the original
Agency thinking about what makes good and great advertising
Advertising is one of the last true bargains of business. Nowadays advertising includes media, direct marketing, sales promotion and interactive advertising, because the purpose of all these types of marketing communication is to advertise a brand. The currency of all advertising is ideas and in principle a good idea costs no more than a poor one. Yet good and great advertising can not only build a brand, but transform its fortunes. What distinguishes good advertising is creativity. Creative thinking that runs through every sector of the industry. Good advertising raises a product from the relatively mundane and undifferentiated — it inspires attachment to and preference for a brand by being inspired itself. Advertising is an art, not pure science. It is the art of persuasive commercial communication.
What makes good and great advertising is well understood by the best people in agencies. And it was the idea of the IPA, which represents agencies, to identify and share these beliefs. The Shared Beliefs are not rules, but thoughts — about approach, strategy, creative work, media and processes. They are principles about how to do advertising that apply to all disciplines of marketing communications. The aim is to share this thinking with clients who want to maximise the potential of advertising. And for people who work in agencies, in all roles and at all levels, and share a passion for how creative thinking can leap to powerful, imaginative communication, it aims to inspire their creative thinking further.
Agency thinking about what makes good and great advertising
the original Mike Hall Claire Bickerton
Start with an end in mind Ultimately the aim is for somebody to do something A brand isn’t a brand without advertising It’s not what you spend but what you get that counts Creative thinking is the lifeblood of advertising It ain’t (just) what you say but the way that you say it The more people get into your advertising the more they get out of it Identify a target response not just a target audience Media should be at the centre not at the end Find a truth and make it matter The best advertising has a single-minded idea Be different You don’t have to be in the centre break of Coronation Street Consistency is a key to success Keep your finger on the pulse Don’t patronise your audience Branding comes from the whole of the idea not just the logo “It’s on brief” and “I like it” doesn’t mean you’ve got good advertising The idea is only the start of the execution All great advertising has a great client
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startwithanendinmind
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Advertising is not a mechanistic process but a voyage of discovery. You don’t know for sure where you are going until you get there. But you do need to start with a plan. Because even the first step you take, takes you in a certain direction. The start point is to develop a working hypothesis. This requires a clear vision and focus. So it’s vital to understand how advertising (any form of marketing communications) fits into the wider picture of marketing and business. Your advertising objective (for example, to get people to identify with the attitude or personality of the brand) therefore reflects, but is not confused with, your marketing objective (perhaps to enter the repertoire of current rejectors of the brand) and business objective (to maintain sales in a declining economy, say). With the amount of published research and the availability of tailored market studies, there is no excuse for not understanding what the possibilities are. Although you start with plan A the answer is often plan C, because solutions illuminate problems as well as solve them. It is only from the top of the mountain that you can see the best way up. Because advertising is a creative journey, one of the exciting thingsabout it is that, with a strong idea, new possibilities are likely to emerge en route. There is literally no end to where advertising can take a brand.
Stimulating people so that they do something doesn’t mean that the role of advertising is to sell. Sometimes it is, but rather seldom. Take selling cars. With the exception of the classifieds or specialist websites, advertising doesn’t sell cars. Sales people sell cars. But advertising does affect people so that a sale is more likely to take place. It influences behaviour by making the brand mean more, so that people want to do something as a result. That “something” might be a classically physical behavioural response, especially in forms of advertising like sales promotion or direct marketing, using a call to action: to clip a coupon; phone a number; go into a store and look at a product; click through to a website; or perhaps even leave what they’re doing to go and buy the brand. Alternatively, and more frequently, what people may do can relate more to mental behaviour: they may strengthen their determination to continue buying a brand; make a mental note to check a brand out; resolve to find out more about a service. If they do such things, advertising is creating a stronger sales environment, by stimulating demand and desire. Advertising must create an impression about the brand. It is not enough for people to do things like open a mailing or notice an ad, remember, like or talk about it. And sometimes even this isn’t necessary for people to respond, because not all advertising is consumed consciously. Ultimately what people do in relation to a brand counts, what they do in relation to advertising doesn’t.
