NORTHERN PLANNER

More email based advice. Just a reminder, this is what I think, not everyone.

Hi Andrew, 

Sorry to bombard you with
questions. I feel that 'strategy's is not embraced within the client
organization at all. Strategy is about retrofitting the execution as opposed to
guiding the creative. While I know real life doesn't happen in textbook fashion,
I believe this should not be happening all the time. What do you think?

 

Hi

You’re too right that real
life doesn’t follow the textbooks,

And most of the textbooks are wrong.

I think the trick is to insert best practise into real life and
not the other way around.

Loads of clients only care about you making the best ads, and
have got someone else to do the ‘grand strategy’.

And yes, lots if planning tends to be a ‘ad tweaker’ as Stephen
King put it.

Now I’m not here to get bad/indulgent/plain wrong work through
the client or research.

I sure, neither are you.

 

This about patient and playing the long game – and not bruising
egos.

 

I don’t like testing work, it’s mostly pointless and can kill
great work, especially in the hands of a bad researcher. However, if you’re
client is a fan of testing, use it to your advantage. It’s immoral, but as you
say, we live in the real world.

So use research defensively.

If everyone is in love with an idea, but isn’t objective about
how it works, and either won’t listen, or will hate you forever for killing
their baby, be the voice of the consumer and test it.

Which means moderate groups yourself (you can’t escape this and
getting good at moderation gets you great at client meetings and managing
workshops) or making friends with the researcher. Researchers are lonely folk
who no one takes the time to befriend. Have influence on the discussion guide,
tell the researcher what you’re looking for.

In other words, fix work by getting people to say what you know
is wrong with it, kill bad work if it’s begging to be put out its misery – but
get people to say what you know is the right alternate approach.

In other words,  people other than yourself to alter or
crucify the work, but make sure you also have a clear, insightful and
interesting way forward.

And because it’s endorsed by real buyers, the client will buy
into it too.

 

Of course, you might not have the budget to do formal research
and the client might not want to pay to test work (in most cases hallelujah!)
so put the work in front of people of the doers in the agency who are not ‘comms
professionals’ –accounts, PA’s etc. Get their feedback instead.  Or do
cheap and cheerful street interviews. Works internally, while clients bloody
love vox-pops. Just make sure the respondents match the clients ‘minds-eye’
picture of their audience, not always the real audience, then they’ll accept it
far more. Play to their prejudice. I once worked on a brand who’s CEO believed
all their buyers where beautiful fashionista women (preferably with great
breasts). So went out to do vox pops with precisely these kind of women (it’s a
hard life).  And no, my natural charm and film star looks didn’t make it
easy to attract this kind of respondent, I took an account exec to man the
camera who, in the looks department, did.

 

Now, as far as ‘grand strategy’ is concerned, this is really
part of the same job. Folks, of course, don’t like work for surface reasons but
mostly, when they talk about why the like or don’t like stuff, you can quickly
root out the fact that the work is based in the wrong objective or direction.
So, feeding back on work enables you to feedback on strategy and present a
better approach with evidence as to why that’s the case.

 

Failing time to do this, make sure you do work to brief, but
then present and alternative, just make sure you have  strong, evidence
argument for why it’s better, and let the account folk help with some of those
dark arts of charm and persuasion.

If you don’t have time or resources for that, this is where
dirty planning really comes in. Don’t post rationalise why the wrong work is
right, invent the argument for why the right work is right – convince them it’s
on brief. Most ads and stuff have a specific strategy and a specific ‘way in’ –
executional idea. Just make sure the execution does the job you want it to, but
convince the client it does what THEY want it to.

For example, a client thinks this about proving superiority by
talking about quality ingredients,

 

 

 

but it’s really about relevance and role, creating a specific
feeling and context for the usage experience, and getting across a unique brand
point of view without saying it (we’re for folks who like being outdoors and
experiencing more low-fi, authentic stuff, bourgeois bohemians)  – a brand
for ‘people like me’ that shares my values and aspirations. . It’s no good
providing evidence without presenting the argument first.

 

Hope this helps