Every Ad is Someone’s Baby

A colleague said that to me the other day. It’s important to remember sometimes, when you take a break from the trench warfare that is agency-client relations, that your co-workers aren’t just people doing a job. Whatever your role in an agency, your work is your baby. Still more so as a designer or copywriter. Every line and placed graphic is part of your personal validation, evidence of your ability. And for it to be questioned and picked apart by those around you is no easy thing. You really do have to work to have a thick skin, because your work is both inherently personal and inherently vulnerable.

And that’s a good thing. It would be easy to dismiss what I’m saying as just the prissiness of artistes, self-obsession, unnecessary touchiness. But that’s what makes for great work. Great work, at any level, at any level of ‘importance’, demands personal commitment. If you can’t care, you can’t work – as I’ve said before, if you can’t bring yourself to care, why would your audience?

So care, and fight, and rage against those who want to change what you’re doing. And bend, and compromise, and conciliate. Because those twin impulses are what advertising is about – creativity plus corporate. Practical art.

And as an account handler, with a foot in both the client and the creative worlds, respect your client, certainly. But also respect your creative partners. Because they are the key to making the work that you really want to be a part of. And the ads that you are making are their babies.

A little care and attention goes a long way.

Don't Be Defensive

This is another anti-ego post.

It’s easy when you’re throwing ideas around to become fixated on your own positions and thoughts at the expense of everyone else’s. This is true whether it’s for a pitch or a campaign execution, or whether you get Nandos or KFC for lunch.

(For the record, the correct answer is of course Nandos.)

The point is, if you argue your point, and you’re still out-voted, you have to be able to accept it. Even if you’re the boss – one of the best skills in leadership is knowing how and when to give way, even to subordinates.

And sometimes it isn’t even about outright rejection of your ideas. It can simply be becoming defensive when your ideas are questioned or challenged or tweaked. You can’t defend your original vision to the death.

The most important thing in all this is to remember that your colleagues are competent. Sounds obvious, but in the heat of the moment it’s easy to unconsciously behave as though you’re the only person capable of good ideas. Which isn’t generally a popular or safe opinion to express.

And with that established, you have to then understand that if your ideas aren’t the ones that win out in a discussion, there are two options: First, that you need to step back and work out how to express your ideas in a better, more engaging way, or second, that maybe, just maybe, your ideas weren’t all that effective in the first place. And that perhaps it’s just possible that you only believe that they are great ideas because they are your ideas.

Food for thought.

Although for the record all my ideas are the best ideas.

Intermarché and Ugliness as a Virtue

This is a slightly older campaign to talk about, but if you haven’t already heard about the Intermarché “Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables” campaign by Marcel in France, you should really check it out.

It’s a very simple idea at its heart: promote the sale of ugly vegetables, in order to save money and resources for Intermarché, and for its customers. The less appealing produce was sold alongside the standard fare – except clearly marked at 30% off the normal price. Obviously this was quite an easy sell in a way, as everyone wants to be thriftier in the current climate, and it appeals to our environmental side as well.

More to the point, it was a witty, fun campaign, and captured the imagination. The campaign ran with jokey slogans about the produce which underlined the fact that, ugly or not, this was still good food that doesn’t have to be wasted: “An ugly potato makes beautiful mash”.

Intermarché is an up-and-coming brand, a plucky outsider, and this helped establish it as a brand that cares for its customers. 13 million people saw the ads for free on social media, and it wasn’t just a viral phenomenon; sales have gone up 24% since the campaign began.

And think about it from an image point of view. Ugly may be ugly. But it also conveys honesty, straight talking, and trustworthiness. Think Oliver Cromwell and his portrait, warts and all.

Who wouldn’t trust the brand that places value and quality over skin deep, superficial prettiness?

It’s a genius bit of insight.

Taking Things to Heart

This too shall pass.

You’ll find throughout your career that you have good moments and bad moments.

(I know! I was surprised too.)

Consistency is of course a good thing to strive for but it is never going to be a reality. You are human after all (I hope). So there will be highs and lows, great successes and the odd abject failure. And of course everyone around you is human too, so even if it’s only a minor failure in real terms you can find that it is treated by others as piss in their coffee.

Here’s my point:

Don’t take it to heart.

Neither the good nor the bad. Enjoy the praise and the accolades when you get them. Learn from the mistakes and the blame. But don’t dwell, don’t be complacent, don’t think of your character as being comprised of these moments.

You’re not defined by the past but by the present. Jumping for joy over last week’s performance review can lead you to fall right into a pit. And obsessing over an error-strewn Excel sheet can blind you to a new opportunity waiting for you. So look forward, not back.

