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Clients Need a Little Respect |
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Too often, those of us on the agency side seem to brush aside the client’s wishes in our quest for breakthrough creative.
That old joke “advertising would be a great business if it weren’t for the clients” belies an underlying elitism that allows us to be less receptive to valuable client input. That’s certainly putting the worst spin on it, but even the slightest bit of “agency attitude” is a tremendous mistake. A better alternative is to assume that a client who has been successful in business has some valuable insights on marketing his or her product. The creative team that goes into a project prepared to listen closely to the feelings and desires of the client and his customers will actually produce a better creative product.
Only when the creative team understands a client’s desires can they begin to deal with the client’s needs. Otherwise the result may be jaw-dropping but irrelevant. Worse, the resulting campaign will be scorned by the client’s own employees.
There was a recent campaign for a national oil heat association whose purpose was to keep oil heat customers from converting to gas heat. The client wanted creative that would make a big impression. What they needed was a campaign based on some solid grass-roots knowledge of how homeowners choose to heat their homes and their relationships with their local oil dealers. The agency produced a spot that depicted a family dressed in clear protective plastic garments, sitting on furniture wrapped in clear protective plastic. This was intended to show that oil heat is clean enough for even the most compulsive homeowners. It was quirky and funny, but it left viewers with the impression that having oil heat means homeowners should wear protective garb in their own homes. The oil heat dealers hated it. More importantly, the message was so poorly conceived that homeowners didn’t get it. Needless to say, the account went into review immediately.
Two Halves Are Better Than One
If the right brain is the creative center for concepts that will stop consumers in their tracks, the left side of the brain is the intellectual center that can help shape the raw concept into something that demands more of its audience than merely being spectators. Until just a few years ago, it possible to build a brand using only humor, shock or any other creative device that might increase unaided recall. In today’s world of instant gratification (on the consumer side and the client side) the old rules for branding no longer apply.
Today, a concept must be crafted in such a way that the consumer feels a more immediate need to interact in some way: whether via the Internet, phone or (in just a few years) the lowly TV remote. And it’s not enough merely to tack on a quick graphic at the end of a TV spot. That’s where the “left brain” comes in: to take the raw emotion, humor and/or shock value of a concept and focus it into a message that leads the viewer to inevitably act in a way that will satisfy the client’s active goals.
This more “whole brained” approach is what it really takes to produce highly creative, yet successful advertising for today’s more demanding marketing environment. I even coined a name for it few years ago: “Active Branding,” which is described more completely under the heading “The New Math.”
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