what they can currently buy, and so it has some value. The key issues are - what is the value of the thing, how do you sell it, and can you make a profit by selling it at a price that covers the costs and leaves something over for you?

Image by bplanet

Everyone gets that. 

And then I ask: so, what do Agency's sell?

The usual answers?

• Time.
• Ideas.
• Creativity.
• Solutions.
• Ads?

These answers just raise more questions:

• If you sell time, how is your time different from another agency's time?
• How do you decide on the price for an idea/creativity/solutions?
• Is an agency a service business or a product business? 

The correct answer, in my view, is none of these. It was perfectly explained in this blog by The Ignition Consulting Group, called Are you really in the Service Business?

Many agencies lament that they have become “order-takers.”  But why?  Who turned your agency into an order-taker?  You did – not your clients.  You did it by forgetting what it is you’re really selling.  You’re not selling service.  You’re not even selling ads or ideas. You’re selling business results. 

Yes - what agencies sell is the chance for the marketer to realise their marketing objectives. This is the continuum - business strategy, marketing strategy, communication strategy, implementation, results.

Without the agency providing the stimulus materials in the best channels to persuade the target consumer to think, feel or do whatever it is that they want them to think, feel or do, the marketer doesn't get to deliver the results.

Here's more from the article:

The fact is that agencies shouldn’t be regarded as professional service firms, but rather professional knowledge firms.  Clients don’t just hire you for what you do, but rather what you know.

What this change in emphasis does is empowers an Agency's recommendations. They are the ones with the specialist knowledge. Agencies often compare themselves to other 'professional' firms like lawyers. "Those guys are taken seriously, and their recommendations are listened to. Why?" Because their clients assume the lawyer knows more than they do about the law and the application thereof.

If Agencies are simply "servicing" their clients, then where does the specialist knowledge lie? Is the assumption that the Client has the knowledge, and Agencies are simply implementing it?

Research conducted by The Ignition Group underscores this:

Over the many years that Ignition Consulting Group has been conducting surveys of advertising agencies, we have discovered that agencies give themselves the highest ratings in the areas of “Responsive service,” “Listening to clients,” and “Meeting timetables and budgets.”  The lowest-rated areas?  “Developing proactive ideas and delivering marketing leadership to clients.” 

Service is a commodity.  Smart thinking is not.  Clients can get good service anywhere, but proactive marketing leadership is in short supply.  In fact, most surveys that seek to diagnose why clients switch agencies usually produce the same answer: “Because our agency never gave us anything we didn’t ask for.”

I asked delegates in an Account Management workshop to define the role of Account Management. One of the answers was "to keep Clients happy".

Image by Ambro

I would suggest that the happiest a Client is, is when their marketing campaigns deliver better than expected business results. And Agencies can do that only by protecting their expertise so that they get to prove what they can do.

Which is not to "service" clients. It's to delight consumers.



Adtherapy is a training and consulting business which aims to make your bottom line healthier, and your business happier. We specialise in helping Marketers and Agencies get the best out of each other. Read more about what we do here

All images courtesy of freedigitalimages.net