Often the real problem isn’t the one you’re concentrating on.
Often the real problem is upstream of it.
Here’s an example.
We had just started an agency and I was sitting talking with Barry Pritchard our head of planning.
We’d just left a really good agency to start ours.
Barry said, “The question is can we do better work here than we did there?”
I said, “The question isn’t doing the work Barry, the question is running the work.The best work never sees the light of day. It’s killed off in research. That’s the real problem.”
Barry said, “It sounds to me like the recruitment is wrong.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “Well, we’re writing daring and exciting scripts that are getting killed in research. So we’re writing Opinion-Former work, and researching it amongst Opinion–Followers. Of course it’s getting killed.”
I said, “What do we do?”
Barry said, “Recruit Opinion-Formers. In any demographic group there are people who disproportionatly influence the others.
These are the people who are ready for new ideas, who talk about them and spread them. Watch any group of people. They may all be the same demographic, but one will be doing most of the talking, That’s the sort of person we want for our groups.”
And Barry was right.
We achieved a trickle-down effect.
It cost less to reach a smaller number of influential people than a larger number of non-influential people.
Our ads got made, and were way more effective, because Opinion-Formers picked them up and spread them.
Without the creativity of the planner, our creativity wouldn’t have seen the light of day.
As George Lois used to say,
“It don’t matter how great your roughs are. If it don’t run it ain’t advertising.”
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A great post. The swing towards being the customer representative in planning is way too excessive (and just at the point when planning went global). There is an argument for seeing the swing go the other way but the merit in the argument stands right now.
Wish more people would approve of this instead of thinking we’ve lost our minds and it’s ‘unnatural’ cause it’s not :/
Surely you are you not advocating manipulation?
Jolhn. Did you think planning has some sort of exlusive access to a higher truth than the rest of us?
What I’m advocating is:
1) using your brain to get the result you want.
2) taking responsibilty forf the resuilt you want.
Or alternatively spend your twilight years sitting in the pub bitching about how you had all these great ideas that never ran.
Specifically targetting the opinion formers rather than the mass market is the basic principle behind the rapidly growing WOM (Word of Mouth) marketing sector. US$1.3billion was spent on word of mouth programs in the US last year and it will continue to grow as it taps directly into the uncertainty captured in the old adage “One half of the money spent on advertising is wasted but which half?”
P&G has its own very sophisticated WOM business unit,Tremor, and there are heaps of these companies springing up globally.
It’s serious competition for clients marketing dollar and one of the main reason’s I believe that the commonsense that Dave is posting everyday is more relevant than ever.
I’ve had some involvement with WOMbles and I’ve got to tell you it’s not a lot of fun.
The referee is looking at his watch…it’s time the creative community stopped staring at the baubles and got its eyes firmly back on the ball.
Hi Dave
I’d like to think that ideas get through without resorting to gerrymandering. Perhaps I’m too naive. I suppose in the greater scheme of things all that matters is getting the ideas through, even if it is by hook or by crook.
Great post. I didn’t think you’d do this well and I’ve been proved spectacularly wrong. But both of us got persuaded to blog by the man they call Sam Brownfield, so I hope you’ll forgive me. Before I wrote this, I had just written a post myself about just how much spanners/planners are rationalising the nuts out of creative. It’s at http://www.percival-agency.com/percival_perspectives/
John. Sorry if that last reply sounded grumpy.
It’s just that because they are called “planners”, and what they do is called “research”, it all sounds very scientific.
So everyone assumes they have a better access to the truth than the rest of us.
That isn’t so.
They can’t predict the future any better than anyone else.
What they can do, if they’re good, is give us useful information to help us make decisions.
So I’m not suggesting bending the truth, just a way to get more appropriate input.
Marshal MacLuhan said, “Trying to predict the future based solely on (what people tell you in) research is like driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror.”
I’m not saying that research/planners have better access to the truth either but surely some resistance to an idea, so long as it was based on some overlooked insight that stands up to scrutiny, is better than setting up a situation whereby an idea will run because everybody is of the same opinion (formers).
So long as the idea, in some manifestation, survives it would then be a case of what doesn’t kill your idea, makes it stronger but then again on the other hand there is a case for saying that there is enough ‘natural’ resistance to an idea without introducing it to so called enlightened research. Do ‘big’ agencies differ from ’small’ agencies on this matter of running research? Does it all depend on how big the account is?
John. I’ve found, at the client end, CEOs are much more open to original, unexpected ideas than junior clients.
Senior clients are entrepreneurial and usually demand something that will shake up the status quo in their market.
They expect a return for their investment.
Something to send a tremor through their sector. Otherwise why spend the money?
Junior clients don’t want a tremor, in case it goes wrong.
They are insecure so they just want to follow the rules, then they can’t get blamed.
Personally, the best clients and planners I’ve worked with have used research to make us all braver, me included.
Research that leads, not follows.
In fact, that may make another blog, thanks.
Sorry John, I’m still not happy with my answer.
Before Bernbach, all advertising was opinion-follower.
Talk to the lowest common denominator, keep hammering the message home, and spend a fortune on it.
We didn’t want to do advertising like that.
We wanted to do ads that were smarter, more fun, less patronising.
Turns out that sort of advertising appeals to that sort of people.
And those people are opinion formers.
And if we could motivate those people we’d get a better result, faster, cheaper.
Everybody wins.
Whether you see it as manipulation or creativity depends on what you believe.
Ok, Dave maybe manipulation might have been too strong a word but creativity might be stretching it a bit too. I’ll meet you half-way with the term ‘creative accounting’ coming to mind.