Starship Articles
A passing browse of any media or marketing magazines might make you think that ad agencies are in some kind of death spiral. Are we though? For an industry that is supposedly dead, there sure are a lot of us still out there. Rigor adtis, maybe. Apparently, the ad agency is going the way of the dinosaur… which is a far more apt metaphor for what is going on in the media industry landscape than the mags would believe. The dinosaurs as a species, after all, didn’t really go extinct. You still see them today: your average bin chicken hustling for scraps descended from theropods, which included famous dino species like T-Rex. Dinosaurs didn’t technically die out. Their descendants are all around us. Hell, you probably ate some of them for lunch.
The Phantom Leap
Scientists have come up with various theories to explain the jump from velociraptor to quail, from the “hopeful monsters” concept, that species formed by large-scale mutations and not by gradual natural selection, to seamless transition: where bird features evolved one by one over time. As lovers of Jurassic Park, we’re still a little disappointed that it turns out dinosaurs probably had feathers. Not that it’s stopped the sequels from having lizard-like dinos, which shows you: there’s nothing quite like the power of branding, even if the product eventually turns out to be incorrect.
Similarly, ad and creative agencies have evolved over time. From the days of Letrasets to inDesign, from analog to digital. The movement towards a blurred line between ‘agency’ and ‘consultancy’ is just the latest step. As brands and consumers begin to expect more from agencies across different touchpoints, many agencies have tried to maneuver to meet demand. And, of course, traditionally non-advertising agencies have also evolved. Take a certain Big 3 accounting firm, for example, which has branched out with a Digital arm and a Consulting arm, both of which can and do bring in clients that are just as profitable as its traditional auditing arm. In 2014, Deloitte Digital brought in $1.5 billion in revenue. Other firms like Accenture have followed suit, and they’ve been buying up creative agencies to boot.
The creative industry has always been highly competitive. Now that other players from other industries have evolved to encroach into the share of the pie, what must an ad agency do? Well, again we can look back at nature. Predator/prey co-evolution has often been an arms race of adaptation. Either ad agencies evolve, to provide better ROI for our client with an eye on emergent technologies and strategy, on top of quality creative, or we’ll get eaten. Almost literally, given the fate of some smaller agencies to date.
Darwin and the Ad Agency
Starship hasn’t been a pure ad agency for a while: we’ve always held a finger to the wind. We do ads, yes. Also marketing, branding, social media, business plans, digital strategy… we even have a specialist retail projects arm that looks at retail-specific technology and strategy. We’ve long understood that diversifying is the way to go. Especially as it’s become easier and easier for clients to be tempted to do things in-house. Platforms like Facebook make it extremely easy to create and run ads: you just need to set up a free account. Our focus is not just on making good creative but creating good value. What can we do for a client that a client can’t? In the process, like the dinosaurs of old, it’s been a gradual transition, as we add more and more to our skillsets. Sometimes it can be frustrating. But it can be rewarding too. We’re here for our clients, after all. And while their core needs may remain the same, the world is changing.
Power of Flight
Pure creative agencies and ad shops out there still exist, of course. And they’d probably exist for a while. A brief browse of recent science fiction films (Altered Carbon, Bladerunner 2049 etc) all indicate that advertising is alive, well, and (eyeroll) still full of scantily dressed women in the future. Even as we shed old technologies, we’ll embrace the new. And more importantly, we shed old ways of thinking for the better. The new wave of creatives coming to join agencies are interested in ethical design, in human-centred technology, in inclusivity. We’ve found ways to slowly co-exist with hybrid consultanties–either by carving out niches for ourselves, or becoming somewhat more hybrid in our own way. Technological development has been accelerating on an exponential curve: it’s hard to imagine now, but when I was growing up three decades ago, the internet wasn’t yet widespread and available. It’s inevitable that change happens. It’s not always an easy process, but it can be an exhilarating one. You learn how to fly or go the way of the dodo. But once you’re up in the air, it’s worth it. The view from up here is great.
If you are a medico, read this and get ready for unemployment. You might even want to cancel your new Maserati.
Medical Doctors are no doubt one of the most vulnerable professions during the rise of the robots.
All your usual diagnostic methods, like temperature, heart, blood checks, eye and skin observations, all could be better done by a robot. They can drill down to a micro level and they can do it long distance, meaning the robot doesn’t even need to be in the same country.
Your analysis methods, whether by website or peer comment, could be done much more quickly and more efficiently by a robot. What’s gut feel? It’s unscientific, plain phooey and you know it.
Your available hours and your systems of quick meetings with patients, many per hour, could be done better by robot. And a hell of a lot cheaper.
Robots would happily do house calls. They’d probably love to get out of the office, oh, I forgot, they don’t care. They don’t need a ‘lifestyle’.
Robots would be far less likely to be swayed by personal issues when prescribing drugs or other services. And does a chemist really care who writes the prescription, as long as it’s right for the patient?
Instead of seven or more years, and millions of dollars, a robot would cost almost zero to educate – you just download the update program in seconds, and bingo, another doctor!
Robots don’t need/want to make several hundred thousand dollars a year so their kids can go to a private school and take holidays skiing in Canada. Robots don’t need to drive Mercedes cars or Teslas, they might just propel themselves. Did you see that problem Serena Williams had with getting proper medical care during childbirth? Robots wouldn’t be subject to institutionalized biases. They wouldn’t be rude to salespeople either. Maybe they’d even mitigate or solve the global opioid crisis.
Robots may not do very well in a soft, caring sense now, cause, they don’t actually care, but how many of us have felt the Doctor’s ‘sympathy’ was just a well-practiced, fake, ‘bed side manner’? And besides, I heard they’ve been working on giving robots a personality. Hell, there’s a robot out there right now called Sophia who’d just been given full citizenship in Saudi Arabia.
And you know what Ms Doctor, while you think you’ll be rescued for some years by the power of an AMA or your capacity to lobby your local government member, think again. You personally have little sympathy for people who’ve been ripping you of for years and giving you shit service, like supermarkets, getting rolled over by the likes of Amazon. That’s how we feel about doctors. We just want a more efficient, less costly system. We don’t care what you think about it.
So it’s not like you’ll have any control – we’ll just go where the service is better and the costs are lower. We humans will do what we have always done. We will vote with our feet.
About the author – Geoffrey McDonald Bowll is a market researcher and advertising executive with over 30 years experience in managing behavior change and brand growth. He has successfully run creative agencies, served on several medical boards and advised government, service and pharmaceutical suppliers at the most senior level in Australia, US and UK. See GeoffreyMcDonaldBowll on LinkedIn.
