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.

Playing Together to Win - how to build an agency ecosystem (across brands, categories, disciplines & regions) that delivers great work

Global and local CMO’s have starting asking the same question: now that we know we need great creative because it works better (thank you Binet and Field and Mark Ritson), how do we get it? 

It’s a question every CEO should be asking, and every CMO answering.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the strategic framework of defining Where to Play, How to Win, and what Capabilities are needed to execute the strategy. 

Perhaps the other really important question that marketers need to ask is “how do we play together to win”? 

In other words, how do you optimize the client-agency relationship so the combined partnership ‘plays’ in a way that generates the best quality commercial creativity?

For a number of recent local and global projects, Adtherapy has been briefed to look at optimizing client-agency relationships, applying this to the client’s full eco-system of different agency types, scopes and services, specifically in order to improve the quality of creative output. 

What makes this sort of project interesting, is that it's not really clear where the ownership of various aspects of the ecosystem and the deliverables sit in an organisation. A 2019 report by the World Federation of Advertisers outlined the challenges faced by their members. Does this sit with Procurement, Marketing, Marketing Ops (if there is such a thing), the Agency?

When a marketer has a complex ecosystem of agencies with different scopes of work and different deliverables, across different categories and brands and in some cases, different markets, it’s important to clearly map the ecosystem and how it fits together to make the whole. Not only does this help the flow of work, but it helps in three other areas: it helps in collaboration – if the other agencies across the eco-system know who’s responsible for other things, it’s easier to work together. It helps define the guardrails and where accountability lies. It also helps in pitch governance: when and why does anyone on the brand side need to brief or pitch outside of the ecosystem? (Clue: mostly they don’t).

Once that’s done, a Ways of Working can be mapped, so everyone clearly understands who does what and when, and who needs to be included when and where. RACSI’s can be defined to ensure that the process is clear and that the correct decision makers are in the room at the right time. One the things that becomes apparent is the need to clarify terminology across the organization and across agencies (so many terms we bandy about kind of mean the same thing, but crystal sharp clarity is needed for consistency). Most importantly, is the definition and explanation of the “why” and the “what good output of that phase” looks like. What the process needs is for the marketing practitioners in the business to buy-in to the effectiveness of better work, and clear communication of the ambition, from top leadership, to ensure that the business achieves better creative outputs. 

In order to achieve this goal, the key inflection points in the Ways of Working process must be identified: i.e. those activities that have a material impact on the next steps and the quality of the output. At each of those inflection points, best practice examples and templates, accepted guidelines, and most importantly the “how-to’s”, with links to training courses, templates and tools, have to be clarified and communicated.

Briefs are a critical inflection point. Creative evaluation skills and understanding what the business is aiming for in terms of creative quality, are equally critical. In a large organization, with many people making these decisions on a daily basis, what criteria are they using to approve or reject creative work? If there’s a research company in the mix, what are their criteria? Is there common ground? Process issues, like uploading files in the right format for re-application, can be a small thing, but can have enormous knock on effects in inefficiency, cost control and quality.

After the need for clarity, comes the need for consistency. What’s standing in the way of the consistent application of any agreed Ways of Working? Very often, it’s simply a lack of communication. So many organizations have poor systems for the dissemination of training and institutional knowledge, with years of clever processes and templates and methodologies sitting in people’s hard drives, at best inaccessible when needed and at worst, completely forgotten when people leave the organization. (I’ve been briefed to develop a X Marketing Way training academy from scratch, when I had been involved in the building of the same company’s marketing academy a few years before. The new team didn’t even know where to look for the old academy material. What a waste.)

Another reason for inconsistency is a degree of inexperience that leads to non-compliance. Inexperience can be absolute (coming into marketing from another function), but it can also be corporate or category inexperience, so relying on tools and ways of doing things from previous companies or categories. This results in a methodology mish mash – in one company I worked with, every brand and marketing manager had a different briefing template, mostly given to them at some stage by an agency. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of them – it just leads to differing inputs that aren’t necessarily the best at inspiring, and getting, great creative work.

