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. 

 

Is a Super Bowl Creative Brief different from a normal Creative Brief?

Now that the dust has settled on the Super Bowl of Advertising (what - there was also a football game? who knew?) the same question we ask every year, is being asked again. What does a Super Bowl ad brief look like and how is it different from the briefs we usually churn out?

One thing that has to be true is that if writing creative briefs is hard then writing great creative briefs is extremely difficult. Especially when you have 100 million pairs of eyeballs waiting for you.

The main problems in briefs are usually a lack of clarity of thought and an uninspiring 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 now imagine the pressure of the Super Bowl. Not only do we have to think about what to say and how to say it - we have to know that more than 100 million people are going to watch the outcome.

So, how does a Super Bowl Ad Brief differ from the Common Client Ad Brief?

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

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?

Many moons ago when I first started pondering this question, I picked up a quote from a Bloomberg's Business Week article entitled "Game on: Super Bowl 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.”


Why Agencies Must Fight For The Right To Be Creative

Ten years ago, I made the decision to open a new business after watching three bad (TV) ads in a row and having a EUREKA moment:

I needed to rid the world of bad advertising.

But how?

I thought of the great campaigns I'd been involved with in my 20 years experience ("great" meaning very creative and astonishingly successful for the brand and business) and tried to isolate what made them possible.

Brave work? Tick
Brave client? Tick
Strong Relationship? Tick

Okay, good.

But what MADE those things possible?

Brave work needs to be sold. Brave work can only be sold by a team that has taken into account the possible risks the brand and business faces, and has mitigated those risks based on the strong possibility of success. This takes skill and wisdom and strategic ability. Equally, a brave marketer needs to have astute evaluation and feedback skills and the ability to hear their instinct over their fear. A strong relationship is based on trust, based on a true belief that the other person knows what they are doing. Look up the word "trust" and you get words like:

• to rely on
• to depend on
• to believe
• to expect confidently
• to rely on the integrity, strength, ability of...

This trust goes both ways. The agency has to trust the marketer as much as the other way round. You trust each other.

It's not a blind, stupid, trust. It's a trust based on cumulative experience and knowledge and track records and understanding business.

So the concept of Adtherapy was born: to help marketers and agencies work better together to get the best possible work, because it works better.

I'm not going to rehash the argument of why this is so, (if you want more, you can read my previous post here.)

Just quickly, here's a repeat of some of the cogent points:

The Case for Creativity reported on a research study commissioned by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners of Advertising) and Thinkbox in the UK and conducted by acclaimed researcher Peter Field in 2010, entitled "The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness". Some key findings were:

• Only about 0,001% of advertising wins a creative award, yet among highly effective campaigns (in this case winners of an IPA Effectiveness award), 18% are awarded. This means that there's on "over-index of 128,500" of how likely creative campaigns are to be effective.

• In an analysis of "Excess Share of Voice" (ESOV, which correlates a brand's share of advertising with its share of market, Field found that the "Return On Investment (ROI) for a highly creative campaign is on average 11 times higher". ie... "you need to spend 11 times more on media for an uncreative production" to achieve the same result.

• And, here's the kicker: Creatively awarded campaigns are more certain to achieve a higher rate of effectiveness by a "degree of confidence of 99.9%" as opposed to to non-awarded campaigns'  degree of confidence of 87%.

www.slideshare.net/jameshurman/the-case-for-creativity

"What this implies is that less creative campaigns are not only less efficient, but also less predictable than creatively-awarded ones - something of a departure from the perceived notion that a more creative approach is a less certain one"

James Hurman, Author of the Case for Creativity

In short, creative advertising is much less risky than boring advertising.

But "things have changed in the last decade".

Digital is all pervasive. The word Advertising is a no-no. Content is King. No, Distribution is King. No, CONTEXT is King. There is constant debate about what is King, or Queen or the most important thing in communication today. They're all interesting points and all add to the ongoing evolution in this industry. But to me there is a simple point that's missing.

Luckily, today, two articles addressed this point, albeit in different ways.

Creative is King.

"COO Sheryl Sandberg and her team have been relentlessly experimenting with how to make ads more compelling despite the limitations of small screens. "Creativity’s never been so important," Sandberg says. "When TV ads [first appeared], people thought the creative was important. Then when you moved into online, what really mattered was the targeting. What we’re [now] seeing on the Facebook platform is that it’s both."

Why Facebook is one of the Most Innovative Companies of 2007 

Or this one:

"Why have modern marketers shunned what will make them stand apart and define the new century by becoming cold, calculated, and analytical to the point where creativity has been ostracized? 

In this creative age (in which) we are crossing the chasm and entering, creativity is the main differentiator."

Brand Quarterly: Curing the new Marketing Personality Disorder: Be More Human, Less Analytical

In the article quoted above, by Geoffrey Colon, he imagines the characteristics of people he would hire for his own agency, that would define the "new century marketer". They will probably not surprise you. They are:

1. Intellectually curious
2. Always listening
3. Empathetic, inclusive and ethical
4. Learns, unlearns, relearns

And these wonderful attributes will help solve the problem he raises of marketers becoming more analytical but less interesting. As he says, "machines can do analytics better than any of us will be able to do. But empathy? That’s more difficult for machine learning to mimic."

But wait. 

Agencies HAVE these types of people don't they?

So why are they not allowed to do what they're good at; creating empathetic work that differentiates the brand and connects to consumers' deepest motivations?

That's sadly an easy one to answer. Marketers often under perform in this critical area, that of unlocking the creativity of their agency partners for their own business success. Why?