Storytelling is a bit of a fad concept in adland. The fact that adland people like to call themselves storytellers isn’t surprising. We love our fancy titles. Solutions architects? Yeah mate, why not. Strategic Visualiser? That meant to be literal or what? Cat herder? Sure. And now there’s ‘storyteller’, which I hope was meant ironically before the fad started, given the tendency of many people in the creative industry to claim they’re ‘visual’ people and only read books that include the words ‘Harry’ and ‘Potter’ in them. If at all. The ability to spell was a rare skill in design school in Australia, strangely enough, as was the ability to tell the difference between “your” and “you’re”.
Just check out Adweek’s recent list of 12 Books That Will Make You a Better Writer and Storyteller. Charlotte’s Web, really? That’s a book I enjoyed when I was six, before I became an avid National Geographic enthusiast and realized quite a few species of spiders actually have babies that eat their mothers. It’s a stark contrast from the “Best Of” lists that fiction authors like to produce, which usually include books like Lolita and Ulysses. I’m not claiming that those books are more entertaining than Charlotte’s Web. Confession: in the shallow darkness of my soul I probably enjoyed the book about the unlikely friendship between a pig and a spider more than Ulysses, which still doesn’t fail to put me to sleep. The sheer dissociation between adland’s fav ‘storyteller’ books and the rest of the world’s, sadly, speaks to the dissociation between what adland considers a good story and what the rest of the world does.
You’re A Storyteller! You’re A Storyteller!
storytelling
ˈstɔːrɪtɛlɪŋ/nounnoun: storytelling; noun: story-telling
adjectiveadjective: storytelling
Yes, some adland people are, objectively speaking, also well-regarded tellers of stories. James Patterson, one of the world’s juggernaut bestselling authors, was the creative director of JWT, then its US CEO. Peter Mayle, who nearly single-handedly created a new genre of books with his Year in Provence, worked as a copywriter for Ogilvy, then as creative director for BBDO. Salman Rushdie was also in Ogilvy. Dr Seuss used to be an adland illustrator.
The list stretches on, both in film, in art, and on the page. The fact that many adland people have become successful published authors, filmmakers, and illustrators within their own right doesn’t make us all storytellers. By unironically co-opting and throwing the term around, adland is beginning to devalue what it means to be a storyteller.
In other words, consecrating ads as stories satisfies every meta-marketing objective.
So what’s the issue?
One obvious problem is that most brands have no particular story to tell—at least not anymore. (x)
We like being called storytellers because there’s a mystical quality to the word. It’s an expression of craft and talent with a lineage that stretches as long as there has been language. While advertising can be called storytelling in the thinnest sense–some ads do have some sort of basic commercial narrative–to put advertising on par with Anna Karenina is a bit of a stretch.
Humility? Good gracious. Perish the thought!
We do want to be taken seriously by everyone else, don’t we, Don Draper?
Second confession: in the agency, we have a list of keywords that we call ‘Wanker Words that Work’, a list that many a ‘solutions architect’ would be familiar with. (Yes, we’re self-aware here on the Starship.) Please don’t make us add ‘storyteller’ to the top of the list.
What Even Makes a Good Story Anyway?
A good story sticks with you. It seeps into your bones. You’d remember it forever, because it probably changed part of you. That’s something that a good ad can share with a good story: the resonance. You can’t work in adland without being able to name your favourite ads. The ads that you watch and make you happy to be part of the industry. I’ll start. My favourite ad of all time so far is the Volkswagen Little Darth Vader ad:
Hugely successful, this Super Bowl commercial was said to have changed advertising. Strategy-wise, anyway. The ad was released pre-game, which was considered controversial at the time, at least in adland, which often has a strange idea of what it thinks should be ‘controversial’. It’s the most shared Super Bowl commercial of all time, and one of the most shared commercials anywhere, ever. Storywise, it’s simple: a little boy wants to be Darth Vader, but is unable to summon The Force until his father uses Volkswagen’s remote fob to make it look like he has. Hamlet it is not, but it’s clearly resonated with millions of people worldwide.
Still, the Little Darth commercial is an outlier. The vast majority of advertising, even 60 second ads, is built to push a product or service. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s what advertising is for. Making out people to be ‘storytellers’ can make creatives lose sight of what they’re in advertising to do: to work for a client. An ad that does nothing for a client–whether by increasing market share, pushing its bottom line, or fulfilling some other measure of KPI–is a failed ad.
Nice story, though.
You Can’t Deny Some Branded Content Are Great Stories, Karen.
Ahh branded content. These effectively long-form ads don’t always push products or services, and are often, in their best forms, pretty much sponsored short films. There are also some literal stories: KFC, for example, famously created a romance novel for Mother’s Day. There have been great films pushing social issues that resonate with a core audience, such as Shiseido’s “Marriage Market” short. And, more recently, Apple got acclaimed director Peter Chan to film a short film called “Three Minutes“, using the iPhone X, about motherhood, Chinese New Year, and sacrifice.
Great branded content is an outlier. Few brands can be persuaded to go to the expense or the trouble. When executed well, good content can do more than make a brand stand out in the marketplace: great, sticky content will resonate with consumers, leaving a mark in today’s ultra-competitive world. But at its core, branded content is still advertising. An expensive piece of content that does nothing for a client in any way will mean an unhappy client, and rightfully so.
Good stories do stand out from the noise. That’s why the classics last the test of time. It’s hard to imagine an ad having the lasting power of 14th Century’s Romance of Three Kingdoms, and that’s probably a good thing. We’re not in this industry to create the next War and Peace. We’re here for our clients. We may not all be storytellers the way we’d like to be, and–unpopular opinion–that’s fine. We’re adland people.
Now if you’d excuse me, I’m going to try to finish reading Ulysses.
About the Author: Anya is the head of branding at Starship. Her first novel, the Firebird’s Tale, was published in 2016, and her short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily SF, Giganotosaurus, and other magazines.
The following discussion is about how to build a brand for big property development. What to do, when, and why.
Get yourself a glass of red wine. Now a piece of white paper. Hold the wine up to your mouth, take a swig, and be a bit messy about it, so some of the wine dribbles over the rim of the glass. Watch the drop slowly run down the side of the glass, down the stem, onto the curve of the base. Move the glass to and fro, just so. If you do it right, you’ll end up with a red line around most of the base. Stick the base onto the piece of paper. Pick it up again, drink the rest of the wine.
You should have on the piece of paper a red, messy, almost-complete circle of about 8cm across. You photograph this and send the photo to the client. If you’re a designer, you call this a logo and charge $30,000 for it. If you’re a really smart designer, you’ll sell them on three different colours of the same logo for another $5,000 each.
I can show you at least half a dozen similar logos currently in the market place for very similar projects. And the designers who did them don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. The engineers and architects and accountants who approved them don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. They all think, cause it looks like the others, they are in the ‘fashion’ of the moment…bozos.
