When students are doing a rough, they’re thinking about what they want in it.
Later, when they’re putting a book together, they’re thinking about what they want in it.
Eventually when they’re doing actual ads, they’re thinking about what they want in it.
Excuse me.
What you want in it has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
In none of these cases are you the target market.
You’re just the person doing the ads.
You should be trying to get a result in each case.
You should be asking yourself, what does your target market want in the ad?
The person you want something from.
What do they want?
Why should they care about your ad?
You want a creative director to give you a job.
Okay.
He’s the market, not you.
How can you make him want to give you a job?
What’s in it for him?
Most students don’t get jobs because they never ask this question.
They’re too wound up in what they want.
In what makes them laugh.
He should give them a job because they like their book.
Never mind what the creative director wants.
So they keep going for interviews, not getting jobs.
And wondering why.
They like their book.
They think it’s great.
There must be another reason.
The creative director doesn’t like guys.
Doesn’t like all- girl teams.
Doesn’t like northerners.
Or cockneys.
Or they’re too old, or too young.
Most ads don’t work for the same reason.
The creative teams are doing the ads they want to do.
The creative teams are doing ads for 20 -30 year old, middle class males, working in media, living in London.
Never mind what the target market wants.
They are the target market.
Them and the awards juries.
Not that other crap.
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Bulls eye.
This is why hardly anyone in the business (especially the ‘good’ agencies) is making populist ads anymore. Their target audience is themselves, their mates, and award juries. A lot of the most lauded/awarded work today has exactly the same tone/feel/style as the most lauded/awarded work in the beer and sportswear categories had a few years ago. It’s a formula. People are trying to recreate what they think is ‘cool’ and what will excite a jury, rather than doing what’s good for the job. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because the awards juries are full of the same people.
No one who wants to win awards would make the Smash ads these days.
Shame.
‘The person you want something from, what do they want?’
Here’s where we head back to awards land. At a lot of good agencies, the ECD/CD would like awards as well as sales. If Gill/Brazier/Craigen get their clients’ sales to increase and win no awards for five straight years, I think questions would be asked and P45s written. However, if, at the end of the year, a couple of clients leave but they can point to a black pencil and 20 Cannes lions, then they could say that they at least did their job, and probably avoid the chop.
That’s another reason why creatives write ads for awards juries: many of their bosses want/need it.
Of course, that’s a generalisation, but you’ve already explained what that is, Dave.
Hi Lunar. I don’t have any problem with awards as long as they’re just part of the fun, it’s a nice high on the night to win.
My problem is when creatives believe awards are the truth.
So that’s all they aim for.
When creatives believe that it’s only a good ad if it wins an award, and it’s not a good ad if it doesn’t.
Was Guinness ‘noitulove’ a better ad thatn Sony Balls, simply because 6 people in a French beach resort said so?
The people who hire ECDs aren’t creative, so they have no other means of judging ECDs than by how many awards they’ve won.
They have that reinforced as a truth when they see creatives all over town acting as if it’s true.
I disagree, as a creative we try very hard to find that one thing that makes that product special, but we only use it if we think its going to appeal to the public.
We try and come up with things that our parents our friends and other people might like. I had my computer fixed the other day and the woman had been transfering documents for safety, she commented when I came in the shop that she really liked what we had done, but when we showed it to people in the industry, they weren’t so keen.
Someone mentioned the other day that when they mentioned they were in the industry in a taxi, all the driver could remember was cute little mobli from the carphone warehouse. not the grand sony or honda ads, cute little mobli.
Unfortunately opinions from inside the industry and those outside the industry vary greatly, The IPA effectiveness award show that, most of those awards don’t feature in things like cannes and D&AD but they sell and the figures are there to prove it. I would prefer to know that my adverts are appealing to who they’re meant to: the consumer.
I’d have IPA awards over Cannes Lions anyday.
[...] Your are not the target market - more wisdom from David Trott because I do want to help you in your quest for self improvement [...]
i think dave is right. uk creatives are waaaay too into winning awards. and we all know there are templates for winning awards. and conforming to a template is death for creativity. you’re repeating the past. honestly, these days, i love it when there isn’t even an awards show category for what i’ve done. not winning awards is the new winning awards
if you do something brilliant, you’ll win awards. they’ll have to give them to you. so don’t worry about it.
Vinnie, I couldn’t agree more.
We should aim to be ahead of the awards, so they have to catch up.
“The time to worry is when the avant garde becomes the establishment.”
Orson Welles
Too right Vinnie, and I am a UK creative. But I feel lucky in that I spent my first 5 years in the business at a good agency that didn’t enter awards as a matter of policy. So I never felt like they were important, or necessary in terms of feeling good about what you do. I feel sad/disturbed about the status quo here in terms of creative departments approach to awards. And what Lunar says above is sadly true - this attitude is being passed down from the top. I think it’s having a long-term negative effect on the industry and its output, which is why I always wade in on topics like this, but at the same time have found little pockets of like-minded thinking in the business - like Mister Trott here, you Vinnie, the nice chaps over at Karmarama, and us at Sell! Sell!, who are all just doing it like we think it should be done.
i blame the gunn report!
memo to self: stop doing winking smiley faces on this blog.
Do you know what Vinny?
I hadn’t heard of The Gunn Report before you mentioned it.
I just looked it up.
That is the most depressing thing I’ve heard this week.
Quantifying creativity by the number of awards you’ve won.
So a big agency that can afford to enrter every ad they do into every award scheme worldwide must be more creative than a small agency who can’t afford it.
No wonder everyone’s obsessed with awards.
This really is awards becoming to exact opposite of creativity.
How corrupt.
How sad.
On the other hand, it does give us another something to fight against.
oh yes. the gunn report. in its way it’s a brilliant idea. get ad agencies to pay you lots of money to tell them precisely how wonderful they are. the ultimate parasitical idea.
but i know from experience that the global agency networks use it as a benchmark. a benchmark for what exactly i’m not sure. but they like it. ddb is officially better than tbwa etc…
i recall feeling remarkably “meh” upon hearing that, according to the gunn report, my budweiser work was…drumroll…the most awarded tv campaign of the past ten years! i kind of already knew that.
i’m with you dave. awards should be a side-effect.
though, having said that, i am perversely proud of having the 5th most awarded spot of 2005. according to the gunn report! and therein lies the appeal of it really. pure vanity. mirror, mirror on the wall etc…
gunn is appealing to a very basic human weakness. probably a scot too with a name like donald.
I do not work for a big design agency or work with a team of graphic designers. I am just a student starting off in this industry. After reading this blog entry I see that people are thinking more about awards than the customer. Of course it’s nice to win awards but when that’s your only main focus whats the point? The customer might be impressed but in the end it’s only a piece of paper/trophy. What the customer will truly remember is the quality of the work, the service and how you created what the customer wanted. Thats what keeps them coming back for more business I belive. So I will keep working hard to satisfy my customers and wont brag about awards because like the blog says I Am Not The Target Market!
Frankie Torres