Don’t misunderstand me – it’s natural and normal to feel down when things go badly, and to feel invincible when things go well. But be mindful, because scientists have found that the leading cause of 78% of screw ups is the belief that you finally know what you’re doing.

A career is a winding road of ups and downs. Just have the patience to see that nothing is permanent, good or bad. The sooner you can adjust to that, the faster you can react and respond, and avoid the traps of complacency or dejection.

Defeat and victory are both impostors. The true goal is just to keep learning.

There is Nothing Wrong with Selling

There’s an ad campaign going around in London, of various images sent in by people with the tagline “#beframeus”. Every time I read it I read “be fram-e-us”. And it annoys me. When I get home I’m going to try to find out what this campaign is all about. Because that is all the information given.

And that’s the problem. Sure, I’m going to make the effort (hopefully, unless I forget because I might have better, more interesting things to do), but I don’t really want to. And most other people I imagine don’t want to either.

“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”

Too many advertisers try to be overly clever with their campaigns, to make it a puzzle, to make it a mysterious pathway of content to carry the audience forward.

That would be nice if the audience were watching every ad in a row like a movie. But we don’t. We watch piecemeal – we watch at random. You can’t assume anything about how much the audience has seen. Of course you don’t want to patronise the audience. But don’t force them to do research to understand what you’re doing.

Too often this byzantine form of advertising is done because we’re afraid that our audience hate advertising, and want to have some kind of organic content experience. I’m not quite sure what that even means. But here’s the point.

You can’t be afraid of selling the product. Don’t hide behind clever lines and “guerrilla” advertising that is so guerrilla that it lives in a part of a jungle that no one has ever visited.

If you have a point to make, make it.

I don’t give a shit about #beframeus. Tell me what you want me to buy.

(Having looked it up it seems to be JCDecaux' new editorial content feature. So I guess in the end it doesn't matter that no one knows or cares about it, since the target is so small anyway.)

Strongbow is Selling Itself on the Basis of Quality and I am Confused

You may well have seen the spot by now. It’s no longer particularly new. A TV ad highlighting the seasonal nature of cider apple growing, and the care and attention that goes into making Strongbow cider.

And I’m confused. Because Strongbow isn’t known for quality. It’s known for being cheap, plentiful, and not particularly nice. There’s a reason people mix it with squash. And that it’s one of the main ingredients of snakebite. I have no beef with Strongbow. But it isn’t known for quality.

(Although interestingly in Australia Strongbow is branded as an English heritage product. Cutesy images of trees and apples and everything.)

The point is, there are other ciders, even mass market ones like Magners, which place their quality and care as a key selling point – and it’s believable because they are actually quite nice.

So why is Strongbow going down this route for its advertising? We can only assume that they feel a need to aim for a more mature audience.

After all, Strongbow ads have traditionally been very strong, playing on humour and funny scenarios – exactly the kind of thing to appeal to a younger class of drinker, who wants something cheap but also wants a brand that seems to understand and care about their sense of humour. But perhaps that market is under threat by own brand supermarket offerings, which are much cheaper and taste about the same. Advertising can only trump cost to a point.

That there is one of the most interesting market developments of the last few years. Many value range branded goods are suffering from the competition of cheaper supermarket-made alternatives.

(It’s probably worth an article of its own. I’ll have a think.)

But here’s the main point: if you see an advert that looks odd, seems unusual or out of tone for a brand, start thinking. Why is it there?

Quite often, the answers are more easy to reason out than you think.

Rapid Remarketing with Berocca

Berocca is a well-known alka seltzer-type vitamin tablet.

(Those are sometimes known as effervescent tablets. Advertising!)

It has an ad that’s been running for a little while now, showing a guy detailing all the things he has to do today that mean he needs Berocca. It’s a nice, fun little ad that does a good job of outlining why you need this product and how it helps you.

But that’s not what’s interesting about it. What’s interesting is how blatantly it is acting as a moment of remarketing and repositioning. Because the beginning of the ad shows the star’s friend coming up and remarking that he must have had a big night.

Berocca has a reputation for being a hangover remedy. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness but that is the name it has for itself. That’s all well and good but clearly to Berocca it’s too limiting a label. And so, quite obviously to anyone with an ear open, Berocca is rebranding: not just for hangovers.

In just a couple of seconds Berocca acknowledges its reputation, and then declares that it is so much more. It’s so fast you barely notice, but it’s an open, rapid remarketing. And it is very effective.

And that’s it. I just found it interesting.