Agencies do things differently.
Good ad agencies put serious thought into the whole game. Especially the psychology of how it all hangs together. But if you’re not a seasoned large scale developer, you may not know the disciplines…or why you ought to use a disciplined ad agency over a bunch of hip, cute, but dumb designers.
Welcome to the world of property, big time. I’m not talking about doing the local paper ads for an apartment block of 8 or 10 in Caulfield. I’m talking 2,000, 5,000 or 20,000 house lots – whole suburbs. …
No, I don’t mean the business in baby boomers is booming, cause God knows you all know that’s the case, so why write an article about it? I mean they bloody well boom. They talk loud, they push you around. They are a bit deaf, cause they’re older than most of us, and they have this God-given belief in their own importance, cause they were the kids on the block in the 50’s, they were the hippies in the 60’s, at the discos in the 70’s, were the yuppies in the 80’s, now they are the boomingly loud pains in the arses in the 2000’s that will have everyone else in society paying for their over-due retirement.
Like big sisters and brothers, they dominate your world and they own it too. They own more shares, more bits of real estate and more companies than the rest of us put together. And just like big brothers and sisters, they don’t care if you’re not happy about it. You can get stuffed. And they are the high court judges, and the politicians, so you can keep getting stuffed until they are dead. Which is probably 30 years away. If medical advances keep advancing, it could well be 40 years. We Gen X and Gen Y’s will probably have suicided well before then…
They Club-up together. They recognize each other – bit of a paunch. A few wrinkles. Plenty of grey. They say ‘Hey, we want it this way’ and the government changes tack or companies change their strategies to accommodate them.
Because baby boomers are who they are, they dominate things. Brashly, purposefully, selfishly and with little diplomacy. There’s some three million of them. Controlling, by simple age and experience, most of the nation. They probably employ you, Miss reader. And many of you marketers out there are ignoring them, do so at your peril.
The Rising Cake
Assuming global warming doesn’t wash them off the beaches or freeze them as they are tramping through the high country, their numbers will go from about 12% of Australians to some 27% over the next 40 years. They’ll not only take up more space in the statistics, it is expected that they’ll work for longer – part-time or full time. Chances are the government will have to move the retirement age up to more like 70 or even 75 as they demand to be allowed to continue to work (the alternative is to stay home with the spouse – after a month or two, almost everybody would prefer to work).
They will also live much longer than previous generations. It will not be uncommon for granny to reach 100. King Charles (assuming Liz dies one day) will get a very tired hand writing to his peers when there are thousands of centurians dotting the country.
And yes, they’ll seek out the “sea change” life, or a ‘tree-change’. But also inner city apartments will continue to be in demand, regardless of the current over-supply, because in retirement people seek what they didn’t have during their working lives; If they lived in suburbia, they seek sophistication and travel. If they traveled a lot, they seek a stable village-like atmosphere.
Note that – retirement villages will be full of Baby Boomers seeking a village environment – way more than the ‘silent’ generation before them, who were simply seeking company and to avoid the maintenance costs of keeping a big home.
Which means the Baby Boomers will want more activities, fun things to do, will want to be able to run a little business from their apartment, which could simply be growing weed on their balcony…
They have more money to spend
The pattern with Western life is that you go to school, get your first few jobs, have plenty of money, spend it on clothes, booze and getting lucky, then, assuming you’re straight and have the usual hang-ups about wanting to continue the family name etc., you get married. You buy a house, have kids, and pay off the bank for 20 years or so. About mid 40’s, if you’ve got most of your mortgage paid and if you’ve managed to get your kids to leave home, you then have disposable money again. Boomers have now had disposable money for 20 years, and have spent it any damn way they liked.
What works on Boomers?
See things from their point of view.
That is a much bigger issue than the previous sentence could possibly convey. Try to think like them. They may be old, tired, often in pain, but they are still fit enough to do 18 holes of golf and then go to a drinks party for 3 hours; it may be their last. Most importantly, their brains aren’t old. They don’t feel old. All our research says they feel like they are 30 years younger.
Treat them as individuals.
The older a person gets, the less they are ‘normal’. Many older people I’ve spoken to believe that if people think you are ‘normal’ after 40, you’ve failed to develop as a human being.
Don’t talk down to them
It almost doesn’t bear mentioning, but many younger marketers patronize older people to such an extent they automatically put their customers off. Talk to them like you talk to a rich Uncle, not your Mum. Your Mum puts up with your attitude because she loves you and hopes one day you’ll grow out of it. No-one else will.
Family and friends matter
They have put their lives into making their families lives the best they could. They therefore cherish their families, and those friends they’ve grown to love. Show happy, real families and you’ll hit a chord.
Loneliness is an issue
As families move on and friends inevitably die off, older people suffer from a loneliness and a sadness that’s hard to explain to a younger person. Which is perhaps why so many go to funerals. Sign of respect, but also a way of keeping in touch with society.
Security
As your body deteriorates, issues like security start to become more important, no matter how much you might deny they exist. If you’re not capable of running flat out for 10 k’s at the drop of a hat, you are less likely to feel confident walking past a group of young thugs.
Ditto for sleeping in a neighborhood surrounded by them. Which is one reason why many Boomers like to spend time at the gym or the swimming pool, making them physically stronger to take on younger people they feel (at least sub-consciously) threatened by.
For this reason sales tactics based on fear actually work less well than more positive ones, as Boomers don’t want to be made to feel even more vulnerable.
Sex still sells
The number one product in dollar terms at most retirement homes ‘shops’ is not milk, it’s lube. I’m not kidding.
Use bigger type
The older you get, the poorer your eyesight. Don’t laugh. It will happen to you. Use 12 point type or bigger. For the same reasons, avoid glossy shiny paper as it reflects.
Use older copywriters
If you want empathy with older markets, use people who have something in common with them. Brief them to use simpler words – boomers don’t appreciate wanky business terms (like ‘bloom’ or ‘platform’ or ‘verticals’) or SMS type derivations. You can however use words that seem old-fashioned like the ‘hip’ words from the sixties/seventies, like ‘groovy’ or ‘fab’.
Language itself is important – most boomers appreciate correct grammar more than those who are younger. And they grew up in an era which used English rather than American. So they prefer spelling that doesn’t use z much. Where color is spelled with a u. But they have spent years reading the Women’s Weekly and No Idea, so keep in mind that weird magazine English is also quite acceptable, at least with the women.
Nobody thinks they look old
Always use people who look about ten years younger than your actual target market.
Don’t bullshit
Boomers are far more media savvy than any other group – kids aren’t media savvy, they haven’t been around long enough. Boomers have been watching TV or listening to the radio for 50 bloody years. They have heard all of the ads before – they are so much more critical of creative than young people, it’s scary. Because they saw the ad you’re trying to push when it was a new idea, 20 years ago.