The big hairy challenge is how to build compliance in a positive way. Rather than make this a tick box approach, realize that compliance is aligned to culture, so try to build an understanding through the organization of why creative work is the goal, why it’s important (again, in case you still don’t believe me, because it’s more effective). The aim is to get people to lean into compliance rather than be forced into it. Creativity needs air to breathe. In research conducted by Peter Field, he showed a strong correlation between companies awarded Cannes Advertiser of the Year, and significantly higher than average share price growth in the same period. Why? Because the companies were in a period of innovation across their whole business. (Source: The Case for Creativity, James Hurman).

Having said that, there are risks, and financial implications for non-compliance, so for certain key steps, you need a governance and evaluation/measurement system that makes it clear what the metrics are and where the boundaries lie.

Once all of this has been mapped out, the system needs to be constantly communicated and updated. My preference is for a shared portal of some sort that aims to both be a source of tools and methodology as well as a source for inspiration. It should be living, breathing, and frequently accessed, refreshed through the sharing and rewarding of great work, great briefs and great case studies from within the company and without. This virtual Center of Excellence becomes a place where the agency and client can easily access best practice guidelines but also add to and build expertise across functional lines.

Ultimately, the success of the process, of how the client and agency play together, will be in the success of better work in the market. The win will be if the organization follows the process, if the process unlocks greater collaboration and better quality creativity, and if that delivers greater results in the marketplace.

It’s hard to see how it cannot win. Mediocrity thrives in chaos. What an exercise like this aims to do is to take inconsistency, lack of clarity, lack of accountability and lack of ambition out of the picture and build in a clear picture of what the process is aiming for. 

In times like we're in and entering into, the relationship and the Ways of Working need to be slick, empowering and delivering greater value in terms of creativity than ever before. 

 

Creative advertising works better. Now, how can I get it?

Every now and then an article pops into one timeline or other and it's like switching a light on. And then, in very special circumstances an article pops up and it's like someone switched the light on, and a loud "hallelujah" echoed forth. 

In this case, it was this article by Ryan Wallman in Marketing Week.

So what did Ryan say?

In the afterglow or glow of cynicism following the Cannes advertising festival, he poses this simple question to marketers, : "How much should you concern yourself with the creative work that supports your marketing?"

Of course the answer is as simple as the question. A lot. You should concern yourself a lot. Marketers get the agencies they deserve, and they get the creative outputs they deserve. You and I know this. But incredibly there are some marketers that still doubt the effectiveness of creativity.

Ryan helpfully shows us some research:

1. Admap research, based on an analysis of more than 1,500 case studies, which ranked the top 10 factors that drive advertising profitability, showed that creative execution was the second largest contributor to advertising profitability after market size. Read more here

2. A 2017 Nielsen analysis of advertising effectiveness, based on nearly 500 campaigns across all media platforms proved that creative quality was easily the most important factor for generating sales, contributing more than double the next highest factor (reach). In fact, Nielsens says that "creative remains the undisputed champ in terms of sales drivers". Read the report here.

3. He references Les Binet and Peter Field’s work for the IPA, that demonstrated how creatively awarded campaigns are more efficient at driving market share growth than non-awarded campaigns. He also acknowledges some recent criticism of the "Survivorship Bias" of the survey which of course might be valid. However, the results are borne out by other research institutes such as Ehrenberg-Bass and Nielsen who have reached similar conclusions.

Highly creatively awarded campaigns are more efficient and more effective.

The main point of Ryan's article thus far is this: 

"To state what may seem obvious, marketers can benefit from good creative work – and can benefit even more from great work."

But how to get it? 

You might think that research is the answer. Turns out that sometimes gives you the exactly wrong answer. 

"Peter Field has demonstrated a negative correlation between the use of quantitative pre-testing and the success of IPA award entries. This implies that if you use quantitative methods to pre-test your creative work, you might be doing the opposite of what you intend thereby reducing its likelihood of success."


Here's where Ryan gets to the "hallelujah" part.

Loosen your grip on the creative process.

"Creative work is like a rebellious teenager – the more you try to control it, the less it will do what you want.
With that in mind, the first step is to give your agency some space. Brief them well, then let them do their thing.
Second, remember that it doesn’t really matter whether you ‘like’ the creative work or not. What matters is how your customers respond to it.
And third, don’t analyse the work to death. It will inevitably lead to compromise, and the end result will be anodyne (or worse)."

