There’s a common belief that being ‘creative’ is the way to be successful in the world of hype. Many advertising campaigns are judged as being successful if they are simply the most creative. Awards are given out for the most creative campaigns by the big marketing and advertising organizations. The Addy, the Cleo, and so on.
But, who gives out an award for the ad campaign that actually sells the most products?
Huh?
Hey, why mention SALES at a time like this, and ruin the romance of the moment. Creativity — that’s what we’re after.
Thousands of artists, performers, radio jocks, DJ’s, actors, models and impressarios occupy the CEO or President’s desks at thousands of ad businesses across the country — all of them calling themselves “advertising agencies”. You can tell they are an advertising agency because that is the way they list themselves in the Yellow Pages. “Get yourself a Yellow Page ad, and you can be an ad man, too!”
But did they get their college degree in advertising? No. If they got one, they got it in the College of Design. The Advertising Department would have been across the campus, located deep inside the College of Business. In that building, people also study marketing, use spreadsheets, and do consumer research. They study sales. They know something about mathematics, something about art, something about theater, something about music, something about focus groups and consumer polling. They know about demographics, psychographics, studies of brand recognition, consumer motivation, selling strategies, and market testing. These folks are sales people. They use mathematics, analytical market research, comparative product testing and similar approaches. And, they marry those technologies to artwork, illustration, photography, singing, dancing, acting, page design and layouts.
The idea is to SELL something.
Selling requires a witches brew of art and science. Combining them successfully demands a special ability to converge these two worlds into one productive team. You know the team has ‘won’ when the product being advertised SELLS MORE than it did before. It’s that simple.
I’ve met them socially hundreds of times. All dressed up in a suit and tie. Expensive duds. Very slick — hair in the latest styles. You engage them in small talk, and finally they get around to asking what you “do”. I’d reply that I’m an advertising agent and they’d say, “Hey that’s what I do. I own Fancy Stuff Creative down the street. You’ve probably seen my stuff for Sad Schmuck Jeans all over, huh? That’s me! The ads, not the jeans, of course. We won a bunch of awards on that run.”
After a few painful bouts negotiating myself through this verbal minefield, I soon learned to wean myself away from these folks — asap. I found you could never ask them how much money their award winning campaign made the client — they didn’t know (or care). You couldn’t even mention money, increased market penetration, and so on. That would be changing the subject. “Hey money, sales, market share — that is marketing, not advertising!” they would exclaim. “We leave that to the bean counters and boys in pin-stripes. We’re not MARKKETING people, we’re ADVERTISING people. Creativity, man… that’s our thing.” And then they would shun us real ad agents… as if we were members of those offensive sales-oriented counters of beans.
But if ad men are not artists, and not marketing people, then who are they?
They’re salemen, pure and simple. They’re salemen who lead a team of creatives and bean counters. They are people who come up with a real reason people should and probably will, actually buy the product. Then they produce the ad campaign that will end up doing the job.
Somewhere along the way, there may be a bit of creativity. It may show up in the way research is done to find out why people prefer the competitions’ products, or it may show up in the way the music and the video is done in a TV commercial that delivers the selling proposition. But, creativity is not the main thing.
But of course, the artists who run ad agencies have the cart before the horse. Advertising is the name of the industry. Artists are hired by ad agents to illustrate, to act in, to photograph, to portray and to dramatize a selling concept — a sales proposition. It’s all about sales. In producing sales, sometimes it pays to be creative. But usually, it pays to purposefully NOT be creative. We want memorability, and comprehension, and persuasion, and action (purchasing).
Creativity usually gets in the way of sales.
John O’Toole was for many years the Chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding Communications, Inc. Under O’Toole, Foote Cone became one of the world’s largest agencies with annual ad budgets in the billions of dollars. He was well known for devising advertising campaigns that continued to produce well for clients for many years, sometimes even decades. His client product’s became famous, and very profitable. And, while his campaigns were enormously successful for a wide range of famous brands, he disavowed any reliance on creativity, in fact he often warned young advertising agents:
“If you want to invest in creativity, buy some beautiful artwork and donate it all to a museum. Don’t waste your money forcing it into your ad campaigns.”