Give them fresh ideas
Give them radical ads – they appreciate them much more than you think. But don’t make them look ‘radical’ because they can’t read bad typesetting – and they can’t be bothered to have to try just because it looks fashionable – make the actual content original.
Educate the market
Boomers with more time are more inclined to attend seminars or lectures. You can tie these in with brand promotions. Amex are currently running a series on fraudulent telemarketing for older people.
Use a sense of humor
Anybody older than 50 has to have one. If they didn’t they’re dead inside.
Don’t clutter Messages on TV
Loud background music makes it hard to remember phone numbers when you’re half deaf. Keep those details up longer, helps if your memory is not what it should be, or you can’t get to the pen and paper quickly.
Reduce Risk
Money back offers work well with older people who are unsure of newer marketers.
Research
Boomers have more time, they are cheaper and easier to research with. They are also more open to giving you their opinion, even if it’s not requested (helping marketers?) as long as they agree with your values. You can afford to research them more than other markets.
Do your sums
Many strategies for luring Boomers will backfire as their numbers reach full bloom. I can see Senior’s discounts being phased out in the near future as offering discounts to the 1 older person in every 4 people is unlikely to be a profitable way to go. But how to explain taking away her discount, to your Mum?
It’s about values
The Baby Boomers like values. They respond to people doing the right thing. Note I said doing, not just saying. (NB. Highlight that bit and send to board.)
The older a market segment gets, the more predictable are its values. As you study or work with older Australians, you can measure their different values like counting the rings in a tree trunk to see how old it is. Values are not formed the moment a person drops onto this little blue planet. People develop them over time as they experience life. Something happens to you, you clock that into your memory. It becomes a ‘value’. And yes, their values are ‘old-fashioned’; they were developed in old times. Which is why they do feel for the Viet vets – many of their friends were veterans.
It helps in any market to know the values of the customer. People simply won’t play with a group (purchase from, invest with) who push values they don’t agree with. This is accentuated with older people, who often make decisions on philosophy, a brand’s personality and what it stands for, rather than just technology or fashion. And in the Baby Boomers case, they have so much power, you can’t ignore them, which means you must know the details. Like understanding what is ‘doing the right thing’ in their eyes.
Which is also why price is not quite as important as ‘Value’. Older people buy things like wool sox, because they last much longer, even if you pay three times the price. Over time they have learned what value is. So don’t try to be too clever or to rip off. It just won’t work on Baby Boomers.
Boomers summary
If you want to win them over, demonstrate respect. Do the right thing by them and especially be ethical when dealing with complaints or disputes. Don’t happily churn them like younger customers, who have grown up to expect corporate insensitivity. Treat them like you’d like your Mum to be treated and they’ll do what she does for you; feed you, clothe you, give you a warm cuddle, a bit of sound advice and a helping hand. Want to know more? Call us up, have a chat.
Below I touch on the types of organizations which can buy for you and how to deal with them. If you’re not sure still, call us at Starship (03 9428 4411) and we’ll try to help.
Who can buy TV for you? – Suppliers
Before we start – philosophy – the thing to remember about buying TV is it’s not like buying a house, where you have to show you can afford it, or buying a shot-gun where you have to prove you have a need, ie foxes, and you’re unlikely to kill anybody. In buying TV air space, there are absolutely no rules.
There are three main groups you can deal with in any TV purchasing negotiation. No-one can guarantee you better deals.
TV Stations/ Groups
The stations themselves have large teams of sales reps talking to people like you all the time.
They divide their sales team into two key groups. Agency and Direct. Agency reps are trained to give lots of lurverly theoretical ‘research’ stats to young agency staff. So they sound great, but can’t do much of a deal. (And the chances are your agency will only be repeating what they say/deliver.)
Direct reps are trained to get the most for spots no-one else has pre-booked, which is often quite a swathe of time slots, so they are better at doing deals. If you’re from a bigger company, you’ll find in most cases they’ll try to fob you off to an ad agency or buying group, cause the money side is handled more easily, and they are looking after their mates.
You can always insist on dealing direct and many do.
Media Buying Agencies/Large Ad agencies
Set up to take a slice (1-10%+), depending upon their relationship with the creative agency or client direct) the media buying agencies claim they can get you the best deals because they are the biggest in the world or South Eastern Australia or whatever. They can’t do the best deals. Because if they did, with their percentage of the total buy, the TV stations would go broke.
So the deals they do are almost always the ones with more fat in them than what you can do direct. You are buying the right shows, but you could be paying 20-50% more than you have to for that particular show.
Smaller Ad Agencies
Smaller, ‘creative’ agencies often buy under the umbrella of the big media buying houses, claiming they are focusing on their own particular expertise and allowing the professionals to do their part. The fact is juniors usually do the work in the big media buying groups, so there’s stuff all professionalism and the best deals go to those who own the media buying houses (share holders often being the big ad agencies). It’s nice for the smaller agencies to have someone else carry the credit risk. And if your relationship with a creative group is helped by them getting a little slice, fine.
Direct Buyers/Buy Direct
You can deal direct with any of the TV stations and get good deals. You can also bandy together with a few mates and buy in bulk. Remember, there are no rules.
How the purchase process works
You should decide who your core target market is by demographic (age, income, sex etc) and psychographic (attitudes, personality, values etc.) and even time of day viewing (Business people often watch late night. Families with young kids may often be watching TV at 700 am, but don’t expect to see those show up on a ratings analysis).
You may write it up as a brief with timings, flighting, budgets, what you want to achieve etc. and have it ready to email. Then ring the agency or station rep and go over it. Ask them to respond with their proposed buy. You’ll get that back within 24-36 hours. There will be things you don’t agree with etc., so you might repeat the process a few times. You eventually agree on a buy. They send you a final which you sign off. They do a credit check and off you go. They advise you about 24 hours before hand exactly when your ads will appear and if you want a list, that can be provided afterwards for your records. You’ll get 45 days or so to pay the bill, but contrary to everything you hear, this can also be flexible.
If you want to know what things should cost, or more of an idea how it works from the inside, give us a call us at Starship and ask for Ebba, she’s the tall, very good looking blonde ex-media rep who knows everybody who matters. Or call and ask for Geoffrey, who’s short, balding, knows no-body, but writes these blogs when he’s bored.
After some weeks of end-of-financial-year spirit, I turn my unfocused eyes to the tricky bit about TV. The bit you can’t fathom or explain. The price of TV ads. And how those selling it smother what is essentially horse trading with a lot of pseudo-scientific rubbish designed to fool 22 year old marketing graduates.
