strategy

But I still think it’s a Good Idea

Juli 22, 2010 by Jonathan

Working in teams with the creatives here at Miami Ad School in Hamburg, I have a strong feeling of deja vu – of me as a young copywriter. The one defining lesson I took from my experience in the creative field was how much you can fall in love with what you believe is a great idea. But, truth be told, it is not a good idea – no matter how eloquently you post-rationalize it. The memory of me as a bad copywriter is my constant reminder how important the third person in the middle is to ask, „Does this really work?“.

A quote from a discussion this week: „I know it goes against all the values of the brand, but I want to present it anyway.“ So what do you think will happen? That miraculously the client throws over board all his prior considerations and picks your idea? That would not a the brave client, that would be a stupid client.

Now there is proof you can make a client brave and bold, but you need substance and strategy that make sense for the client, not for yourself, not for the idea. I am still amazed how many of the seemingly crazy ideas (Old Spice guy) have obvious and clear strategy behind them (we need to address married middle-aged women because they make the bodywash decisions for their husbands, often choosing lady-scented varieties). Planning gruntwork and great creative helped P&G take a controlled risk, not a leap of faith.

Creatives have it tough. Idea after idea after idea rejected, buried, killed. Every meeting a rendezvous with the guillotine for your most brilliant work to date. I get why they hate it. I’d hate it, too. But all the great clients are usually the toughest clients with meetings that can be summarized (according to folks I met) as „Great! Your best work, ever! – Make it better.“ To steal and paraphrase a quote from Winston Churchill: „Great creative is the result of going from one rejected idea to another with no loss of enthusiasm“. Creative is more about letting go many ideas than coming up with one perfect idea.

That said, being aware of the creative’s fragile mind I avoided to kill off the idea of the prior quote: I will let the person present their great idea personally, if they show up on time. Which they never did at any of our meetings. I rest assured we will not be wasting our client’s time in the meeting.

Let’s be clear what we are talking about…

Dezember 15, 2008 by Jonathan

Last week this commercial for the Austrian Lotteries went on air. I actually like it. It has a good idea, the main protagonist is perfectly cast and it is amazingly subtle and still funny – for Austrian standards.

Last year’s „Dog“ was also a good idea in my eyes. Got Lowe GGK showered in awards, but internationally only shortlisted (i.e. Cannes).

Yet, despite being brilliant ideas and quite successful, I believe these ads could look a lot better if the agency would be clearer about what they are talking about.

These commercial have a looong history: Along with the tagline „Alles ist möglich“ / „Everything is possible“ they have been showing the depressing status quo of a person contrasted with the glorious golden future of that person being a lottery winner.

These two commercials have completely left that look-at-that-terrible-job-you-are-in-now-and-the-lottery-will-get-you-out-of-there strategy and tell a much clearer message:

Play the lottery because it will you make so filthy rich that [insert commercial idea here]

I have my doubts that there has been a true strategical decision towards this message. Rather good ideas that were pressed into the old corset. The execution is still stuck in that old tradition of how these spots must be made.

So in „Opera“ they spend 15 seconds telling nothing of relevance, because that was the way we have always done it. It makes no sense, does neither help story nor punchline, and it costs extra money each time the ad is aired. And it will go no further than the Cannes shortlist.

Just my two cents.

A look back: XBox

Mai 14, 2008 by Jonathan

This is a presentation I did at school back in 2003 at the University of Oklahoma. It is outdated but I still believe it is a great example of how to build up an argument for a strategic decision.

I have to stress that we made this before the Playstation „Mountain“ commercial that won the Cannes Grand Prix 2004. „Mountain“ actually could have been based on this presentation, except here the technical potential would have been stressed.

| View | Upload your own

Fast Strategy Event

April 29, 2008 by Jonathan

Did something interesting in my lunch break today. I teamed up with the Planning4Good AllStars who were competing at IPA’s FAST Strategy event today.

Ok, explanations first: Planning for Good is essentially a club of Account Planners all over the world that tackle strategic problems for good causes and non-profits. Members include Gareth Kay, Planning Director of Modernista!, Aki Spicer of Fallon, Mark Earls (author of Herd) and many more notable names from the Plannersphere.

Anyways, Mark Earls was team leader of the Planning4Good AllStars (him, Jon Leach, Chris Forrest (The Nursery) and Ian Tait (Poke & crackunit)) to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars, one of three teams competing in the three hour battle for the title Fastest Strategist.

Mark additionally called – through the power of the Internet! – the combined brain power of Planning for Good people who could spare the time. So my lunch break was 30 minutes of furious typing, reading and searching at once, trying bring in as much thinking, ideas as possible. The Brief was about creating a strategy for a dog owner’s registry in the UK.

What I learned today (apart from „30 minutes is not much time“) for doing strategy in a team online and fast:

kick off fast, don’t wait for suggestions, have influencers just throw starters
keep the team updated of what you are doing, ask questions constantly
choose the platform wisely. wetpaint is good for a wiki, but maybe twitter would have been better for this fast event. Communication felt slow both ways.
give directions once you feel where you are heading, this will organize the herd instead of dispersing the effort.

Mark Earls posted that they just made second place. Bugger. Still was fun.I hope I can see the presentation they gave.

Apropos, presentations. In my Vodpod there is a splendid presentation Mark Earls gave at the ARF conference in New York (via Gareth Kay). He talks about Word of Mouth, decision making in our connected lives and how to best influence those processes. Intriguing stuff. I think I will get his book.

APSotW Winning entry: Me. Yay!

März 26, 2008 by Jonathan

This week started with a pleasant surprise:
Rob Campbell posted Paul Colman’s reviews on the presentations for the assignment on Extra gum. After short disappointment because I wasn’t able to identify my presentation from the feedback (see whole story here) it turns out the winning presentation is my entry.



 | View | Upload your own

To sum this up in short: Extra is the everything else gum of Wrigley’s. The brand is spread out to appeal to everybody, and also the vehicle for new products. My recommendation was to define Extra by leaving innovation to a new brand, and putting focus on Extra as functional gum that aids concentration, focus etc.

Personally, I knew that this would taken two more slides, but ten was the limit. I REALLY would love to see Assignment „I“: „Mental Hygiene“ is perfect, sums up my positioning thoughts much better. In fact, I would love to see all the other presentations. It was always great to see where all the other minds went.
BIG Thanks to Paul and Rob for taking the time to a look at the work.

But, alas, back to work. The new assignment is up already online.

Hm, I can’t help it, but I still have a suspicion that there has been an error and Paul Colman will ask me to return my price.