ultimately the aim is for somebody to do something
If you use advertising merely to expose people to a message or simply as a showcase for a brand, you are exploiting only a fraction of its power. This is because advertising can add meaning to a brand, to make it far more than the sum of its physical parts. It is a tool that enables you to give a brand a personality or an attitude. It is the most powerful tool for turning a product into a brand. Think of the product Levi’s (the durability of denim clothing); think of the product PG Tips (refreshment from tea leaves in a paper bag); think of the product Orange (a network of communication from nothing more than a vibrating airwave). Now think of the brands they represent — where do “youthfulness”, “homeliness” and “the future” come from? They come from advertising. This is not to say that advertising is a solution to everything. It can only encourage people to try a bad product once. It only plays a supporting role to essentials like pricing and distribution. Packaging and design can go a long way to communicating brand values — as with Clinique or Dyson. But it is testament to the power of advertising that without it brands are always less than they can be. Even a brand like Porsche, whose engineering alone makes it different and desirable, needs to communicate with its target market, although TV advertising may not be necessary. Whilst retailers have stores which are essentially their own advertisements, Marks & Spencer suffered when it failed to advertise the changes it made, neither reassuring current users who didn’t understand it, nor informing
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lapsed and non-users who knew nothing about it. Tesco strengthened customer relationships when direct marketing of the Club Card was added to its advertising portfolio. And a brand like Levi’s depends upon mass-media advertising building its personality and attitude for its very survival. So essential is advertising as an ingredient of building powerful brands that when it is done well, advertising and brand are integral to each other. It’s difficult to tell where the product Levi’s ends and the brand Levi’s begins, where the brand Persil finishes and the advertising for Persil starts. It’s seamless. At its best, a brand is its advertising and the advertising is the brand.
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a brand isn’t a brand without advertising
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Advertising is an investment in the equity of a brand. Like all investments it needs a return. How long it takes to get that return depends on the nature of the task. And the size of the task also determines how much you need to spend. None of these things is fixed, and if budgets aren’t sufficient then priorities need to be set. Once you have a task that is both achievable and affordable, you need an idea as well as a budget to get you there. How well you achieve the task depends on how good the idea is. But you can get far more than what you actually pay for. A great creative idea can take you beyond the task and transform the fortunes of a brand. Similarly, a brilliant media idea can make an impact on your audience much more quickly and strongly. And in principle a good idea costs no more than a poor one. Big budget clients have seldom bought the best advertising. You can buy time, lists and discounts by the pound, but not ideas. You can almost guarantee a certain result by buying share of voice and frequency of impacts. But making the most of your money is not about making more impressions, it’s about making more of an impression. Apple’s legendary “1984” commercial was only ever aired once. Britart’s pavement painting created a nationwide stir. Once you have the right idea, you must make the appropriate investment: in production values, to make the most of the execution; in a medium, to reach a threshold of impact.
Agencies as well as clients should be looking to maximise the return on this investment, so it’s essential to calculate what you get for the spend, if advertising is to be truly accountable. The results you are paid for can be specified as sales, direct response or brand relationship measures, as long as they relate to the agreed task. Knowing what you’re getting is a fundamental part of a more businesslike approach to advertising. Tracking research and accurate sales or response analysis are essential not only to evaluate performance but also to provide guidance for strategic development. Advertising is an investment that’s increasingly worth making as brands converge not only in functionality but also in positioning. Advertising communications can be a key differentiator, so it’s vital to be able to demonstrate the difference they make.
As a creative industry advertising is unlike the pure creative arts because it only exists to get a response. A lack of originality in advertising leads to a lack of response. Imaginative thinking isn’t just the job of the copywriters and art directors. It’s the responsibility of everyone whose interest lies in making good advertising. It starts with the brief. It required creative thinking for Volvo to adopt safety as a strategic idea. And there is a leap from safety to the creative idea of a protective cage. This can come from anywhere (but it is essential that it comes from somewhere). It’s what gives the creative team the platform for an arresting and original execution of the idea (in this instance a shark attack). Michelangelo’s brief for the Sistine Chapel was not “paint me some scenes from the Bible”, but rather “create something for the greater glory of God”. Creative thinking can also lead to media solutions for the brand.