Keep in mind we are dealing with eyeballs. Putting your message in front of peoples eyes with a moving, hopefully emotional story that gets them to do something, whether its buy a car or donate to a charity or stop beating their kids. TV is just one way to get that message to those people. It’s not a big deal anymore, like it used to be before we got You-tube and Netflix.
Also remember where are dealing with a short-life product. Like oysters out of the fridge, it goes off really fast. They can’t sell an ad on yesterday’s show. Which makes it a very negotiable commodity – no one actually knows what it’s really worth. Airtime has no value other than what someone like you is prepared to pay for it.
Buy on the R&F’s, not tarps.
Tarps, or Target Audience Rating Points is an easy way to confuse a 22 year old media buyer. He/she thinks multiplying the reach (proportion of the ‘population’; your core target audience demographic, that’s watching the show) by the Frequency (the number of times they see the ad) works. It don’t. People seeing something only once or twice is useless. You want 60, 70 or 90% (or whatever proportion of your audience you can afford to hit) of your targets to see the ad at least 5 times. Yes I’m serious, five times – we are over-loaded with information so only heavy repetition works.
Frequency is fundamental
Very few customers buy on seeing an ad once. They only buy when the promise is burned into their brains. When in doubt, go for more frequency with a lower reach than the reverse. You have to have absolutely sensational creative to trade reach for frequency. Better to have 50,000 people see an ad 5 times (250 tarps) than 100,000 see it three times, (300 tarps).
Buy Peak and Off Peak
Peak Time gives you heaps of viewers, which means wide reach. Lots of people seeing the ad. Off peak gives you a limited number of viewers whom you can afford to hit several times, which gives you frequency with them. Over a campaign, you’ll find you’ll also pick up quite a few of the peak customers, but slowly. Thus you build up reach & frequency most efficiently over a campaign with both.
Road Block – buy many stations at the same time
On the basis that they’re running the ads at the same time, which is most often the case, if you want to hit everyone you can, it’s a nice idea to book an ad on all the relevant stations to run in exactly the same ad break. Then you know you’ve got at least one solid ‘frequency’. (See Flick Factor)
Appropriate shows
Show selection is critical. You are associated with the content – so if you’re on a stupid show for your target market, they’ll think less of you. A traditionalist will tell you to buy on the shows that best suite your target market demographic and that add something from a psychological or ‘environment’ sense (ie. The Money Show, for an on-line broker’s ad etc.) Yes, if you can afford to, please do. But it’s not value for money if you can hit the same audience for a third the cost on other shows. Use your judgment and don’t be conned into paying full whack for a ‘key’ show just ’cause your boyfriend likes it. And you don’t need to tell the rep which in your eyes is a key show – better to have the really important shows as almost ‘add ons’, so they don’t charge you more next time.
Regularly on the shows
If you buy regularly on a show, you become associated with the show. Sometimes nice for credibility. For some strange reason, a regular time-slot works really well.
Buy the Top and the Tail
This is the usual buy with the most seasoned TV advertisers, such as Telstra, the banks etc. Because people channel surf, the best spots are the top and tail of the break. That’s a 30 seconder at the start of the break for those who don’t use their remote to surf the other stations, and the 15 at the other end to remind them and get the message to those who did surf, but saw the first bit of the first ad and see the last bit of the 15. This also works better if they are watching the show on a time warp thing like Tevo, cause while they are running the ads faster, they still see a bit of both of the ads.
Buy the cheapest in the slot.
If you can’t afford to buy the top and the tail in the show you want, buy the cheapest ad in that time-slot, knowing full well that with the flick factor /channel surfing you’ve got a better than even chance of getting the audience anyway – if they surf, they may hit that station. If you’re paying less than the average cost, you’re getting the better deal.
Buy Unsold Time
As the time gets closer, the panic sets in amongst the sales force. If you’ve got ads already running on a station, occasionally you can get them to up the number of ads they run in a particular period, which suits you, for only a very small additional cost – if air-time is not pre-sold, it can be very, very cheap. I’m talking ‘I’ll shout you lunch’ cheap.
Buy Direct
The Stations are prepared to sell slices of time at whatever rate they can get (as long as the big buyer’s clients don’t get wind of it). And the stations will provide whatever research you need. They all get it from the same sources.
Buy Calendar Off -Peak
There are many weeks where you’re not paying to compete with an excess of other advertisers. If you’re in retail and it’s Xmas week, you have no choice, but if you’re building a brand, choose weeks/days which are less full. In all months there are softer weeks. In all weeks, softer times. But people are still at home with their eyeballs open.
Avoid ROS
Run Of Station means Spots We Can’t Sell. Unless you have a product that is wanted by people who can’t sleep or security guards, or stoners, don’t bother with late night, unless it’s ridiculously cheap and I mean only a hundred bucks.
Screw them on price
They will screw you to the wall when you want something, so do the reverse when you get the opportunity. Trade them off against each other and dutch auction rates. By that I mean say ‘they other guys only want x’. At the end of the day, a spot on a show is worth whatever you get it for. And that’s it. They will still deal with you as a buyer next month and they’ll only respect you more if you’re tough.
On length
TV stations often push buys for large numbers of short length ads (Wow, they’ve offered me 100 x 10 second spots!) on bunnies because the bunnies have heard of the concept of ‘Frequency’ and don’t understand that with no impact frequency means nothing. Unless they are very powerful and simple, short ads do not allow the punters to get the message, (brand, positioning or whatever). Our brains take more time to react than you think. Just cause you can see the logo in the ten second sponsorship, because you’ve seen it in the edit suite 100 times, don’t expect more than a small percentage of your customers to take it in. So don’t be talked into paying for short ads at a pro-rata rate. They are not worth it. They are nice as a value-add gift as part of your buy and to put the brand in front of the public, but have a history of being virtually useless to actually build the brand profile.
If you can, buy a 45 or even 60- second ad. I’ll bet your agency will be able to re-cut the footage you have and it will sell it’s tits off over a 15 or 30 seconder. You can also use this same longer version in Cinema….
Flighting
You must flight; re-run the ads regularly during the year. Start off with a heavier buy, to build awareness, then flight or run the ads every second week or month or so to keep awareness and sales levels up. All agencies have different theories on how to do this. It does vary dramatically in certain markets, the more competitive the market, the more frequently you need to flight. Run ads when your dashboard says sales may be waning. Don’t wait for confirmation from your stores or warehouse – that often costs companies like yours millions in lost sales.
What to do?
If I was you, I’d decide how I’d like to buy the TV, I’d then get an agency to negotiate it on an hourly rate, and ignore all the fluff the industry tries to use. In the end, you’re buying access to people’s minds. Pay for good advice, not prime time rates at full whack. TV time is not rocket science. It’s simply air time sold to the highest bidder.
