Last week I wrote a post about agency traffic.
How 80% of the time was given to the part of the process that never appears on screen (writing briefs, meetings, lunches) and just 20% given to the part that does.
I got an interesting reply from MelbourneJoe, see what you think:
“I’ve come to believe clients actually prefer to just play around in strategy – they’d much rather not have to do the creative bit at all.
That’s why the client/planning stage gets an unfair amount of time (given that, as you said, people only see the execution)
Many clients actually believe now days it’s them doing the heavy lifting and the agency just help them out.
A couple of decades ago agencies sold the idea that the planners were the brains behind an agency and now its shifted to where the clients believe they hold the smarts.
But the reality is the actual magic, the emotional thing the audience responds to, the bit people remember, if it happens at all, still tends to originate in the creative dept.
When the (real) idea does come, everyone who’s contributed in the process before that moment misconstrue that the execution was an inevitable conclusion to their brilliant thinking.
But my experience is most briefs on the page are solid but fairly obvious thinking, often generic, certainly not something people would be inspired by unless they were transformed creatively.”
Now, I think MelbourneJoe could be talking about left-brain versus right-brain thinking.
So try this for a minute.
Clients, planners, account men, mainly went to university, that’s where the left-brain lives: words, logic, numbers, argument.
But the work is done by people who mainly went to art school, where the right-brain lives: pictures, sounds, feelings, fun, music, art.
Now comes the interesting part: current thinking is the only thing that works with consumers is emotion, which is certainly right-brain territory: feeling, sensation, mood, etc.
So the people that do the ads live in right-brain territory.
The people the ads are done for live in right-brain territory.
But the people judging the ads live in left-brain territory.
Why is this? Here’s what Nicholas Taleb has to say:
“A bureaucratized system will increase in complication from the interventionism of people who sell complicated solutions, because that’s what their position and training invite them to do.
There is absolutely no benefit for someone in such a position to propose something simple: when you are rewarded for perception you need to show sophistication.
Anyone who has submitted a scholarly paper knows that you usually raise the odds of acceptance by making it more complicated than necessary.”
The 80% of the ad that doesn’t appear on the screen (research, briefings, meetings, etc) lives in the left brain, which is where university grads live.
As MelbourneJoe says, post-rationalisation lets them believe that all those meetings (which consumed 80% of the time) were responsible for the 20% that ended up on the screen.
But although they spend 80% of the time discussing it, at the end they still don’t have any actual work.
Someone else has just 20% of the time left to do the actual work.
Why does this situation persist?
I think Shirkey’s Principle has the answer: “People will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”
Somehow this brings to mind an accountant.
He wasn’t a suit.
Or a planner.
Definitely not an art director.
Or a writer.
Didn’t even do art buying.
But guess what he calls himself.
An adman.
But really, what’s his contribution to the advertising agency?
Sure, he owns maybe a couple of shops.
Meanwhile, Sir Alex referred to himself as manager.
Even though he used to be a footballer.
The balance between strategy and creative may be wrong, but creative without strategy is a disaster for any campaign. Or forget the word “strategy”. Just replace it with “clear thinking”.
I had a recent client who wanted to sell pub tables that would protect drinkers from coronavirus. His idea of the creative was all about reassurig the drinkers.
But they weren’t the customers. They weren’t the ones who would buy the tables; the pubs would (or wouldn’t, as it turned out).
If he’d leapt into the creative phase he’d have produced a campaign targeted at totally the wrong people.
Arrrr Creative, that old Alchemy all the other bods in an agency have tried to recreate, to rationalise, to do away with.
You’ve taken away our offices, you’ve gate crashed our awards, you’ve kept us away from clients, you’ve tried to replace us with Brand Guidelines.
But you can’t do the Alchemy yourselves. And never will.
I wish we got 20% of the time. Often enough, its less than 10%. Actually far less.
There is a fear factor. Clients need the ad agency’s support not only to create a campaign but also to help them feel safe with facts for their decisions.
20-80%… probably because there are more people who are able to give input on the left brain territory more than the creative.
User experiences, personas, surveys are all interesting and can benefit the creative work if done genuinely and with common sense.
What we see in strategy decks is often tactics, not strategy! And because of that, they often don’t inspire creative process, not more than the client’s initial briefs. We might argue that they kill breakthrough ideas.
Well MelbourneJoe, we’re just lucky that given all the ‘solid but obvious’ thinking going on elsewhere, not to mention all the client service and strategy people who are clearly swanning off to lunch doing sweet FA apart from chewing up time, there is so much brilliantly original thinking and creative transformation going on in the creative department. Otherwise, we’d all be fucked wouldn’t we? Oh, wait a minute …..