CREATIVE THINKING IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF ADVERSTISING
When Yellow Pages found it was too remote from the urban young, they took over public transport as a medium, from bus sides to tube tickets and even a whole train on the Circle line, to bring it close to their everyday lives. And ideas like HMV’s Islander magazine, which reached young music lovers by involving the brand in the Ibiza clubbing experience, are just as much a creative solution as a brilliant 60 second TV commercial. But it does all come back to good creative work, because without it creative thinking would go to waste. It is a creative idea like Budweiser’s “Wassup” that people respond to so strongly that it enters the language, becoming a part of everyday culture. Such originality is what makes advertising not just tolerated but appreciated and even celebrated. Agencies and clients who conspire in the so-called safety of what’s been done before are guilty of more than just narrow lazy thinking — they are not doing the best for the brand. In truth, by following clichéd thinking, they are doing nothing for the brand.
BUT T H E WA YTHA T Y OU S AYIT IT AIN’T (JUST) WHAT YOU SAY
Tell a joke badly and nobody laughs. Nobody even listens. What you have to say in your advertising may be very different, may be very motivating, but say it in an uninteresting way and it won’t capture people’s attention, let alone their hearts and minds. And how you say it can’t be divorced from what you say. The tone of voice, the production values, the way you connect with people through media are all part of the advertising idea. All communicate in their own right and so should be used to add impact and depth to the message. “Cheap” production values bespeak a “cheap” brand. An “in-your-face” tone of voice can lead to people taking out brand values such as “aggressive” or “laddish”. Media usage that takes the audience by surprise makes the brand seem surprising. The message you send is more than the message you write.
the more people get into your advertising the more they get out of it
People will only get close to a brand if the brand gets close to them. The greater the participation of the audience, the stronger the advertising effect. People will not get into advertising that simply tells them how good the brand is. As the great Bill Bernbach said: “Telling isn’t selling”. Just saying something won’t make people respond. You have to engage them. Consumers are active, not passive. Advertising doesn’t just do things to people, people do things with advertising. And what is transmitted is not the same as what is received. Engaging advertising can come from its structure, content or style. In terms of structure an execution can engage people by surprise, intrigue, narrative, suspense. It involves them in a dramatisation, not just a demonstration, of what the brand is about. In content an execution can engage by depicting a situation or an attitude or people that the target audience will identify with, or that they will aspire to, or otherwise relate to by sharing or by desiring the values associated with it.
Advertising can also engage by its style. People will only give themselves to something if they get something back, so humour, for example, is invariably a powerful mechanism. Or clever advertising like The Economist rewards the audience because they feel clever in working it out. (But make it too hard work and they won’t get into it at all.) Advertising can also engage through sentiment, like Oxo and BT or the shock tactics of much charity advertising. Good advertising draws its audience into the world of the brand. But how you choose to engage your audience must be both brand related and brand-appropriate. It must be relevant engagement, not borrowed interest. The sexy girl must actually mean something.
ABC1(35-44) HOUSEWIVES
IDENTIFY A TARGET RESPONSE NOT JUST A TARGET AUDIENCE
You can’t have everyone as your friend. You can only keep in touch with so many people, and you have to know what’s important to them, if they’re going to be interested in staying in touch too. Advertising must therefore be targeted. The first step is to understand your consumer. Today’s sophisticated research means that you can know them intimately. A target audience is not defined by a superficial formula like “ABC1 35-44 housewives”: you need to be able to picture the person you’re talking to in your mind’s eye. Targeting of this kind is, for example, what turns direct marketing into personal communication rather than junk mail. The start to any effective strategy is to work out what kind of response you want from these people: what will strengthen the brand relationship or affect short-term behaviour. Then give them a stimulus that they will want to respond to. Good advertising is a dialogue, not a monologue. If you try to talk to everyone at once, it will be more difficult for an individual to hear you, because by trying to please them all you make yourself special to none of them. Yet if you do something that aims to capture the imagination of a few, it can embrace a much wider group. A carefully aimed pebble can create ripples that spread far and wide.