Further reading on TV buying can be read here.
Oz Comic Con was held this weekend in Melbourne at MCEC, on Saturday and Sunday, an event that typically attracts tens of thousands of people who love comics, pop culture, films and dressing up. Although nowhere on the scale as the USA’s San Diego Comic Con, guests this year included Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo: Game of Thrones) and Billy Boyd (Pippin Took: Lord of the Rings). It was a day of Darth Vaders rubbing shoulders with Deadpools, Daleks facing off Hulkbusters, and as many prop weaponry on sale as anyone could want. Some highlights:
This Ghostbuster looked 100% ready for action: his kit lighted up and everything. A+ for effort!
Impressive makeup work from the Sharp FX guys.
This towering Predator is a sculpture, not a costume – love all that detail!
The presence of one of the most enduring entertainment brands in the world was everywhere. Here, Marvel’s Hulkbuster poses with a Dalek, in front of Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron installation. We were a little surprised to see that Marvel was capitalising on its wildly popular Avengers brand, rather than promoting its less-well-known upcoming Antman film… or… maybe not. Marvel’s overlords, Disney, had a decent showing as well, with various Frozen Elsas and Annas, a Maleficent, and various classic Princesses. Not to be outdone, the BBC had a large stall as well, mostly selling Dr Who merchandise and some Sherlock.
The Prince of Asgard, in the indie artists’ alley.
Now for some shop talk. Anyone found it interesting how McDonald’s Create Your Taste stall in Comic Con had no McDonalds branding? Not even the ubiquitous red uniforms? It was doing a roaring trade, synthetic turf, black shipping container shell, hipster cafe wood boards and all. It was a curious direction for McDonalds to take, and maybe one that they might explore further in the future. Create Your Taste’s campaign positioning (by OMD Fuse) is ‘very “un-McDonalds”‘, and compared to some of McDonald’s earlier attempts at hashtag campaigns, #createyourtaste has been largely positively received.
Will this save the McDonalds brand? Only time will tell. But Maccas? Please roll out your all day breakfast in Melbourne. We can’t wait to eat hash browns at ungodly hours in the evenings.
How to buy TV airtime
After some weeks of end-of-financial-year spirit, I turn my unfocused eyes to the tricky bit about TV. The bit you can’t fathom or explain. The price of TV ads. And how those selling it smother what is essentially horse trading with a lot of pseudo-scientific rubbish designed to fool 22-year-old marketing graduates.
Keep in mind we are dealing with eyeballs. Putting your message in front of people’s eyes with a moving, hopefully emotional story that gets them to do something, whether its buy a car or donate to a charity or stop beating their kids. TV is just one way to get that message to those people. It’s not a big deal anymore, like it used to be before we got Youtube and Netflix.
Also remember where are dealing with a short-life product. Like oysters out of the fridge, it goes off really fast. They can’t sell an ad on yesterday’s show. Which makes it a very negotiable commodity – no one actually knows what it’s really worth. Airtime has no value other than what someone like you is prepared to pay for it.
Buy on the R&F’s, not tarps.
Tarps, or Target Audience Rating Points is an easy way to confuse a 22-year-old media buyer. He/she thinks multiplying the reach (proportion of the ‘population’; your core target audience demographic, that’s watching the show) by the Frequency (the number of times they see the ad) works. It doesn’t. People seeing something only once or twice is useless. You want 60, 70 or 90% (or whatever proportion of your audience you can afford to hit) of your targets to see the ad at least 5 times. Yes I’m serious, five times – we are overloaded with information so only heavy repetition works.
Frequency is fundamental
Very few customers buy on seeing an ad once. They only buy when the promise is burned into their brains. When in doubt, go for more frequency with a lower reach than the reverse. You have to have absolutely sensational creative to trade reach for frequency. Better to have 50,000 people see an ad 5 times (250 tarps) than 100,000 see it three times, (300 tarps).
Buy Peak and Off Peak
Peak Time gives you heaps of viewers, which means wide reach. Lots of people seeing the ad. Off peak gives you a limited number of viewers whom you can afford to hit several times, which gives you frequency with them. Over a campaign, you’ll find you’ll also pick up quite a few of the peak customers, but slowly. Thus you build up reach & frequency most efficiently over a campaign with both.
Road Block – buy many stations at the same time
On the basis that they’re running the ads at the same time, which is most often the case, if you want to hit everyone you can, it’s a nice idea to book an ad on all the relevant stations to run in exactly the same ad break. Then you know you’ve got at least one solid ‘frequency’. (See Flick Factor)
Appropriate shows
Show selection is critical. You are associated with the content – so if you’re on a stupid show for your target market, they’ll think less of you. A traditionalist will tell you to buy on the shows that best suite your target market demographic and that add something from a psychological or ‘environment’ sense (ie. The Money Show, for an on-line broker’s ad etc.) Yes, if you can afford to, please do. But it’s not value for money if you can hit the same audience for a third the cost on other shows. Use your judgment and don’t be conned into paying full whack for a ‘key’ show just ’cause your boyfriend likes it. And you don’t need to tell the rep which in your eyes is a key show – better to have the really important shows as almost ‘add-ons’, so they don’t charge you more next time.
Regularly on the shows
If you buy regularly on a show, you become associated with the show. Sometimes nice for credibility. For some strange reason, a regular time-slot works really well.
Buy the Top and the Tail
This is the usual buy with the most seasoned TV advertisers, such as Telstra, the banks etc. Because people channel surf, the best spots are the top and tail of the break. That’s a 30 seconder at the start of the break for those who don’t use their remote to surf the other stations, and the 15 at the other end to remind them and get the message to those who did surf, but saw the first bit of the first ad and see the last bit of the 15. This also works better if they are watching the show on a time warp thing like Tivo, cause while they are running the ads faster, they still see a bit of both of the ads.
Buy the cheapest in the slot.
If you can’t afford to buy the top and the tail in the show you want, buy the cheapest ad in that time-slot, knowing full well that with the flick factor /channel surfing you’ve got a better than even chance of getting the audience anyway – if they surf, they may hit that station. If you’re paying less than the average cost, you’re getting the better deal.
Buy Unsold Time
As the time gets closer, the panic sets in amongst the sales force. If you’ve got ads already running on a station, occasionally you can get them to up the number of ads they run in a particular period, which suits you, for only a very small additional cost – if air-time is not pre-sold, it can be very, very cheap. I’m talking ‘I’ll shout you lunch’ cheap.
Buy Direct
The Stations are prepared to sell slices of time at whatever rate they can get (as long as the big buyer’s clients don’t get wind of it). And the stations will provide whatever research you need. They all get it from the same sources.