– John O’Toole, Chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding Communications and later President of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, from “The Trouble with Advertising”, Time Books, 1985.
Another great ad man often warned about relying on creativity in his books and speaches around the world. David Ogilvy was founder and Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, which was also a multi-billion dollar agency with famous brand campaigns that produced for clients over decades. Ogilvy devised simple, dramatic and persuasive presentations. He had few secrets about the reasons for his success. He wrote about the whys and wherefores in 3 books:
- “Blood, Brains & Beer: The Autobiography of David Ogilvy”, now out of print (written in the 1950s)
- “Confessions of an Advertising Man”, Atheneum (1963)
- “Ogilvy on Advertising”, Vantage (1985)
David Ogilvy and Ogilvy & Mather became so successful — due to the success of their sales campaigns — that Ogilvy himself became an icon of the industry, amassed a fabulous personal fortune, and retired to a castle in France. Throughout his career, he was known as an opinionated, rule-driven master of the science.
Ogilvy never said that he had “created” an ad. He preferred to say he had “written” it. Ogilvy had cut his teeth on working in the consumer behavior research department for George Gallup, starting in the days before World War II. As a result of that experience, and the laboratory experience of spending many millions of client dollars proving what works and what doesn’t, Ogilvy became convinced of certain simple guidelines that he called “hints” on how to write his sales communications, his ads.
Ogilvy used to say that “I hate rules.” But he used consistent principles driven by consumer research over a lifetime to make billions in profits for his clients. Ogilvy was well-known to start his pronouncements to clients and coworkers with “Research shows…” He could do that because he had always done his homework.
“Do your homework.” Ogilvy used to say to understudies in his office. He practiced what he preached. Before writing an ad, he would intensely study the product, the competition, and the product’s potential buyers. This homework often lasted for weeks. He developed ideas about how the product played in the market, which he called ‘positioning.’ And, he extracted some ways to inform the buyers decisions — to persuade them to buy his product instead of the competition’s. He called that ‘benefit-driven advertising.’ But he disowned any allegiance to creativity:
“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to say that you found it ‘creative.’ I want you to say you found it so interesting that you bought the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said. ‘Let us march against Philip.’
– David Ogilvy, Ogilvy & Mather, from “Ogilvy on Advertising”, 1985.
You want to accomplish these things in an ad:
- Have your audience know what this about at a glance.
- Associate the ad’s ‘aboutness’ or subject with an already existing internal value. Something they know and understand, and already think is important — and want more of, or want to know more about.
- Then you want to link the product or service — the content of the ad — to that value. You want to show how that product or service is unique and superior to other products, and where and how to buy it. You want the audience to buy it!
This means that the audience must:
- Understand the sales message
- Comprehend it
- Believe it
- Remember it at least long enough to…
- Act on the sales proposition by…
- Buying the product
What does this strategy require from the person producing the ad?
- Research on the features of the product/service being offered.
- Research on the competition.
- Research on the values of possible customers. Who they are, what they read, watch, listen to, purchase. Where they shop and play. How to reach them.
- Research on the market for this product or service. How much is being sold now, by which competitors. Where is it being sold? How much is it sold for? Who is the buyer by age, sex, lifestyle, income, neighborhood, etc.
- Development of a selling proposition that may persuade the possible customers to buy the product.
- Produce and illustrate this proposition with dramatic sales campaigns.
- Measure the success of these campaigns against profits, market share, and possible future trends.
- Adjust strategies and re-produce new campaigns to improve on those sales figures, or continue and expand the campaigns — whichever is needed.
Where did you see creativity in that list? You didn’t.
Oh, well maybe it might be involved in the production of Step 6: …dramatic campaigns.
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