We are not in the business of advertisements, but in the business of advertising. Once, all that seemed to matter was the creative content, with media merely the context for an ad. Not any more. In a fragmented society, in which markets and media have fragmented too, the role of media has become more creative and more central to our producing good advertising. Advertising is no longer about writing a TV commercial or double page spread and shortly before presenting it asking the media department to knock out a coverage and frequency schedule. It isn’t enough to think of media as simply reaching a target and giving them the opportunity to see an ad, and in truth it never was. If the medium is at least partly the message, then how people receive it is central to how they respond. Today we have more forms of advertising — from events to e-mails, and fly-posting to text-messaging, by way of publishing magazines, sponsoring football and running banners on a web page — and above all else these are forms of media. And as active consumers, people make media choices. Media are brands with badge values that people use to express or reflect part of their character. The “Hello reader” is as much a symbol as the “BMW driver”. Media is about making connections, not filling spots and spaces. A campaign must have at its heart an understanding of how to get to people on different occasions through different channels, so that they can build a rich and coherent picture of the brand. Media is the crux of modern advertising.
media should be at the centre not at the end
Above all else, effective advertising deals exclusively in the truth. Because, in order to work, communication must be credible. People will simply dismiss something they don’t believe. But the truth alone is not enough. It must be a compelling truth. An unimportant message has no receiver. People won’t act on something that doesn’t matter to them. Finding a truth that matters means doing your homework. Interrogating the brand and researching the consumer. You need to know everything about both of them, because a good strategy is based on an insight, which derives from knowledge. The strategic idea of a campaign is what gets you from the heart of the brand to the heart of the consumer. The only brand truth you may be able to find might at first appear unpromising because it seems unimportant or equally true of competitors. This is the power of the creative idea, that it can take this insignificant truth, create something original around it and make it matter.
FIND A TRUTH and make it matter
It can take something trivial, as Tango did with “orange hit�, and make it central to the brand idea. Or something negative, as Marmite did with the fact that some people hate the taste, and transform it into a positive. Or something rationally important but dull, as Halifax did with higher interest rates, and make it motivating. Or even something that is not different but a generic truth, as Heineken did with refreshment or Lynx with sexual attractiveness. Even if it’s not uniquely true of your brand, you can pre-empt ownership of the creative territory, provided that you protect it through consistently brilliant creative work. A small brand truth is better than a big brand lie.
ADVERTISING HAS A SINGLE
THE BEST
MINDED IDEA
If you throw three balls at somebody, the best they will do is catch one. Unable to focus clearly, many will miss all three. Advertising should therefore be centred around one idea, so that when you interrupt people’s lives with something they weren’t sitting around waiting to hear, you have a better chance they will get it. And whereas a movie or magazine article can unfold a complex story, a piece of advertising communication can’t. It has limited space and time to get its point across. So it should focus on just one. If you’ve got a brand with more than one strong thing to offer, choose one of them. The one that really matters, which you find out in your strategic work. This does not mean that you only communicate one aspect of the brand, let alone that it’s the only thing that people take out. Take the commercial where the puppy runs off with the roll of Andrex from the little boy sitting on the toilet: the single-minded idea was a demonstration of length. But the puppy embodies softness; the
execution conveys reassuring family values; from the tone and style people will take out emotions such as mother-love, care and warmth; the endline also mentions strength. What good advertising needs is a single-minded idea, not a singleminded proposition. Advertising isn’t really about propositions at all: what matters is not what advertising proposes, but how the consumer responds. Having a single central idea allows people to get what it’s about, from which point they can make these further rich connections. If there’s no central idea there’s nothing for people to work with. If there’s more than one, the advertising becomes confused and so do consumers. Whichever idea you choose, you’ll never have 100% of people get the idea, but the people who do, you want them to get it 100%.