Buy Calendar Off -Peak
There are many weeks where you’re not paying to compete with an excess of other advertisers. If you’re in retail and it’s Xmas week, you have no choice, but if you’re building a brand, choose weeks/days which are less full. In all months there are softer weeks. In all weeks, softer times. But people are still at home with their eyeballs open.
Avoid ROS
Run Of Station means Spots We Can’t Sell. Unless you have a product that is wanted by people who can’t sleep or security guards, or stoners, don’t bother with late night, unless it’s ridiculously cheap and I mean only a hundred bucks.
Screw them on price
They will screw you to the wall when you want something, so do the reverse when you get the opportunity. Trade them off against each other and dutch auction rates. By that I mean say ‘they other guys only want x’. At the end of the day, a spot on a show is worth whatever you get it for. And that’s it. They will still deal with you as a buyer next month and they’ll only respect you more if you’re tough.
On length
TV stations often push buys for large numbers of short length ads (Wow, they’ve offered me 100 x 10 second spots!) on bunnies because the bunnies have heard of the concept of ‘Frequency’ and don’t understand that with no impact frequency means nothing. Unless they are very powerful and simple, short ads do not allow the punters to get the message, (brand, positioning or whatever). Our brains take more time to react than you think. Just cause you can see the logo in the ten second sponsorship, because you’ve seen it in the edit suite 100 times, don’t expect more than a small percentage of your customers to take it in. So don’t be talked into paying for short ads at a pro-rata rate. They are not worth it. They are nice as a value-add gift as part of your buy and to put the brand in front of the public, but have a history of being virtually useless to actually build the brand profile.
If you can, buy a 45 or even 60- second ad. I’ll bet your agency will be able to re-cut the footage you have and it will sell it’s tits off over a 15 or 30 seconder. You can also use this same longer version in Cinema….
Flighting
You must flight; re-run the ads regularly during the year. Start off with a heavier buy, to build awareness, then flight or run the ads every second week or month or so to keep awareness and sales levels up. All agencies have different theories on how to do this. It does vary dramatically in certain markets, the more competitive the market, the more frequently you need to flight. Run ads when your dashboard says sales may be waning. Don’t wait for confirmation from your stores or warehouse – that often costs companies like yours millions in lost sales.
What to do?
If I was you, I’d decide how I’d like to buy the TV, I’d then get an agency to negotiate it on an hourly rate, and ignore all the fluff the industry tries to use. In the end, you’re buying access to people’s minds. Pay for good advice, not prime time rates at full whack. TV time is not rocket science. It’s simply air time sold to the highest bidder.
You’re the marketing manager of a confectionary company. Don’t ask me how you got there, it’s a very long, messy story. The big product you’ve been proudly taking to glorious heights is FAP – coined by you. You are yet to think of a clever way to explain it, FAP just is. Very karma. FAP’s a combination of vitamins, fruit-based complex sugars, more roughage than a pack of sultana bran and it tastes awful. For the first three seconds. Then it tastes like lemon acid. Then fresh, raw chilli – the little ones that burn. You run out of breath just as the Haighs chocolate hits your mouth and soothes you. Lasts at least 10 minutes. Sells better than ice-cream on a hot day. The board love you, especially now that Bolockson’s, the countries biggest manufacturer, has slapped 100 very large ones on the table to take FAP off their hands. They can all go to Vanuatu or Paris for a few years and exchange their tired wives for fresh ones.
You seem impressed, even excited for the first few minutes while the Bolockson’s CEO tells them/you of his plans. Then he talks about their brand strategy ….Bolockson’s FAP.
Your wild packaging, your electronic pointy wointy of sale. Your in-your-face 15 seconds TV ads. All your good work for the last 3 years. All now pushing Bolockson’s along with FAP. You could see your baby being strangled in front of your eyes, if it wasn’t for the tears…
Bolockson’s will take your prize possession and wrap their tired old brand images as close as they can get to your brand, to give good old Bolockson’s a bit of street cred. A bit of cool. Picture a seventy-year old in a hoodie. Your work, which has made what might have been nothing but a long line of food additive numbers into a moving emotional experience for millions of Australians (and with that fibre, one that moves their very bodies) is now the promotion vehicle for an ageing brand that can’t think of any easier way to boost its flagging share price.
The brand architecture they are proposing will destroy the cred of FAP and thus the brand itself. What is Brand Architecture exactly? It’s the priority given to the brands on a label or in other communications – Holden Commodore versus Commodore, by General Motors Holden.
This is a visual thing, plus a sequencing thing and it’s very much the domain of the designers and psychologists out there.
Marketers, the natural bosses of both these groups, need to take control and look at it from our personal point of view and that of our careers. Do you want to be the marketing manager of one of a hundred versions of the same brand – say like the girl/guy who manages Virgin Blue? Or do you want to be made a tad more famous by being the person who grew XYZ brand from nothing into a household name? My career? I’d choose the latter.
Why do companies structure brands in certain ways? They do it for consistency – you can grow a brand much faster if everything is co-ordinated. They do it to keep costs down – there’s often less overall money spent on marketing one main brand rather than four or five different brands. And they do it for political, money-making reasons.
At the core, brand architecture is about egos. Board’s, designer’s, printer’s, marketing manager’s egos. The rest is often interesting academic debate about relationships and complex psychology, but the real story is raw ego.
Brands create and stir more ego than any other thing in corporate land. Yes, your pay matters and your corner office with a view over the harbour is nice, but if you’ve managed to change the order of priorities so the Frito-Lay is in front of the word Chip and you at Frito-Lay therefore own the Chip, rather than the Chip owning Frito-Lay, you can sleep easy at night knowing your world is secure.
Which brings up the issue of ownership – intensely connected with architecture. Brands and who owns them can change priority for many reasons. These reasons usually relate to board’s strategic desires – do we flog em off? Do we acquire? Do we make us, our board and our logo, more important? Or do we boost the Solvol? They may help each other as supporting money spinners, detract from the mother ship if weak. They all need careful attention and the exercise is life or death for those who’s careers fly on them. ie. You.
A few items to consider
People have favourites. Make no mistake, many people in board land like the multi-brand approach like Unilever or the all together drive, like Nestle etc. Flexibility suffers when certain egos win. If you have a blinkered view of any landscape you do far worse than those with an open mind. Keep your’s that way too.
These things are often global. Try as you may to educate the powers above you that the Aussie market is different and that this is an icon brand, essential to our cultural heritage, if a big multi-national has bought it they will want to bring in into line with their overall brand architecture and frankly, stuff you and your brand’s needs. Think Vegemite, Holden, Tuckerbox Dog Food, the list is endless.
Adjustments can be detrimental to sales/values.
