Ben Kay and Bob Hoffman recently wrote interesting blogs about ‘Moneyball’.
The book is about baseball.
How a coach with a small team managed to beat the big guys.
He did it using a computer.
He found that most teams chase the big expensive players.
The players who get all the press write ups.
The ones who get the glory.
They spend absolute fortunes buying these players.
But, when he ran the stats, it was a different story.
Most of the actual work was being done by players who didn’t get the glory.
Players who were consequently, much cheaper.
Using this stats-based analysis, he was able to put a successful team together much more cheaply.
And achieve more than the bigger, more expensive teams.
Because a computer isn’t distracted by perceived talent.
It just crunches numbers.
And they tell a different story.
How experienced coaches get seduced by high profile athletes.
How, in reality, statistics beat perception.
How logic beats emotion.
How left brain beats right brain.
How careful data analysis beats reputation.
How cost and wages don’t reflect the real impact on team performance.
Ben Kay then asked the question, “Is it possible this is happening in our business. Are we being seduced by perceived brilliance instead of real contribution?
If we crunched the data instead of spotting talent, would ad agencies get different and better results?”
It’s an interesting question, but for me there’s a simple flaw.
The difference between baseball and advertising.
In baseball the criteria are simple: you win the game.
No discussion, that’s success.
The team that scores most runs wins.
So you can apply measurable data to that.
In advertising, achieving success isn’t the difficult part.
The difficult part is establishing and agreeing the criteria for success.
In my experience that’s why good agencies fall apart.
People stop agreeing on the criteria for success.
And if we’re not agreed on what it is, how can we achieve it?
Should the single-minded criteria for success be doing good work?
If so how do you measure that?
Is it high profile ads that win awards?
Or is it effective ads that sell lots of product?
Is it ads that create controversy?
Or is it ads that are liked?
If so, by who?
Our peers, industry gurus, ordinary people?
Is it campaigns that build brands?
Or is it advertising that gets into the language?
Is it keeping clients happy?
Is it lots of publicity, fame, word-of-mouth?
If so, what sort?
Famous inside the advertising community, other agencies, Campaign, etc?
Or famous in the marketing community, clients, Marketing Week, etc?
Or famous in the business community, Financial Times, etc?
Is it growth?
If so, is it winning new business?
Or is it getting more business from existing clients?
Or is it tying up your suppliers and diversifying?
Is it profitability (revenue against costs)?
Is it keeping the shareholders happy and the share-price up?
Or is it personal: lots of money and possessions?
What is the single-minded criteria?
Because you can’t analyse the statistics until you decide what you’re measuring.
And I think that’s the problem.
We can’t decide what the single thing we want most is.
Which, funnily enough, is also the reason most advertising doesn’t work.
This is what Maurice Saatchi calls ‘Marketing Darwinism”.
Evolution is a process of being brilliant at one single thing.
Being better than everyone else at something.
Not trying to be vaguely okay at lots of stuff.
That way you end up extinct.
That’s why Maurice reduced M&C’s philosophy to ‘Brutal Simplicity”.
If we have to be great at just one thing, what is that one thing?
We have to keep working until we find that one thing.
The thing that will deliver success.
Remember science class at school?
Where you put a liquid solution in a container on a Bunsen burner.
Then heat it, reduce it and reduce it.
Until you’re left with a very small, very concentrated amount of liquid.
This is the absolute essence.
This is the distillation of everything you want to say.
You don’t keep going back and changing it.
Rethinking it.
You retain that essence as the single thing you must deliver.
Any criticism or change is judged against that.
Will it dilute the essence?
If it will then it’s harmful and should be ignored.
The rules for good advertising are the same as the rules for a good agency.
Don’t get sidetracked.
Decide on a single, simple criteria and stick to it.
Then you can measure it.
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What you think the one thing to judge an agency by should be Dave?
“Simples”.
The trouble is also how you interpret the stats. There’s lies, damn lies and there’s statistics.
Stimulating as always Dave, but I’m not sure that being brilliant at one thing is the basis of on-going success in either evolutionary or advertising terms.
Being great at one thing can get you noticed. It can make you a successful species. But only while the conditions suit you. If the conditions change, if the meteor hits, it’s the adaptable and multi skilled that survive. It’s why top predadtors are always the first to die out.
Isn’t that why almost every agency - M&C included - has added direct and digital to their offering during meteor 2.0?