I'm going add some of my own magic dust onto his hallelujah. Here are my simple steps to achieving great creativity.

Understand, and believe in, great:

Take the day off, in fact take one day off every month, and truly understand  what makes great work great, and how it is an undisputed competitive advantage. If you really believe in its efficacy, maybe you'll try harder to make sure you and your teams deliver great, not mediocre-but-meets-the-deadline.
There are hundreds of resources: get your popcorn out and start with this one:  The IPA - effectiveness learnings

Write inspiring, tight briefs:

Briefs are a strategic document - not a process document. And tight doesn't mean prescriptive, it means absolute clarity in terms of the job to be done.
Briefs are way harder to write than anyone thinks and like most chefs can tell you: bad ingredients in, bad meal out. There are a few key tips to writing good briefs - but most important is to understand that it's not something to be banged out in ten minutes, or cut and pasted from last year's brief. Get the right training, get the right people to write them, give enough time for them to be inspiring. Remember also the three drivers of great briefs: Brevity, Clarity, Fertility. 

Learn how to evaluate and give constructive feedback:

Again, this is harder than it looks. Get your own opinions out the room. Use a tool if it helps to distance yourself. I invented one which I'll give you here for free. I call it R2OI2. (Trips off the tongue doesn't it?) Simple: R = Relevance and Resonance. O = Originality. I = Insight and Idea. and there's ROI = will it deliver against investment and objective?
Biggest wins - a powerful insight and a big idea. If you spend time looking through any Cannes winners' case studies (which you should, after you've done the IPA site backwards), you'll start seeing that insights and ideas are essential. When you evaluate work - if there's a gigantic idea there but you don't like the execution - keep the idea and work on the executions. Mostly, the execution is thrown out with the bathwater. 

And lastly:

Up-skill your team.

Many people land up in marketing or advertising with considerable skills, just not these ones. I'm not being facetious and I'm not saying it because our Creative Fitness and Business Marketing Academy courses could change your life. I mean they could. But, this stuff is difficult and it's risky and it's expensive, yet many people don't know how to do it, and even fewer of then don't know how to do it brilliantly.

It's worth investing the time and money into building these skills. If you don't want to call me to do it, spend some time reading the work of Beloved Brands - there more tools and tips in Graham Robertson's blog and Linked in feed than you can use in a lifetime. He is immeasurably generous with his knowledge.

In the end

We all know creativity works harder and is a competitive advantage and delivers more bang for same buck. In fact the less creative dreck that surrounds us every minute of every day (something above 3000 messages every 24 hours), that we ignore, is often more expensive, takes more time and breaks agency-client relationships.

If you remember only one thing from all of this it's this: Mediocrity is Expensive.

Someone clever said it, and the story of the quote is in itself a lesson. Read about it here.

Make the rest of your year about aiming high. Because your business deserves it.

___________________________________________________________________________

Contact Gillian on gillian@adtherapy.co.za or +27832659099 to help you figure out how to find this holy grail. It's not easy, but it's not hard once you know how.

Trend spotting in the Adbiz, 2018: It's not on top, it's inside.

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Every year I am asked to write something for BizCommunity on a trend I foresee, you know, in my crystal ball.

Image courtesy of Jannoon028 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Most years it's a variation on a theme. More data, more insight, customised communication, the power of mobile...This year - it's something completely new. Here's my 10 cents worth.

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If I close my eyes and picture the world of marketing in 2018, two words come to mind.

They are Watershed Moment: “a critical turning point; a moment in time where everything changes; a point in time when nothing after will ever be the same.”[1]

But doesn’t everyone say that every year?

Yes, there are changes, and things have changed, so what would make 2018 a watershed moment, a critical turning point? Is it not simply a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same?

No. Because the truth is that almost everything has changed in the world of marketing communication.

The only thing that hasn't (enough) is how agencies and marketers work together.

And that’s where I believe the watershed is happening.