Being different does not have to mean being wacky, or crazy, or weird: it just means not being the same. It means being individual. And you don’t have to be different in every single thing you do. But you do have to “zig” somewhere along the way. You need to be different to be noticed. You can’t engage in a dialogue with someone who won’t stop to take part in it, so you have to look like someone who might be interesting to talk to. If you’re just another face in the crowd, they’ll pass you by. Originality will engage people because it says you might be interesting and worth their while finding out about. But being different only to get noticed misses the point. If you ran naked down the street, you’d be noticed, but it would do little towards building a long-term relationship. You don’t just want to make an impact but a good impression. Making a good impression means being different in a way that is true to the brand. The nipple in the vogue.com poster was not just arresting but made a statement about the brand being at the leading
edge of fashion. For Ronseal it would have been gratuitous, whereas “It does what it says on the tin” created a different style of advertising and tone of voice appropriate for a DIY commodity, but wholly inappropriate for a glossy magazine. Difference has its degrees. You can be different by doing the common thing uncommonly well. Even a red corner flash saying “Free” at the top of a mailshot can still get people’s attention, though it’s been done a thousand times before. Because getting something for nothing is always different from the normal way you acquire it. But sometimes radical is on the menu. To break through a market, or force a reappraisal of your brand, you have to have breakthrough advertising, because a big step takes you further than a small one. Breaking conventions can be the logical, not the risky thing to do.
you don’t have to be in the centre break of Coronation Street
If you want people to appreciate how different you are, it’s not enough to look and sound different, you have to act different. In terms of media, the conventionally obvious solution is highly unlikely to make the most of the opportunity — or the client’s budget. Conventional media thinking is numbers-driven. Creative media thinking focuses on building a relationship. It’s not about counting the people you reach, but about making the communication count. To achieve this you have to understand what all the possibilities are. This gets more demanding as the choice of media proliferates and boundaries between them blur: digital technology promises to put pictures on radio, making it more like television, which is becoming interactive, making it more like the web, which will use un-foldable screens, making it more like newspapers (and it will all be updated by your mobile phone)… Faced with such turbulence and excitement, many people play safe, as though success is measured by survival rather than progress. Yet in this Brave New World all we have to do by way of being brave is
admit there’s a lot we don’t know, then explore, listen and learn. It’s an admission of strength not weakness, because it can take us beyond apparent obstacles that competitors are afraid to confront. Discovering new possibilities doesn’t mean abandoning old truths. As long as they still hold true. Television can still get you in front of a lot of people quickly. But its value has been measured in more than these quantitative terms for a long time. Qualitatively it can still give a brand stature, because people know that a TV brand is a big brand. But this can be achieved by imaginative programme sponsorship that uses the values of the channel and programme environment, as well as by a prime time 30 second commercial. The art is to exploit any medium to its full.
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TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS But there are no rules. Pot Noodles gives itself a deliberate advertising TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS makeover before people have the opportunity to tire of its appearance TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS and before the relationship goes stale. But it maintains a tone and TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS attitude that is recognisably of the same character. TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS If you want to stimulate a diversity of impressions through diversity TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS of creative ideas, consistency has to come from the strategic idea. TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS Foster’s has changed its creative idea several times over the years, but TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS it remains rooted in Australian-ness. Do something completely new TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS and you have to start anew. TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS In media terms, consistency of support over time means talking to TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS someone before they’ve had the chance to forget you. Any relationship TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS is damaged by neglect. But media consistency is about regularity, not TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS routine. All relationships thrive on variety. TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS Consistency creates a strong brand relationship by building on the TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS past, not by ignoring it or by relying on it. TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS TENCYISAKEYTOSUCCESSCONSISTENCYISAKEYTOS
