Why real is not always more important than feel

Anyone who's ever had video coaching for some kind of sport will most probably know what this phrase means. You think you've a silky smooth golf swing that would make Ernie Els purr with delight, whereas instead the video your coach shows you appears to be of some demented fool attempting to snag a set of keys from down a drain at breakneck speed.

The same is true in any kind of service business. You think or "feel" you're doing a good job, providing the client with a stream of new and relevant ideas and advice that is key to him or her exceeding their objectives, all delivered in an atmosphere of openness and unconstrained positivity. On some occassions you may even be right.

And yet, and yet. Sometimes, just as in sport, what feels fantastic to you is anything but to those on the receiving end. Even those with the most advanced sensory acuity can get it wrong. Clearly, some kind of objective method of measurement is important. In games like golf, you can simply look at the scorecard. In professional services, it's often harder to work out what 'real' really is.

True, there can often be business results to look at. But there many factors that go into their creation, some usually beyond your direct control. More often than not, we have to turn to the distinction between 'feel' and 'real' once more. Put simply, you can have stacks of objective evidence that you're doing a good job, but if it doesn't feel right to your client chances are they won't be around for long. And if they've got good business results and still don't feel great then something is seriously wrong indeed.

Maybe feel is real after all.  

Do the right thing

As more and more brands ask us to bring their corporate social responsibility programmes to the fore I was amused by this quote from John D. Rockefeller: "Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing".

I can see plenty of clients who would say amen to that but my colleagues over at Ogilvy Earth are now looking at  a new and more radical agenda. Most brand managers know that CSR programmes in themselves have very little effect on consumer demand. That may be fine if all you're looking at is corporate reputation type measures but the irony is that in many cases the best thing these companies can do is buy more from their suppliers. Put simply, the single most important driver of quality of life for many farmers and others is the level of demand for their goods & services. That, in turn, means brands selling more to consumers.

As we said before, they're unlikely to do this by simply celebrating their new and ethically sound CSR practices. Rather, people still make most decisions on simple factors such as price, perceived quality and performance. So the trick, if that's the right word, is to show consumers how good and ethically sound business practices makes their product perform better. They'll buy more and feel better about doing so too. And the farmers and other suppliers throughout the world will directly benefit through greater incomes. It's a classic win - win scenario, and there really aren't many of them around any more.

Why no creative progress is usually better than some

A fascinating piece of post rationalisation from my colleagues Clare Rossi and Dennis Lewis. More than half way through a tense and important creative development process the sum total of our efforts was close to zero. This launched an already nervous client into wave upon wave of panic until Dennis drew him the chart you see here.

He argued that much though we might like it to be so, creative development is not a linear process. Instead, getting to a big idea involves rumbling along the bottom trying lots of different things until gold is finally struck. In doing so Dennis argued that by having nothing of any note to show at the intermediate review was therefore a good thing and that we were completely on target for greatness (the asterisk in the above chart).

Conversely, if we had a few half baked ideas we would almost certainly end up with work that was quite possibly good, but not good enough.

I've found myself using this argument a lot ever since.

The Power of No

Amidst the endless repeats and Xmas specials on TV over the holidays I managed to cram in 2 hours watching Crash by Paul Haggis. I hadn't seen it since it first came out in 2004 and as well as being enjoyable in its own right it was strangely prescient of my first week back in the office.

Three or four storms in a teacup have now developed into major hurricanes, the origins of which go back weeks and months into 2009. It seems that all too often our agency took the path of least resistance when digging our heels in would have saved much of this new year heartache. Just like in the movie (sort of), the origins of crashes are multifarious and complex. They usually occur a long time before the event.

If 'yes' is the consumer response we spend our time and effort trying to generate, I have a new year resolution of saying "no" more often to help get it, even if I know it'll put a few noses out of joint in the short term. I know we're all up against it and the last thing we want to do is upset those we depend on, even in the short term, but by simply saying yes all the time we're doing them all a disservice. And no one wins from that, least of all us.

The biggest challenge for food & drink advertising in the new decade

Google the words “food and drink advertising” and you’ll be left in little doubt as to the most important topic of 2009, that of increased industry regulation particularly in the HFSS and children’s categories. The general gist of the coverage is that the authorities are having to step in to protect unscrupulous marketers from exploiting the country’s most vulnerable individuals.

Yet while a few companies try and shift the odd case here and there by sailing close to the regulatory wind, the enlightened have already recognized that consumer sentiment was leading regulation in the first place, and reacted accordingly.

These brands, both big and small, understand that consumer perceptions are no longer framed by one way conversations. In short, you can make all the fantastic advertising you want but if it’s dissonant with the other aspects of a brand’s behavior, such as corporate provenance or sourcing of ingredients, then consumers will at best ignore you and at worst attack you.

Many ad industry experts cite share of voice as one of the key determinants of success. And while it clearly has a role to play, the important thing to recognize is that it is only a means to an end. In 2010, the most important channel is people. Advertising can help encourage conversation but it’s only one element. A more wise move is to see it in context alongside the other elements of the brand and frame it accordingly. 

Has OTC advertising moved on from Mad Men?

A prominent pre-testing company recently presented “breakthrough” findings on what makes effective OTC advertising.

Their advice was to avoid “visual vampires”, that problem/solution is always best, having a single minded relevant idea is vital, believability is key, mention the brand name within the first five seconds of the ad and that creativity is not a critical ingredient to effectiveness.

Sound familiar.  They ought to.  These insights are the very same ones you would have found 50 years ago in the golden age of the Mad Men.  Amazing how little the accepted OTC advertising formula has changed.

Like it or not, the way in which people view and interact with brands has changed, and that pace of change is increasing. Winning brands and categories constantly find new ways to fuse cultural and category conventions that help define the markets in which people live and think in the present day. I can't help think that most OTC advertising would struggle to qualify in this regard.

The equation for perfect advertising

A few months ago Wired ran an article on "the formula that killed Wall Street". It was about an equation (the Gaussian Copula formula) which our financial institutions used to bundle up risk and thereby identify the value of sub-prime mortgages. Self evidently it didn't work, or if you believe the formula's creator David X. Li, the formula was fine but just misused.

In the new(ish) field of behavioural economics there would be some kind of explanation for this. In fact, you could probably write another equation to explain how and why the first one stopped working so spectacularly. Can we then create some sort of formula that would allow us to create the perfect ad?

A friend of mine has small holiday cottage which we sometimes borrow during the summer. Amongst the holiday reading on the bookshelves is an ancient leather bound tome entitled 'How to advertise' from the 1930s. It contains many simple and straightforward formulas for creating adverts that, if followed to the letter, would guarantee success.

Much has of course moved on since then and the word 'formulaic' is often used to describe advertising we find dull and familiar. Rarely is formulaic used positively, especially when applied to the subject of creativity. But whilst there may not be formula, perhaps there is at least a definition of creativity we can agree on. My favourite is "A mental process involving the generation of new ideas, or new association between existing ideas. The result of this (divergent) thinking should be generally both original and appropriate".

It's can't be so hard to build this into a formula can it? In which case formulaic ideas are the best ones, and highly leveraged practitioners can bring the world of communications to its knees by misusing it in the pursuit of unsustainable growth. Sound familiar?