We all know that marketers are chasing increasingly tough numbers, and they are searching for innovation, efficiencies and integration to help deliver their goals. 

Unlocking the full benefits of technology is challenging (and full of opportunities) for marketing teams. Same for data. But a major blockage to increasing efficiencies and integration is how they work with agencies and how agencies work.

Marketers have always needed agencies to create the link between the business and the people who need to put their hands in their pockets. They needed agencies to unlock insights to create ideas to change behaviour. They needed agencies to decide where to place the messaging, to buy the space, and to implement the sometimes hundreds of elements across numerous channels. 

They still need a central concept (a big idea) which can be simply communicated based on insights and barriers and whatever will drive consumer behaviour. But more and more of the pieces of the puzzle could be done, and might make more sense to be done, in-house.

To quote industry commentator and guru, James Cannon-Boyce, in his article on curing your adsanity: “There is the famous old adage about the CEO who said that they knew half their money was being wasted in marketing — they just didn’t know which half. That was from over a century ago — these days, the answer is that it’s not half that’s being wasted — it’s close to all of it. More and more, I feel that I am in the same meeting — it’s a bit like Groundhog Day if the Bill Murray character was a frazzled over-whelmed marketing executive and not a weatherman.”

Marketers already have their own insights departments (although sometimes generating  more information than insight). They have their own relationships with specialized production houses, or in-house production capabilities. They already have or are building their own social media and community management teams due to its always-on, strategic and tonality requirements.

There’s a growing sense that whoever owns the data has the power. As the CMO of Booking.com said recently, "We have way more data than the agency has. I’d make a very strong case that anything that generates data, you need to own as a business. You cannot have anyone else be the expert."[3]

This seems especially true for brands born on the internet, as they have no “advertising legacy” and have direct relationships with their customers.

Take a look at the credits for the creative team listed by Adweek, in this latest campaign by Spotify. 

They look different because they are all in house. [4]

Yes, but that’s there, in the USA. How will this affect brands in SA, with historical relationships with agencies? Simply, there has to be change, on both sides.

The structure within corporates isn’t yet optimal either. They, as well as their agencies, will need to restructure to unlock the siloes, open the flows of insight and information, to reduce wastage and duplication (and cost).

The challenge to agencies is that as the outside bits are being eaten away, what happens to their business model? As John Mandel from Mediacom says, "They are still set up for fighting the last war. They haven’t really set themselves up for the future war. Instead they are trying to eek out gains from a model than needs to change, while always trying to upsell clients on services."[5]

I’m not proclaiming the death of agencies yet as there are a few stumbling blocks in the in-house agency vision. Marketers have not yet figured out how to properly integrate all the sources of insight - obviously digital (big, or rich data)  but also from places like the sales/customer channel. The creative piece remains essential and ever more vital. Unless you hire in this talent, it’s going to have to remain outside. Hiring issues, like BEE and to creative culture remain a concern. 

Here’s where a new agency model like Oliver can play its part. They build agencies inside companies. One of their White Papers quotes research that the shows the number of brands bringing digital in-house increasing at a staggering rate, and that by 2020, “54% of brands think they’ll bring previously outsourced functions back in-house to match the need for more agile marketing efforts”.[6]

Will agencies still play a role in the idea development – using insights to create powerful brand stories and platforms? I think they should. There is now an even more pressing need for cut through creative. But agencies have to be reimagined and reinvented if they intend to survive. And the reimagining of the business model is the most important aspect.

The watershed moment could actually be a good thing. Marketers are driving this conversation because they have to – the model is not working. But it’s also not working for agencies. It’s time that people own what they are good at, so that everyone in the value chain benefits.


Footnotes:
[1] http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_watershed_moment
[2] https://medium.com/@jamescannonboyce/i-can-cure-your-adsanity-in-three-easy-steps-a9d40f20fa97
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-are-cutting-out-ad-agencies-and-going-in-house-2017-6
[4] http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-unearths-more-hilarious-user-habits-in-global-outdoor-ads-for-the-holidays/#/
[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-are-cutting-out-ad-agencies-and-going-in-house-2017-6
[6] https://za.oliver.agency/news/a-new-way-of-working-with-agencies/