KEEP YOUR FINGE
Markets and consumers don’t stand still. Just because your campaign worked doesn’t mean the job is done. Brands move on: when Wash & Go launched, it was based on a Unique Selling Proposition, namely that it was the only shampoo with a built-in conditioner. But USPs don’t survive for long, and nor do the strategies that depend on them. And sometimes a competitor does more than catch up with you — they can break new ground, as when Nike redefined both the sporting goods market and its advertising category. You have to be quick to respond in order not to be left behind and it’s not by copying them that you get ahead of the competition. People move on too: a brand like adidas was allowed in the 1980s to grow middle-aged along with its users, leading to rejection by the next generation. Advertising that stands still will be ignored. Your strategy has worn out. It has lost its relevance. Or a successful campaign might stop working because the way the strategy is executed has lost its impact. People will no longer be drawn into the creative idea simply because they’ve seen it enough times. Your execution has worn out. It has lost its distinctiveness. If the execution has lost its impact, you will need a fresh idea for communicating it — perhaps no more than a new executional idea, but maybe a whole new creative idea. If the strategic idea has lost its
ER ON THE PULSE
relevance, you will have to review it, and find a new brand truth to focus on (e.g. VW’s shift from reliability to driveability). You will not know any of these things if you don’t do research to keep in touch with market and consumer trends. And it is the brand that needs to dictate change, not the needs of the ambitious or overexposed agency or client. But where the consumer is at isn’t the same as where the advertising should be at. If advertising is to move a brand forward, it must do more than hold up a mirror, simply giving people a reflection of themselves. It must offer them a vision. There is only one way to predict the future and that is to invent it.
DON’T PATRONISE YOUR AUDIENCE
Sexist stereotyping aside, David Ogilvy’s words still hold true: “the consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife”. None of your friends, none of your colleagues you respect at work, none of the people you willingly listen to, not one talks down to you. Nor does any ad anyone pays attention to adopt a tone of voice that assumes a lack of equal intelligence in its audience. A patronising tone leads to people resenting your brand. And advertising can be patronising in what it says, not just in how it says it. People will not believe in a brand that is trying to mislead them - pretending it is something it is not or over-claiming its benefits - particularly today’s advertising-literate consumer. A patronising message leads to people rejecting your brand. You want each individual person to respond, so you must treat them as individuals in your advertising. Patronising advertising deals in stereotypes, reducing people to clichéd roles that the audience knows not to be true. People not only fail to identify with it, they actively object to it and to the brand that treats them in this fashion. Most bad advertising will simply be ignored. Patronising advertising will damage your brand. The consumer is not advertising’s fool.
BRANDING COMES FROM THE WHOLE OF THE IDEA NOT JUST THE
If people don’t get the name of the brand that’s talking to them, the advertising is a waste of money. But branding is not to be confused with logo size, packshots and the number of brand mentions. This is mechanical branding. Genuine branding runs all the way through the idea: the role the brand plays and the idea itself. If a brand owns a strong enough advertising idea, the idea itself is a branding device. The idea is about the brand and supports the brand: the Boddington’s cow, for example, is not merely a distinctive device but embodies the strategic idea of the campaign — creaminess. In order to get which brand it’s for, people don’t have to be told the name before everything else and more than anything else. But the brand’s the thing: it’s what must benefit from all the exciting stimuli. In a well-branded campaign the brand is more than just a signature.
The most difficult moment in advertising is when you are presented with a new creative or media idea. It’s difficult because if an idea is off brief it’s wrong, but being on brief does not necessarily make it good. So how do you know if an idea is worth developing? If the idea you have been asked to respond to is any good, it will take you by surprise — because the role of the brief is to provide a strategic focus, not specify the execution, so a good idea will not be a literal interpretation of the brief. It will not be something you or the target audience could have thought of: it will be a surprise. What makes it even more of a challenge is that how you personally respond to the idea, and whether you subjectively like it or not, are not the best guides to how good it is either. You’re seldom in the target market, and so close to the brand that you don’t have the benefit of perspective. What you need is judgement — the flexibility of mind to visualise not just what people will make of the idea, but beyond that how their response might change their relationship with the brand. Of course research can (and should) inform this judgement, but as with any other business decision, it’s the quality of judgement that matters. Experience makes judgement better, but not everyone can develop it as well as the next person. As for anyone who’s really good at anything, you’ve either got it or you ain’t!