Don’t you find, Dave, that the trouble is also who is reading the stats?
Great post as always Dave. Like Neil, I’d like to know what you think an agency’s one thing should be. For me, it’s crisps. Free ones. For everyone in the agency.
Good point from Dickie there too. But given that an agency is actually more of a microcosm filled with many talented people/departments - each specialised in their own particular areas - could one agency conceivably get all the best people and be the best at being best at everything? Or is that what the global networks like WPP and Omnicom are? The inevitable outcome. An evolutionary pinnacle, as it were.
Or should agencies just give free crisps to all their staff?
Neil and Johnny,
For me it was always doing controversial work that got into the language.
Since my different partners haven’t always agreed with me, it hasn’t always been possible to do that.
Digital Dickie,
I don’t have any problem changing and adapting.
As long as everyone agrees with the change and it’s single-minded.
It’s when we try to be all-things to all-people at all times in all media, that it gets blurry and disipated.
John W.
Stalin said ‘Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.’
I noticed Gladwell in last weeks Guardian - “We need more generalists. Generalists outperform specialists in many tasks.”
If Everything is Overdetermined, can the wider perspective provide a clearer sense of what’s actually going on?
Thanks Dave. Again, wished I had this on hand years ago. I was in London for holiday and was staying at a friend I met at the D&AD Workshop. My host kept telling me how brilliant his friend Johnny was. Johnny was working in Asia and had won lots of awards. Trouble was, those be metal for dodgy clients - curry shop, tattoo parlour. So, much as I envied the pencils, I didn’t like the work. The measure of an ad used to be ‘is it so good you wished you had done it?’ That don’t seem to apply anymore.
I love the book Money Ball and Dave you are correct that the key point in baseball is to win. That’s how they measure the game.
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The other point in the book was how to make the best team on a very strict budget, in the baseball world Billy Bean’s budget was non exsistent.
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He realised that the big teams were employing all rounders for quite often specialist tasks. The scouts like the all rounder good looking american high school kid. Run fast, throw, hit, the full monty etc. The scouts choose badly and when it came to the draft they all wanted teh same kid - so he became expensive - btw the draft is not as fair as the americans make it out to be.
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Billy also noticed too many batters where trying to hit out when batting, where as getting to first base was quite often sufficent. This was because the wrong stats where being used - hit rate rather then getting to first. He deliberatly found players who could bury their ego and get to first with a bunt, or pressure the pitcher in to an error by getting to 3-3 where the player gets to walk if the pitcher no balls - Billy loved walks - it was frustrating to the opposition as well as getting a man on first, which meant the 2nd base man was now under pressure - 2nd baes now cant so easily cover field behind him (ie leave his foot from base) and 2nd isnt exactly a well respected post either.
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The other thing that I learned from Billy was that although he was the manager of the team - he never watched the games - he listened to them in his office or the gym - why? He would set the strategy and get the coach to implement it. He knew if he was there he would get emotionally involved and potentially change strategy.
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Could any of that be applied to the ad world?
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Do marketing agencies (deliberatly - they know no better) employ samey people - same views, same qualification, same look. A CEO of an agency once told me he looked for like minded people - ouch ! Why !
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Do CEO’S change stratgey when things are bad and get emotionally involved when things dont work out?
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Do ad agencies measure the right stats.?
How about, how many creds do you need to go on to get a 2nd meeting and then how many go to pitch? - how many picthes convert? How much does it cost to attend meeting one, how many people go meeting one - how much prep cost, and then meeting 2 likewise, and how much does it cost to pitch. Then how many times on average do you have to pitch to win. So how much does it cost to win a pitch.
Then what is your avergae order value - average length or client and the ave quantity of referals per client.
You know now your cost to win a piece of business compred to AVO - average order value.
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I feel marketing agencies are unique in measuring the wrong stats on a regular basis. They have awful habits and behavious that they believe are fixed in stone very much like baseball.
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Oh one goal of an agecny is definetly to make profits.
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“Profits are just like breathing you need them to live, but nobody just lived to breathe” can’t remember who said that.
(no spell check or grammer check has been done - that’s me I am afarid)
Dave, surely all of the many criteria for success you suggest have one ultimate aim - to sell more stuff?
