We all know the object of advertising is to sell stuff.
Maybe we’re selling a product: car, chocolate bar, tv set.
Maybe we’re selling an idea: don’t smoke, don’t drive fast, don’t be racist.
But the object of what we do is to sell something to someone.
When a client doesn’t want to leave his success to chance, he comes to us.
So we believe in selling, right?
Then how come we leave it to chance whether our ads get made?
How come we don’t sell the ads themselves?
To the ECD, The account group, the client.
George Lois said, “Don’t show me your drawerful of great roughs. If it don’t run it ain’t advertising.”
We think we’ve done our job, once we’ve written the ad.
If it doesn’t run, we’re not to blame.
It’s the account man’s fault.
Well maybe so, but we certainly take the consequences.
We won’t be able to put the finished ad in our book or on our reel.
Because we haven’t got a finished ad.
Just a rough or a script.
And you can’t enter those for awards.
So the question is, if we believe in selling why don’t we sell our work?
And this is where understanding other people’s jobs comes in.
It gives us access to the language that allows us to put together a convincing argument as to why our ads should run.
It allows us to sell our work.
We don’t need to understand everything about their jobs.
Just the basics.
For instance, supposing you’re doing TV and the brief says a 30” ad.
You might ask, “What’s the OTS on that?”
OTS is the simplest and most basic piece of information you can get.
OTS just stands for ‘Opportunities To See’.
So you’re asking what is the average number of times the average person in our target group will see our spot?
This then gives you an idea of what sort of ad to write.
It’s no good writing a subtle and involving ad that demands repeated viewings when you’ve got an OTS of 1.
Similarly a hard sell in-your-face ad is going to get old pretty quickly of it’s got an OTS of 14.
You may find you’ve got a campaign with an OTS of 25.
And you’ve been briefed to do 3×30” ads.
In which case you may be able to put up an argument to make that a single 60” ad with an OTS of 12.
That’s pretty much what Stella used to do during their great years at Lowe.
Make a longer, more expensive, ad and run it for much longer.
Because, when you understand OTS, you can put up an argument about longer term quality versus short term impact.
You can do the same with several 16 sheet posters versus a single 48 sheet.
David Puttnam talks about how CDP built what was then Europe’s best agency by consistently convincing their clients to convert several smaller ads into a single DPS.
But we have to learn the basics of their language in order to do it.
We wouldn’t buy something from a salesman who said,
“Look it’s just loads better this way. Can’t you understand that?”
And yet that’s the way creative people tend to talk to other disciplines.
If it really is better we should be able to put up a convincing argument.
If we can’t put up a good argument, maybe it really isn’t better.
Either way, if we can’t sell it, it doesn’t run.
That’s the bottom line.
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That’s exactly why there must be a reason for every colour and comma and why creatives should always go to client meetings to help sell their work. At a tangent, does anyone else think it’s odd that the old VW ‘Lemon’ ad is being used to sell the power of press advertising at the moment. Great as it is, it makes it look like there’ve been no good press ads since the 60s…
Rachel, you might want to read Ben’s great post on that abnormal “strategy”:
http://ifthisisablogthenwhatschristmas.blogspot.com/2009/01/wtf.html
Rachel,
in the agency I work, people make an impression on me that they are overeducated beyond their logic. I was trying to make a point to a fellow intern while talking about the ad he is putting together. I asked questions like “Why did you put the copy there?”, “Why did you use an inner shadow?(yuck!)”, “Why is there a flag?” etc…etc…
He couldn’t really give me an answer and it ended in a discussion about principles of life. Mind you, he is 22 and I am amazed at how narrow minded he is, not questioning anything he believes or is told. He could do whatever the hell he pleases to, he doesn’t need this job, the pay is almost non existent and he just can’t see the fact how many possibilites open up infron of him because of that.
Ha ha. Ta for that reference Anca. Glad it’s not just me. And what a sad story from you Vik. But good on you for keeping on asking the questions. As Dave says, whether it’s making ads, shoes, whatever, only 10% will be great , which means 90% won’t be. I guess some people care more about being in the 10% than others.
Thanks again Dave.
Trouble is, even the few people who’ve heard of Bernbach probably don’t know who George Lois is.