“It’s on brief” and “I like it”
doesn’t mean
WOW! you’ve got
good advertising
The creative process does not stop with having an idea. It’s what you do with this idea, and where you take it, that matters, and to get the best from your advertising you have to take the idea as far as it can possibly go. Making the most of an idea means being evaluative as well as imaginative — being your own critic and listening to the ideas of others, to build on the idea. “Selling” an idea and closing down further avenues of development leads to minimising rather than maximising the potential of that idea. Production is part of the creative process. So, for example, simply “shooting the board” will almost certainly work to minimise the possibilities held by an idea. The roughs represent creative direction; they don’t define the execution down to the details of the props. Don’t cast the cups. The point of employing a talented production team is that they can add their own interpretation, ideas, and inspiration. Only when you have the finished execution can you stop developing the creative idea behind it. An idea should be worked on to the last minute and to the last degree, the last minute holding the same value as the first.
the idea is only the start of the execution
What allows ideas to flourish is not following a process, but pursuing a vision. Somebody must have the far-sighted ambition and the breadth of perspective to drive an idea forward and make it happen. This is what great clients do. Great clients get great advertising because they take the lead. They give the brief to people they trust, then trust them. They understand what’s needed, and share it. Because they know that advertising is not an exact science they expect some things to fail before finding whatever it is that works. They are not merely buyers. They are the architects of brand building, integrating the different disciplines of marketing communications to construct a single front. They are rewarded at the end both with great relationships and great work. Share a vision for the brand and you’re halfway there.
afterword Advertising is one of Britain’s great creative industries. Its stars may be less famous than those in film, music and other arts, but their talents are on display all day, every day and their commercial contribution to the country’s economy should not go unrecognised. With their clients they are the co-authors of brands that live in the ultimate commercial democracy: people vote for or against them every day. How many politicians could survive such an electorate? The IPA hope that this book will inspire students, clients and all who work in the UK marketing communications industry to ever greater heights of achievement and to continue to build this country’s global reputation for excellence. Hamish Pringle, Director General IPA
We have written what we believe to be true about good advertising and we think that they are genuinely shared beliefs of the industry. Our work is based on research, through which we have benefited from the experience of the lifetimes of other experts and luminaries from all fields of advertising. So to David Abbott, Marilyn Baxter, Simon Broadbent, Jeremy Bullmore, Cordell Burke, Neil Cassie, Andrew Cracknell, Tim Delaney, Charlie Dobres, Jonathan Durden, Gerry Farrell, Peter Field, Bruce Haines, John Hegarty, Steve Henry, David Kester, Mike Longhurst, Moray MacLennan, George Michaelides, Nigel Morris, Chris O’Shea, Mark Palmer, John Perriss, Hamish Pringle, Dave Trott, Louise Wall, John Webster, Robin Wight and Stephen Woodford we say: Thank you for sharing your ideas, and for your appreciation and criticism alike. Thank you also to the many people working for Britain’s leading creative, media, direct marketing, sales promotion, integrated communications and interactive agencies who contributed in Idea Generation sessions we ran. And to all the people at
Hall & Partners who shared in the uncovering and analysing of the many hundreds of ideas we’ve worked on. Writing this book has been a fantastic experience, and has left us in no doubt that advertising is endlessly fascinating and immensely difficult. We hope you share our excitement and passion for what it is possible to achieve. Mike Hall & Claire Bickerton, Hall & Partners
the final word ... should come from you. Share your beliefs, or examples from your own experience. Continue the debate about what makes good and great advertising and marketing communications on www.oursharedbeliefs.com
First published 2002 by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising 44 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8QS United Kingdom Telephone 020 7235 7020 Fax 020 7245 9904 info@ipa.co.uk www.ipa.co.uk Copyright Š 2002 IPA Institute of Practitioners in Advertising All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 0 85294 130 7 Designed by Grant Morrison Telephone 020 8400 6133 morrisondalley@easynet.co.uk Reprinted by Hall & Partners 2014