“Sell more stuff” (7 May 9.53am) reminds me of something amusing. Years ago, Richard Clayderman, a French pianist came onto the music scene. This was pre-yuppie days. And in the beginning, only the more ‘fashionable’, ‘cultured’ and ‘educated’ people listened to his music. Then over time, Clayderman became mass. Everywhere you went in parts of the world, his music was heard. And suddenly, Clayderman’s appeal faded. Into obscurity.
Mercedes is a good brand. So too Rolex. But in parts of Asia, because they are THE choice of people who have money but little class (insurance agent and other Arthur daley types), for a while, the 2 brands lost their appeal among the ‘elite’ - lawyers, doctors and accountants - people who made lots of money and got earned even more respect.
So, ’selling more’ may sound obvious and good. But sometimes, that’s bad for the brand. That might sound snobbish. But that’s human nature.
Jim,
Your comment is like a post in itself.
It’s full of good information.
I particularly like the part about not watching the game, to remove the emotion from the decisions.
I will re-read it several times Jim.
Roland
If it’s always as simnple as selling more stuff, why is the COI the single biggest advertiser in the UK (Over £110 million last year)?
They don’t sell anything.
Hi Dave,
My vote goes for Distillation.
The amazing thing about distillation is it is a living experiment where everything changes through time. Agencies are run by people. The people change as the essence becomes distilled. The only constants are the Directors because they act as the crucible to contain, protect, or regulate those changes. If the directors fail, the experiment fails, the agency collapses or changes shape, and so it distills itself.
Now lets look at the elements being distilled (the people). They too change state under heat. Some evaporate, some consolidate. However, what is left may not be what was expected. That’s Chemistry. It’s not always possible to do what you want to do. Sometimes uncontrollable circumstances overtake events like the current electoral system.
Dave, the COI provides publicity services to a host of Government departments, so is not really a single advertiser.
Also, as it is a Government organisation, it is unlike any other business - it doesn’t have to make money!
I think it’s like you have said before, us creatives don’t really like the idea that we’re really just salesmen.
Or as THE AD CONTRARIAN once said, we should simply… “find something that makes your product seem more appealing than the other guy’s and find an interesting way to communicate it.”
Hi Roland,
In trying to answer your comment I ended up writing a blog-post.
I’ll put it up next week, either here or on my Campaign blog. So thanks for that.
Oooh, I’m scared now. Go easy on me!
Great book by the way.
@Roland
But the COI being a government organization’s got it even tougher. a. A single letter to the Times could open a whole can of worms. b. They may not have to make money but they have to make sure they stay in power. “Don’t really like the idea that we’re really just salesmen” - the best anecdote I can think of is an old BBH house brochure that said, “we don’t sell, We make people want to buy. The difference between the 2 is like rape and seduction.”
I am going to mess up here but I’ll risk it. When I studied Economics (yawn) - we studied advertising and tried to keep straight faced too. No wonder agencies find me a pain?
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In economics it was widely held that advertising had two main functions.
a) to promote - think, come to my party flyers - have you seen my dog poster on a tree
c) to persuade - think switching behaviors / habits
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Then we did weird curves and graphs called indifference curves - to demonstrate attributes of a product, the looked at perceptions of attributes and reality.
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Anyway - why does the COI advertise so hard / much - i.e. why does the state use so much propaganda - ouch - when you say it like that, right?
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Hum - Why would a state use more and more propaganda to tell us (it’s citizens) how to live our lives?
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Well what is the alternative?
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You’d have to actually be able to allocate resources (economics remember)efficiently and create economic growth and social justice at the same time - gulp !!
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So which is easier? Who is to blame for these problems?
Who does the COI advertising blame and target for the ills of society? It’s all our fault isn’t it? - we drink, we don’t re-cycle enough - we eat badly - we get pregnant - we get STD’s, we don’t exercise, we drive badly, we don’t think one think twice think bike, we don’t save properly for our futures, we don’t respect other people, our dogs kill babies, are teenagers are out of control in the streets, epidemics are everywhere ….or do we? - how many of these ill’s are one true and two can be changed by telling people what not to do?
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Oh one of my favourite promotions currently is - and I wonder if it is intentional (doubtful) is the congestion charge. It reads “don’t forget to pay the congestion charge”
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Do you know what the mind reads? - “forget the congestion charge” -the mind is very susceptible to remove a negative from a sentence especially if it is short and offers no alternative. It should read in the positive “remember to pay the congestion charge”…
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Please don’t think about a black cat? What would you now think about?
