Recently, a memo David Abbott wrote in 1994 came to light.
It’s so good it’s been circulated online.
In it, David talks about what was a relatively new thing at the time.
The creative gang-bang.
Every team cranking out work for every brief.
Then the suits showing everything to the client and letting the client choose which they like.
This wasn’t how David Abbott saw his agency.
In fact it wasn’t how David saw advertising.
He saw the job more like bespoke tailoring.
The client shares the problem with the agency and the agency puts their best team on it.
(Note the singular.)
Then the agency comes back with the perfectly tailored solution exactly fitted to the client’s problem.
Notice how different that is to the self-service model of most agencies:
“Come in and look around: choose whatever you like, from dozens of different solutions, in dozens of different sizes, and dozens of different colours.”
One is Savile Row, the other is a cheap store on Oxford Street.
The amazing thing is they both cost the same.
Both solutions burn through the media budget at the same rate.
Of course they don’t deliver the same results.
One keeps the client happy in the short term by indulging their whims.
The other keeps the client happy in the longer term by watching their sales go up.
David’s solution, like Savile Row, is of course the long term one.
So why doesn’t everyone do it David’s way?
Well, the truth is, not everyone can.
Most people aren’t good enough.
They can’t see the best solution, so they avoid choosing.
That way they don’t have to take responsibility.
If the client chooses it, it’s not their fault.
But David thinks these people are taking money under false pretences.
In his memo, David says this (my italics):
“We get paid to make choices.
I must choose the right creative team for the job.
The planners/account managers must choose the best possible strategy and creative brief.
I must choose the best idea submitted by the creative team, or I should choose to send them back for another go.
If necessary I must choose to replace them with another team. In this process everyone is accountable.
This is good discipline and will make us a better agency than just “pick any one from three.”
The most important line for me is the first one:
“We get paid to make choices.”
Yes we do.
But we don’t want to make choices because we don’t trust ourselves.
So we don’t.
And we become self-service agencies.
Contrast that with Collett Dickenson Pearce.
They built the ad agency that, over fifty years, won more D&AD awards than anyone else.
For at least two decades, CDP was the best agency in the UK, if not the world.
What was their secret?
Well, they seemed to agree with David Abbott’s memo.
Perhaps not so surprising, two of the all-time greats sharing the same principles.
One of CDP’s ex-clients recently summed it up like this.
“They didn’t give you the choice of three mediocre ads. They gave you no choice, and one amazing ad”.
Dave,
Are you saying all the different visual interpretations of one agreed thought are culled before any presentation or before the final presentation?
As Paul Rand said to Steve Jobs:
“There will be alternatives, Steve, many alternatives.
But I will see them, you won’t.
Because I am the creative director and that is my job.
You are the client, not the creative director.
I will choose from all the alternatives I see and make my recommendation to you.
If you don’t like my recommendation you are always free to go elsewhere.”
Dave,
“I will solve your problem and you will pay me.”
Thanks for the reminder.
Must reread that great book.
I remember in my ‘suit’ days as an Account Director in ad agencies (but recruitment communications rather than product) we more often than not used to present the client with two, maybe three executions that would each do the job. This worked to a great extent, as all were of creative merit, and, we felt, when it comes to stopping someone in their tracks who might be browsing through page after page of job ad in let’s say a trade magazine with (then ) 80 pages of advertising, there was more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. Of course, it was sometimes fraught with danger, not least the day that a client lined up a dozen staff to walk past the neatly spray mounted boards, each with their own pretty design and words on and asked them to choose their favourite. Cue pandemonium as, what until then had seen like brilliant ideas, due to the votes of the hastily arranged jury, suddenly became ideas that we were a lot less confident about.
Perhaps a lesson learned, although it did tend to be the way that the client got more than one possible solution – executed by own team though I hasten to add. There were times when we had a full creative pow wow where we collectively kicked the brief about together until we came up with some ‘angles’, but thereafter it was always one team that went away and produced the goods.
I also remember a time when what I would then call the ‘product way of thinking’ happened. Basically, I had briefed something into the creative department and the person they put on it was a new writer who came from a product agency. I found this out when, a couple of days later, he came to see me with one idea. It was a good enough idea, but I quickly glanced around before asking him where the others were? A debate then ensued as to why, in his eyes, we only needed the one solution – and this was it. I guess he maybe got that memo from David!
PS more importantly, £55 a ticket to watch West Ham? 😉
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