(Heck, many people haven’t even seen Charlie’s “Fly” ad.)
So, re: your comment that if it ain’t run, you can’t send it to the awards doesn’t really apply.
Definitely not here in the Far East, where an award show (or annual) is the first time a piece of work is seen.
Also explains why the Far East seldom wins awards for TV - TV being too costly to scam.
Have you read “The Cult of the Amateurs”? It’s about ‘how blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values’.
In the past, ad agencies came up with the work.
Now, with Macs, some clients think they can do a better job.
(What’s frightening is, once a in while, they do actually create better work.)
So, these days, it ain’t just selling an idea.
It’s as much about convincing clients to leave the ads to agencies.
Instead of D-I-Y or consultants.
Hallo Rachel/Vic
Reminds me of a Japanese agency I was once at.
The clients pretty much bought whatever crap we showed them. And it was really crap.
MD wasn’t much involved as most of the time, he was at the Jap Ass (Japanese Association as he called it).
Yet, the staff got at least 5 months bonus and company trips to Hawaii, Japan and London! (Not in the same year, of course.)
Think what great ads could be done if said agency had some suits and creatives with ambition.
At another Jap agency, the management insisted on hiring rich kids as suits.
The thinking was the 90210-type brats would introduce rich clients to the agency.
Never happened.
And these kids sucked.
They had little passion.
And firing them was pointless:
a. they didn’t need the money.
b. they might sue the agency. (And why not? Some of these kid’s personal income far exceeded the Agency’s Group combined billings.)
What upsets me is, so many people want to get into advertising and don’t get the chance.
Then we get people who do get the break and make nothing out of it.
Robin.
I’d have been tempted to stay at the place with the 5 months bonus and the holiday to Hawaii.
Robin,
I once wanted to get a scholaship to study at Tamabi but gave up after 3 years of trying. How is Japan in regards of advertising, culture etc?
@Rachel “That’s exactly why there must be a reason for every colour and comma..”
I remember hitting something of a brick wall when I was at Art College needing to come up with a justification for everything. Why paint the sky blue rather than pink? Why paint the sky? Why paint? Why do anything? That type of thing.
Later when I was doing animation a tutor said to me “The best animation is the animation that gets done” and to basically get over myself.
Hallo Phil and Vic
Sorry, I meant a Japanese-owned agency in Singapore.
But I’ve had friends who worked in Japan.
All depends what you want.
One of the bigger Japanese agencies occupies 2 skyscrapers.
They have more than 500 copywriters.
So at any one time, it’s a fair bet that the teams will have similar ideas.
I once pitched on a Japanese copier in Singapore.
The Japanese office insisted on sending a team over to help.
Yeah, sure.
Anyway, from Jap to Sin, they did 5 campaigns!
That scared the livin’ daylights out of us.
So we asked them to show the work.
They proudly said, “Ok, the first concept uses ET to sell the copier, the 2nd has Don Johnson, the 3rd has Ava Gardner”. You get the idea.
We said as politely as we could that what they had done was one idea with 5 celebs.
They disagreed even more politely.
You probably know this.
Many celebs are paied very handsomely to appear in TV spots than can only appear in Japan.
But it’s not all bad.
Folks have done good stuff there.
Think TBWA did some great work for Volvo recently.
Dentsu did the safety pin Volvo.
And there was a Nissin Cup Noodle bit of cartoon that won a Grand Prix Lion.
Vik, could tell you more about Japan - maybe you email vvc…@hotmail.com? Don’t want to impose too much on Trott-san’s blog.
In my experience there are many people in creative departments who DON’T believe in selling. They find it dirty. A little sleazy perhaps. They actually get quite offended if you associate their precious creative work with selling. And sadly, many of these people go on to win awards for work that never ran, become creative directors because of these awards and then hire others just like them.
The days of selling ads to clients seems like ancient history. More and more clients won’t be sold until focus groups approve the idea. Marketing Directors are too scared to make a decision on their own. They don’t want the finger pointed at them when the ad doesn’t do well so they let focus groups decide. That in itself wouldn’t be a problem if the focus groups weren’t full of “C” students.
There is more selling done inside an agency than outside.
Conor, reckon it happens more so in Asia.