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Sales people use this well if they are well trained that is.
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Disclaimer - there are plenty of holes in the above.
Great post Dave. Great post Jim. The agencies employing ‘ samey’ people comment reminds me of a classic cartoon in Private Eye. Three identically suited and styled interviewers from ‘Scratchy & Scratchy’ interview and equally identically styled job candidate. Caption ‘You’re just the kind of original thinker we’re looking for round here’.
@Robin
Surely ‘making people want to buy’ is selling? If everybody wanted to buy, we wouldn’t need to advertise.
And rape is against the law, seduction is all we have.
@Roland
No there is a subtle difference between selling and making people want t buy. In its most extreme form, selling is foot on the door so the salesman won’t get the face slammed. It’s going on and on and being pushy. Also known as ‘pressure selling’. Sometimes customers buy just to get the sales guy out of the way.
WHEREAS making people want to buy is making something so attractive people queue up to buy for it.
Like folks queueing overnight for iPhone.
As opposed to sales people queueing outside a potential customer’s house.
Rape and seduction is just an analogy. You’re right, rape is against the law. So is seduction in some other books.
@Robin - very good - made me laugh, in a good way too. I concur whole heartedly.
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People like to buy but do not like to be sold.
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People buy in despite of a hard sell but not because of it
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@Roland - Making people want to buy SHOULD be how you sell. The point maybe that most people dont like sales people - thus agencies have new business people etc - why are they called sales directors, wouldn’t that be more honest? Back to the thread - How would you measure a sales directors performance?
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Remember the thread I think on here re Transactional Analysis? The child loves to buy (emotional), the parent will allow / give permission, and the adult will justify and make the decision and if need be post rationalise.
@ Robin
I get your point, but remember we’re talking about advertising here, not door-to-door salesmen.
On your other point, the iPhone is not a normal situation or product. It has a cult following. You wouldn’t queue to buy a loaf of bread you had seen advertised.
This is where we need to be creative in our advertising to convince them to switch to our brand.
@Jim Powell
We are taking about selling our clients’ products with creative advertising - not selling our agencies services!
The COI sell ideas or rather they are keen for their thoughts/ideas about public services to be taken up. So in essence they are about ’selling’. Selling a service, selling a product. It’s all about selling.
@Roland
No - what about DMs - the horrid mailers they shove into your mail box. That IS advertising, right? And the difference between that and a well-shot TV spot, for example is the mailer tries to sell but the charming TV spot makes you want to buy.
You say the iPhone’s not normal. Ok, what about people around the world queueing for Harry Potter books? Or when the APS (now an obsolete system) cameras were launched people around the world queued for it.
You say Apple has cult following (and I’m not one of them). Ever think how they got to be in this enviable position? Remember the 1984 TV spot they did? That WASN’T selling. That made people want to buy.
Of course, Billy Bean and his A’s have never won a World Series.
Not to say they won’t (one of their pitchers threw a perfect game yesterday), but they haven’t. And since 2006, they haven’t played well at all.
@Roland - re We are taking about selling our clients’ products with creative advertising - not selling our agencies services!
The difference is what exactly? - This is what truly facinates me - agencies often sell their own services differently to the way their sell their clients’ services or products? Why?
Cracker of a post Dave - all the better because it comes from someone who’s on the sharp end of the creative process.
Knowing exactly what we want to share with people is a lot more tricky than coming up with a single-minded thought that encapsulates a brand or product - we need to understand why the people who matter to us might even care about us in the first place.
Much of that depends on a solid creative and planning approach, which I don’t believe we can distill into a single formula or process (especially not the creative aspect).
However, I think the measurement issues you raise are more straightforward. I’ve always wondered why we (as an industry) make measurement so complicated, when the most meaningful measures should actually be very simple to track. Although most research companies seem to insist on massively complicated models, I think this simple approach would offer far more relevant findings: http://eskimon.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/measures-of-success/
As the post suggests, the model is more of a start than a solution, but do you think it might work? How would you improve it?
Hi Eskimon,
I agree.
Efficiency is doing things right.
Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Dave mi ol’ dumpling,
Let’s get some balance here.
You can do wrong things efficiently.
Doing the wrong thing can also be very effective.
Jo,
For the sake of debate, give me a few examples where doing the wrong thing efficiently was very effective.