Dave Trott’s Blog

Creative thinking and critique from Dave Trott

MIDDLE CLASS versus WORKING CLASS

Posted in General 27 May 2008
There has always been a one-size-fits-all attitude to advertising.

Whatever is the current fashion, that must be the right thing to do for every product, in all cases.

First it was yelling and repetition (50s)

Then it was USP (60s and 70s)

Then it was hard-to-understand (80s and 90s)

Currently it’s YouTube.

Well here’s an unusual thought: what if different products and/or brands and/or audiences need different types of communication.

Take the middle class and the working class (think white collar and blue collar, if you’re happier with that).

Most people in advertising nowadays (client side and agencies) come from university.

This means most of them have had middle class upbringings.

This is responsible for the preponderance of esoteric, hard to understand advertising.

In the middle class the responsibility is on the person receiving the communication to interpret it correctly.

The person making the communication wouldn’t do anything so crass as saying exactly what they mean.

This would be seen as crude, and not caring for the other person’s feelings.

So they hint at their meaning in such a way that an intelligent person can work out exactly what they’re driving at.

Without either of them being embarrassed by direct communication.

So how you demonstrate your intelligence is by being able to grasp what someone means, without them having to actually say it.

This is the opposite of the working class.

Here the responsibility is on the person making the communication to get their message heard correctly.

Here simple plain communication is the only sort that has any chance of cutting through.

Subtlety will either be ignored, or not even heard.

So which kind of communication is right for advertising?

Well it depends what you’re selling, where, and to who. If you’ve got a product that you want to seem stylish and exclusive, then the subtle middle class esoteric style is probably best.

Because the audience has to work out what the advertiser is driving at.

Once they’ve decoded it, they will feel more intelligent and therefore the product is right for them.

However, this approach probably isn’t going to work in a commercial break in the middle of Coronation Street.

No one can be bothered, no one cares.

It’s not that one style is good and the other bad, it’s just that they both do different jobs.

You have different styles for newspapers, books, films, TV comedies, art, dance, in every other field of creativity.

So why do seemingly intelligent agencies persist in pushing the view that there’s only one style of advertising that’s right, for all products, in all cases?

 

Posted in General | 6 Comments »

The answer is ‘brand’, now what’s the question?

Posted in General, Uncategorized 12 May 2008

What is a brand?
It’s the new word for what we used to call ‘image’.
It’s everything around the thing that isn’t the thing itself.
It’s emotional, not rational.
It’s the right brain, not the left brain.
In advertising terms it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
And it is true that sometimes the image is more important than the pure mundane reality.
Take perfume, all it is is image.
No one cares how long it lasts, or how convenient the bottle is.
In this case the rational is the enemy of the emotional.
But that isn’t always true.
It’s become current advertising mythology that brand is always the most important thing.
In all cases, everytime, everywhere.
This has to be lazy thinking.
This is setting the brain on auto-pilot.
This is why ‘planners’ have become just brand-consultants, in the quest for any easy life.
To avoid having to reinvent the wheel every time there’s a new problem.
Think for a minute, is brand really always the answer?
Do people fall in love with the BMW brand and immediately rush into a shop saying,

“Give me some of that BMW brand, I don’t know what they make: cigarettes, chocolate bars, ballpoint pens or holidays. But I must have some of that brand right now.”

Nope, that isn’t how it works.
First you decide you need a car.
Then you decide what sort of car.
Finally you draw up a list of the brands of car.
The brand of car will have been decided by the car’s reputation.
Which will have been decided by the product itself over many years.
Volkswagen didn’t start with a blank sheet of paper and decide to push reliability as their brand.
They started with a car that was ugly, utilitarian, cheap and sturdy.
They repackaged that as sensible, reliable, and tough.
The brand came from the product not the other way round.
That’s because in some areas the product performance is more important than the brand image.
Unless the brand image is the product performance.
Brand is only one of the possible ways to sell.
But, so far as most planners are concerned, it’s now the only way that anybody buys anything.
You’ve heard the expression ‘When the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
Well most planners only have one tool, so every problem looks like a branding issue.
They don’t even consider the business problem.
They knee-jerk straight into an advertising answer, and that means addressing the brand issues.
Let me give you an example.
When AMV had to repitch for Sainsburys.
They sat down and discussed the branding issues.
How could they change the brand to attract more people into the store?
It was depressing because the brief from the client was to increase Sainsbury’s turnover by £3 billion over the next 2 years.
And however much you change the brand you’re not going to attract £3 billion of business away from your competitors.
Then a young planner said,

“Forget the brand for a minute, and look at the numbers.
Sainsburys has 14 million store visits a week.
That’s 3/4 billion store visits a year.
If we can increase the value of each store visit by an average £1.50 we’ll have increased revenue by £3 billion over 2 years.”

And because she said that the, ‘Try something different today” campaign was born.
Not by kneejerking into brand, but by getting upstream and looking at the business problem before you look at the advertising problem.
That’s the sort of planner I, and every creative, want to work with.
Not a planner that says brand isn’t ever the answer.
Just a planner that says brand isn’t always the only answer.

Posted in General, Uncategorized | No Comments »

What to do on work placement…

Posted in General 8 May 2008

After reading this post on How to get a Job in Advertising I wanted to share this.

The best thing I’ve ever seen written for people on placements was written by Ed Morris, the creative director of Lowe. This is it:

“If you are a placement team at Lowe you should do this…

Show me an idea at least every 12 hours (1 working day) without fail.

Make your presence felt. Out of sight out of mind. Out of mind, no job.

Fuck the system. No one in the agency should come between you and your future. Walk straight in. It doesn’t matter how good you are if I don’t get to find out how good you are.

Focus on the work. Don’t try and be my friend.

Work on briefs that you haven’t been given. Run your own show, don’t wait for someone to walk in and “take care of you”. Respect the traffic department, but remember thy work for you, you don’t work for them. Ask them for the briefs you want; tell me if you don’t get them.

Get under the skin of a product and a brief. Don’t show me work that the rest of the department might do. I don’t need people to do what we already can.

Don’t show it to me unless you like it or you think it’s good.  That’s how I find out if you’re good.

You’re not here to solve a brief. You’re here to be brilliant.

If you don’t feel you can demonstrate your capabilities with the briefs we have, do it another way. Show me any idea for any brand on any problem.

Don’t join the club, there isn’t one. You’re not here to make a load of friends and get to know the local pubs. You’re unemployed, remember that. And, if you are any good you should be trying to make the rest of us look stupid.

If you put the effort into the work I’ll put the effort into you and helping you.
But it works that way around. It’s got to start with you.

Be confident, have faith in yourselves, work hard. Look after the work and the work will look after you. A placement is a moment in time. Seize it.

…or leave.”

Posted in General | 3 Comments »

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