The public love consistency. So does your bottom line. Variation outside of brand territory is often short-term cash-flow death. Get back-up in stats, case studies etc. Protect yourself.
Corporate board versus marketing department
Most of the time this is the truth. Try as you might to explain things. But the good marketers get over this little hurdle like the troopers they are. The best Marketers? The board thinks everything is happening exactly according to their plans.
Most important thing is to look at it from the buyers/customers perspective. Many changes are made without reflective assessment of the long term benefit to channel partners, consumers, public.
Psychologist & designer dream
Not enough psychologists work with designers and not enough designers see psychologists.
Nestle – good or bad reputation?
Always check the effect of one name on another. You can’t mix chocolate with raw meat anymore than you can mix some brands with others – by mathematical definition, if you add one unpopular company, which may only appeal to 20% of the market, with another that only appeals to 15%, you suddenly potentially have those overlayed, which in any market means less customers. It’s not 35%. It’s often like 12%. Sometimes it grows both segments, which can be rather tasty, but please check the effect before punching the budget button. You are moving the cards around under a house of cards. It can help to shore things up, but it can also tumble.
Parent Company – the shadow or the whole brand
Sometimes the big company brand name is good – pulling sales through where a brand is not yet known, but often it doesn’t work so well – people may not like the main brand.
A multiple brand structure allows you to market a wide range of products/ services without the public thinking something strange is going on – you don’t think a soap manufacturer would be a good toothpaste maker, but Unilever is. Why would a potato chip maker be any good at soft drinks – but wasn’t Coke? The flexibility of owning many brands gives other advantages as well. You can sell them in a blink. Who makes Panadol today? Who did?
You can own products in many categories with credibility. Even many products within a category and no-one really cares much.
Some companies (Unilever, Fonterra, Coke etc.) gain huge shelf space in supermarkets as they have so many different, individually branded products. Customers just either don’t know or don’t care; they certainly mostly don’t realise they are buying soap from the same company that they are buying soft drink from. This can be a great method to gain large share with different target markets. How many other drink brands does Coke own? Fanta? Deep Spring? The list is endless. Is the buyer of Coke the same who buys Deep Spring? Sometimes, but not often.
Given you’re being asked to make decisions on Brand Architecture, how to do it well?
Check the board’s real desires
If you can get them to tell the truth, find out what their real thoughts are – do they want to sell off the brand as a stand-alone in the long run? Do they want to grow the business in total and flick it as a whole?
Know your business
I know it sounds ridiculous, but many people have never really worked out what business they’re in. Railway people thought they were in the train game, and left transport and logistics to others – you know the story. If you’re in FMCG and want to grow, you should own multiple brands. If you’ve got a sexy brand that translates across a lot of sectors – you could do a Virgin. Decide if you could go one direction or another at this stage.
Do the research
Double check the board’s desires against the market’s perceptions of the brand and the company. What if they all hate the parent company? Or what if the parent company will look silly selling this product?
These issues will influence how the product/brand gets positioned against the owner brand. Which should be more prominent? Should it be Nestle’s Quick? NesQuick, Quick by Nestles. Slow going I know, but sweet when you get it right. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Most of you will have suitable research already available or a supplier you can trust to undertake it. If neither, consider on-line for accurate feed-back on complex issues like brand priority trade offs and awareness/ attitudes to sub-brands (with the right product mix obviously). Web’s not so good for testing stuff sold to tradies who can’t read, let alone use the web. Could use SMS but, hey bro?
Please note few designers use research and usually insist that the public doesn’t understand the bigger picture, ie. the concepts will be wasted on them etc. This is total bullshit. They are just scared of having to change their dream and don’t know how to run a research exercise well.
Brief your designers
Designers flock to brand architectural jobs faster than flies to dog poo. I reckon you could whisper there was a big corporate architectural gig on while you were cleaning your teeth, ten metres down a deserted mine-shaft, and you’d have twenty teams of identical black-wearing serious types with cropped hair and thin square glasses texting you with deep questions about brand relationships in less time than it took to write this paragraph.
Therefore, give 3 or 4 teams a very tight brief and expect to get shocked by the costs. Know that they will try to change everything that isn’t nailed down and that may involve scratching the floorboards. It will definitely include the carpet. Know also they will want a cut of the total spend which could in itself turn into millions.
Choose the team you really, really want to spend many very long days with. I don’t mean the ones who take themselves seriously, ’cause life is way too short. I recommend choosing the ones who do very good work but who also have a similar sense of humour to you.
To keep costs and egos in place, pay them for their time only. Have a production team actually do the buying of all the new signage and packaging etc. This will save you some of those millions.
Budgets
Ahhh, the word no-one wants to mention around this subject. Enough said.
Co-ordinate
All the desperate designers, agency suits, promo people, media tarts (all well recognised industry reference terms) will all want to pull the new baby in different directions because it’s in their interests to get you to spend as much as possible in their area. Too many cooks spoiling the broth. This squabbling will go on for as long as you let it. Be tough. Dictate who gets what and how much gets spent and if they argue too much, go silent for a week or two. That usually scares the hell out of them.
Get it on a chip
Insist early on developing a brand book they all have to stick to, so whatever has been decided gets run out by the operators (finished artists we used to call them when the word Bromide meant press ad, not just a chemical). Understand that a brand book/style guide, or whatever you want to call it, takes time to develop and must to a certain degree be flexible – it is impossible for a small team (everything in the world is done by small teams of 4-12 people and anybody who tells you different is lying. No-one can get a ‘team’ of 200 people to do anything) to think through all the ramifications, all the situations necessary for all the uses you may have. It should be a guide first and foremost and must be stronger in philosophy than anything else.
Do we have to?
Always ask is it necessary to do this bit? The public doesn’t care if your street sign in Niddree is a different colour blue to the business card. The designers will think it’s a huge sin, but frankly, that’s just a wank. Fix it one day when the sign has fallen over, but I guarantee by then there will have been six other business card versions and no-one but the design team front person will have given a fig.
Don’t rush, much
There are two schools of thought about this. One says do everything over night. I mean you do it over six months then change everything overnight. This is great for the design teams who have to work to all hours to do everything and make a fortune at it, but the stress on management, particularly you, is terrible. In some cases you simply can’t avoid it – say you run a bank and you have 1000 branches that really have to happen within a few days or you look silly – in that case you might roll it out by state and or by division – the rural division might change over in May, the public division in June. Regardless of what you’d like, an over rider will often be the pressing need to get as many examples done as fast as possible to get the message out with consistency.
Subtle or brave
Well-researched adjustments, where possible, are often handled with great care, possibly over several stages. There are times however when brutal change is the only logical/effective option. Never anything in between. Do either well and it’s a new car, few trips, better clothes. Nicer smiles in the lift.