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. 

 

Just How Risky is Creative Advertising?

The short answer?

Much less risky than boring advertising.

I wrote this some time back and I thought I would republish. Worth bearing all this in mind as we go into execution season.

Do you know how marketing messages we are exposed to every day?

Figures vary but it's safely between several hundred and several thousand. A figure of between 3000 and 5000 marketing communication messages every 24 hours is often mentioned. Read the links in this article here to give you an idea of the studies done in this area, some which clarify that number, some that dispute it.

Of course when you talk about messaging in the thousands, you are including every single message - from your Facebook stream, the branding on the motorbike in front of you, messaging in shopfront windows and on shopping bags, packaging and so on. In reality, we obviously don't "see" all those messages, as Shari Worthington notes in this piece. She notes:

"Our senses are bombarded with over 11 million bits of data every SECOND. The average person’s working memory can handle 40-50 bits, max. That means we ignore 10,999,950 bits of data every second we are awake."- See more at: http://blog.telesian.com/how-many-advertisements-do-we-see-each-day/#sthash.zNRsE2iJ.dpuf

Whatever the amount is, studies conducted by Harvard University's Graduate School of Business way back in 1964 concluded that of all the messages we see, only 76 penetrate our subconscious. (Bauer, Greyser) 

Further studies emphasised that from the 76 messages of which a person might be aware, only 12 made any kind of impression (Adams, Common Sense in Advertising, 1965). 

And of those, how many are remembered the next day? Figures range between none, 1, 1.7 and mostly, at most 2. (*All references to this research taken from notes in the excellent book: Case for Creativity by James Hurman).

Bear in mind, these studies quaintly only measured 4 - 5 media types: magazines (remember them?), newspapers, radio and TV. Only in later studies did they include outdoor.

Fast forward to the proliferation of media around us, and taking into account Shari's estimate that we only really see between 300 and 700 marketing messages per day, let's settle on a number of around 500? Assuming the number of 76  of which people are even vaguely aware still stands (and why wouldn't it?) that's 15%. If only 12 of those 76 make any impact, we get 15% and a miserly 2% of the total. And recall the next day? Of those that made an impact we are likely to remember 16% the next day, when we're shopping for something. And if we take the percentage of those recalled the next day of the total number of messages of which we were aware? 0.4%. 

Point being - if a tree falls in a forest if probably makes a sound but no-one cares. Ditto with 98% of advertising.

Some valuable insights on whether a tree makes a sound: image from http://musingsfromhigherdowngateandelsewhere.blogspot.com/2014/10/if-tree-falls-in-forest.html

So. Good. That's all clear. We want to be making ads, creating marketing messages, that work. Awareness on its own really isn't much use. What we're trying to do with commercial messaging is create a behaviour change - change how someone thinks or feels or what they do. So vague awareness is only marginally useful. We need to make an impact.

But how? 

Buy more media? Prof Byron Sharp reckons that by extending your penetration, you will grow your share as growth depends largely on mental and physical availability. Not everyone can afford that.

Be more creative? Yip.

Isn't that risky?

Turns out it's the opposite of risky. Mediocre is the risky option.

My elaborate maths above should have already told you that. By being boring you simply won't make any impact and your marketing investment has become that poor tree in the forest that no-one hears.

And how about this?

Here are some astounding some facts, summarised in The Case for Creativity, reported in a 2010 study, commissioned by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners of Advertising) and Thinkbox in the UK. The research was conducted by acclaimed researcher Peter Field and entitled "The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness".

• 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, Peter 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

There are plenty more fascinating analyses in the book or on the Slideshare presentation (link above) if you need more convincing. James Hurman actually concludes that he looked for but couldn't find any research to prove that there isn't a link between creative advertising and effectiveness. He kindly updated his slides and added in even more justification. See here. Honestly, if you're still not getting great work, or aiming for it, you're doing it wrong.

Heavens alive, even Millward-Brown reported in 2011 in an article titled Creative Effectiveness that they observed an overlap  between creative advertising and effective advertising. They concluded, having re-tested Peter Field's research, and added to it with some of their own, that persuasiveness was over-rated and emotional connection is far more effective.

"A study of IPA effectiveness, Effie and Cannes Lions awards winners reveals that ads don't need to persuade to be effective but they do usually engage emotionally."

Dominic Twose, Polly Wyn Jones, Millward-Brown, 2011

Two interesting cases in point

That Volvo ad with Jean Claude van Damme: "Epic Split".

The industry was divided about it. They're talking only to truck buyers, so why should 90million YouTube views matter? Here's what Volvo said.

In a survey they commissioned amongst 2,200 commercial truck drivers, nearly half who had seen the campaign said they are more likely to choose Volvo the next time they buy a truck. A third of all respondents had alraedy contacted a dealer or visited the website for more information. There was also a very positive improvement in the perception of Volvo Trucks as "an innovative and modern truck brand".

Oh, and they achieved their annual sales target in the first Quarter after "Epic Split" ran.

Not bad, huh?