• They are disconnected from their consumers.
• They lack insight.
• They are prescriptive.
• They issue terrible briefs due to all of the above.
• They are not brave. In fact, they are terrified by the stresses of shareholder delivery, Quarter-itis, and internal politics.
• They lack of evaluation and feedback skills.
• And so they lack confidence.

The effect of all this on agencies?

Complete demoralisation. Many of the best people I know in the industry feel bowed down, crushed, by their lack of "professional freedom". By which I mean, crushed by clients forcing them to do work they don't believe in, based on their considerable skills, experience and expertise.

The upshot? Good talent will leave the industry. And the industry, and its clients, will be the poorer for it. Or the good agencies will end those oppressive client relationships. Those marketers will get the advertising they deserve. And the true giants, true leaders, will continue to nurture creativity, to innovate and break barriers. And soar.

That's why agencies need to fight for the right to be creative. And when I say fight, I don't actually mean fight! I mean persuade, convince, inspire. Great agencies have to produce great creativity to keep their souls from self destructing. It's their lifeblood. But it's a win-win because it turns out that great creativity is also a key driver of brand success. 

Of course, they shouldn't have to fight. But the fight is real and fight they must.

________________________________________________________________

Adtherapy works with Marketers and Agencies to help them work better together so that they create better work. Contact Gillian Rightford on gillian@adtherapy.co.za, +(27)(0)832659099 or visit our website www.adtherapy.co.za if you want to know more.

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?

Dear CEO, we need to talk about "integration"

As you know, there is much pressure to cut costs, everywhere, all the time. One of the areas consistently in the spotlight is the communications budget. Just how much are you paying your ad agency, digital agency, media agency, PR agency, media buying agency, social media agency, internal comms agency, shopper marketing agency, direct marketing agency...? And come to think of it - DO YOU NEED all those agencies? That's a lot of duplication right there. That's also a lot of meetings, confusion, lack of integration for your harried and harassed marketing team to deal with. Right?

Right.

So integration makes sense. Somehow you'll find a way (or ask your Lead Agency) to build a core team of big thinkers and surround them with excellent implementation specialists and get the agencies to build a simple yet complex workflow process that gives you the best talent you need, across disciplines, in one team. Not only will you cut down on duplication, you'll save money, you'll cut down on the time creative takes to get out, and everyone will be happy. Right?

Wrong.

Because what's actually eating up your agency fee and killing your creative product stone dead (along with a few of the creative talents working on your business) is your own processes.

Integration is the only way forward in order for marketers to make sense of every increasing channels and agency specializations.

But there is no point getting your agencies to integrate if your own business isn't.

Here are some thoughts to ponder (and with each one, please imagine the sound of money going down the drain):

• Your junior marketing team is most likely briefing the agency on work that has not yet been agreed between your various silos.
• The integrated agency team will start work, and sometimes do considerable work, and present to your junior team many many times before the presentation moves up to a more senior layer, at which point someone (possibly from one of those silos) will say: "why are we doing this?"
• That might  require a debrief or a re-brief and so the cycle will continue. This time there is possibly a more aligned brief. This is good, although time and energy and money have been wasted.
• After the agency has got through this stage, the work will be presented to the CMO, or the CFO, or the CEO, at which point someone might say: "I don't like it", or "why are we doing this?" And thus the agencies go back to the beginning.
• Or the C-Suite are dabblers. Or everyone in the team is a dabbler. And they dabble with a bit of this, and move that to the right, and upweight this and can’t-we-also-mention that. An agency I was with recently was on revert 56 for a print ad. How different was it from revert 55, or 54, or even revert 21? Had it been materially improved? Would the consumer notice or care? What was the cost of that dabbling?

And worse than the fact that your team has literally flushed gajillions down the drain through this process, that's not the only cost.

The cost is the “creative tap closing". 

At a certain point creative teams, generally optimistic and determined to help you, will simply say the worst words imaginable if you're paying. 

"Just. Give. Them. What. They. Want". 

Those are expensive words. Because you are paying for talent and then forcing them to give you mediocrity. Which they will, eventually, just to get your job out the system.

This does not make them happy and it should not make you happy either. You may ask why agencies don't try and change your system to make it work better. Truth is they try, but often end up being bullied by the junior marketing teams to curry favour with their bosses. Once in a process workshop,  a brand manager admitted to briefing an agency to develop a promotion off a creative big idea that had been bombed. What? Yes, that poor promo agency worked for a month on work that could not possibly ever be approved. Why? Because the brand manager had a meeting scheduled with his boss in a month and needed something to present.  Do I need to play you the sound effect again?

What to do? *wrings hands*

• Get your stakeholders to agree briefs and communication needs from a business point of view, before the agencies are briefed;
• Give fewer but better briefs;
• Give senior input early in the process;
• Approve the big ideas early, before the agency has developed the full campaign;
• And - and I love this - institute a Wastage Report. Anyone in your Marketing Team that goes over a maximum of 4 reverts has to sign off the responsibility for it. They have to answer whether it was really really necessary to move the logo to the left and change the type to blue? These reports must be evaluated at the end of each quarter/6-months/year. It's dead easy to see who's costing the company money, time and good work. If someone is repeatedly going over 4 reverts, then they are either not briefing well, or the approval process is flawed, or they are a frustrated creative director. All costly habits.

The result of these simple changes?

Gajillions saved. Happy shareholders. Happy creatives. Good work. Happy consumers. Jingling tills.

Now we're talking.