Remember Dove's Real Beauty Sketches ad, with the forensic artist?

"Since they launched the campaign, Dove has seen an increase of almost 2 billion in sales, and has received a multitude of awards, including 19 at the Cannes Lion Film Festival alone." 

Princeton Partners

It won lots of awards, got  65 million views on YouTube. Did it work?

"A jury of six men and two women awarded “Sketches” the Grand Effie, based on it driving $24 million in incremental sales and garnering $52 million worth of media exposure, all on a budget of just $925,000."

 June 5 2014, Adweek 

Great - that's sorted then.

Let's make creative ads!

Only problem is it's quite hard. Remember that only 0.01% of all ads actually wins an award! 

David Droga, Founder and Creative Chairman of Droga5,  explained why it's so hard going great work, in this interview when his agency was named AdAge's Creative Innovator of 2015: 

"Breaking through the clutter is just part of the Droga5 M.O. Solid strategy supports all of the agency's work -- something Mr. Droga said that for him, has not necessarily always been the case. "There's no question in my younger days, I'd think you could just blink and creative would solve everything. But now it has to be creative on strategy. What's hard is trying to be responsibly creative, versus just creative."

 Adage

Probably my favourite work of theirs is this one for a cereal, Mondelez HoneyMaid. Watch it and think of the cereal ads you've seen lately.

Summary?

It's tough. And sometimes we try too hard. Sometimes we're too picky about getting every word in the body copy right, when the ad isn't any good.

"Most advertising isn’t good. Let alone great. Consciously or unconsciously it  assumes its role to bludgeon the consumer into submission.  It tries to argue the consumer into purchase.   It tries – with varying degrees of heavy-handedness – to reason the hapless audience into some kind of Damascene-like conversion. It has no interest in speaking to what interests the consumer. Its starting point is itself, rather than the passions, concerns and inclinations of its audience. It is, I suspect, born a prisoner of marketing superstition."

http://martinweigel.org/2013/06/10/the-liberation-of-magic/ 

It requires the right skills, on the marketer side and an on the agency side. It requires the right relationship between agency and client. It requires courage. Fundamentally it requires an unwavering belief that creative advertising is effective.

It's worth it.

The latest work from Peter Field and Les Binet for the IPA is even more justification, although they're worried that our obsession with short term activity is endangering effectiveness in general.

A final word from Creative Circle's first Marketing Champion of Creativity, Geoff Whyte, now CEO of Nandos Southern Africa:

Off you go then. No-ones waiting for you, unless you give them something worth waiting for.

________________________________________________________________

Adtherapy works with Marketers and Agencies to help them work together better 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.

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

I have written a few top tips on how to write a great brief, as you head into execution season.
Here is the link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/youve-written-your-brand-plan-now-its-time-write-brief-rightford/?published=t
Let me know if we can help!
https://www.brieftherapy.info
Services we offer:

• Creative Fitness workshop training
• Brief writing
• Brief mentoring/finessing
• Strategy and Big Idea consulting

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.”


Which Advertising Books Should be Essential Reading?

I am a big fan of advertising and marketing books. I read all of them. Well, okay not ALL of them, but certainly all the ones that people I respect are talking about, and I have shelves full of them (digital and actual bookshelves).

BBH recently decided to put together a World Cup of Advertising Books Tournament  on Twitter, so they compiled a list, which was then voted on by nearly 5000 people.

As with most of these sorts of tournaments, some of the quarter or semi-finals could have indeed been the final, but the winner was a very worthy The Choice Factory, by Richard Shotton. (Follow him too on Twitter - he is a font of information: @rshotton

Amazon calls this book "the new advertising essential". I would agree.

"Before you can influence decisions, you need to understand what drives them. In The Choice Factory, Richard Shotton sets out to help you learn. By observing a typical day of decision-making, from trivial food choices to significant work-place moves, he investigates how our behaviour is shaped by psychological shortcuts. With a clear focus on the marketing potential of knowing what makes us tick, Shotton has drawn on evidence from academia, real-life ad campaigns and his own original research. The Choice Factory is written in an entertaining and highly-accessible format, with 25 short chapters, each addressing a cognitive bias and outlining simple ways to apply it to your own marketing challenges. Supporting his discussion, Shotton adds insights from new interviews with some of the smartest thinkers in advertising, including Rory Sutherland, Lucy Jameson and Mark Earls. From priming to the pratfall effect, charm pricing to the curse of knowledge, the science of behavioural economics has never been easier to apply to marketing. The Choice Factory is the new advertising essential." via https://www.amazon.co.uk/Choice-Factory-behavioural-biases-influence/dp/085719609X

Having said that, I think that the last 16 in the tournament are all essential building blocks; all the books in the quarter finals should be compulsory reading; and there are still many that aren't on there.

It's a worthwhile list to study and to stock up your digital or actual library. And, of course, they would love to know which books are a must-read that they have missed. Let them know via their twitter account: https://twitter.com/BBHLabs. Let me know too https://twitter.com/grightford

(click to see the full chart)

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.

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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.