Archive for 2012

My old friend Mike Fromowitz recently posted a blog in Campaign magazine regarding the recent rise in start-up advertising and branding companies such as our own. It’s an increasingly common topic these days, and if you look around across Asia some of these ‘little shops’ are doing very well indeed, attracting big name clients to give them a try.

I think there is a good reason for this and it has more to do with the issues facing bigger, international agencies as it does the qualifications of the small, independent ones.

Here’s a theory to add to what Mike has suggested, shoot it down if you will. In recent years, Asia in particular has come on in leaps and bounds in terms of award-winning creative work. More than that, the diversity of source countries producing great work is broader than ever. The global creative map has changed forever.

What’s also changed and is seemingly irreversible, is the ability of agencies to actually sell in great work to clients. Selling ideas is tricky. Clients, by nature, are more likely to be apprehensive about ideas which seem risky, are not familiar. Not tried and tested. Which is why most creative advertising we see around us every day is tried and tested. Not to mention mostly crap.

But in today’s world, agencies don’t have to sell in their great ideas. They simply request the client’s permission to ‘run them’ in order to qualify for the award shows. So everyone’s happy. The creatives are happy because they get their chance. Client service people are happy because they don’t have the (once upon a time very stressful) pressure to try and get brave ideas through the client. And the clients are happy because they are comfortable with the tried and tested work anyway. Despite the fact that more outstanding ideas might work that much harder for their brand and achieve better returns.

However, the end result of all this is that many agencies (I’m talking big network agencies) are now split down the middle. There is the real world. The bread and butter work which gets churned out every day for real briefs from big spending clients. Nobody really tries to rock the boat with that. Clients won’t buy brave ideas anyway. Do the job and take the money. Then there’s the pretend world, where you do excellent creative work for the shows, pay for it to run (big agencies have budgets set aside for this) and pretend it was real. (It always makes me laugh when agency leaders blame poor standards of creativity on a bad economy which makes clients more nervous…when nobody bothers getting better work past clients in the first place these days…they simply ask to run it.)

This is now the norm. If you asked many agencies to showcase the work they do on their biggest spending projects vs their most award-winning work, there’s a very high chance that the two will not correlate.

This is very different from the world’s most famously high profile creative agencies (ie Weiden and Kennedy, BBH London etc) who built their reputations by doing great work on real briefs. They did this by having very strong client relationships. By being honest and firm with clients. And also, by leading the relationship, as opposed to the other way round where agencies are told to do as the client says with a ‘customer is always right’ mentality. (Because the main objective is to meet the numbers.)

So, there’s the great divide. Two world’s under one roof. The results of all this are a generation of young talented creative leaders who know no other route to the awards stage than under the table. And agency client managers who would not have the faintest idea how to begin to sell in a daring idea to a client. Agencies are not breeding any Frank Lowes today. Any Mike Greenlees (tasked with the difficult challenge of selling in Dave Trott’s ideas..). Any Rod Pullens. In fact, let’s say any real leaders.

For the small independent agencies, who are often started by senior, experienced agency people who want to get back to the basics and see a better way, this is good news. Because you know what? Clients want that too. At least the good ones. They want people who think for their brand or business. Who have opinions and offer expertise. And know how to sell a brave idea.

I know which world I prefer.

Speaking as a seasoned copywriter, I like to think that on the whole I’m half decent at my craft. That I know how to string together a few words with the purpose of selling or persuading a reader on a brand or product. And quickly at that.

However, I can also honestly say that over the many years I’ve been applying my skills, I’ve probably written the odd line or two, under duress, which I wouldn’t want to own up to in the cold light of day.

The odd tacky slogan. And over enthusiastic promotional blurb. Or some rather boring corporate brochure waffle. I’m sure in this sense I’m not alone.

Sometimes, due to client demands or subjective viewpoints, what starts out as a good rational well-written piece can soon become convoluted piecemeal, patched together to address the ‘suggestions’ from the various parties with a vested interest.

In the interest of client relations, or motives of a financially driven nature, you do you best to accommodate, but it’s often only afterwards that you look at it and think ‘Did I write that?’ Yikes!

However, none of this can explain some of the absurd linguistic rubbish which is polluting the environment these days, and had me asking – how on earth did that get approved?

What group of people in their right minds could sit in a room and give it a smiling thumbs up before sending it out to be thrust upon an unsuspecting public who probably won’t even notice it because it’ll be buried within some poor excuse for a layout design amidst a buffet feast of similarly badly worded messages?

Some of what we don’t really see or notice day in day out is actually scary, if you pause to give it some rational examination.

Here are a few examples (I’m not naming names but they’ll know who they are even if you don’t):

Indulge in elegance – now what on earth does this mean? People can be elegant, yes. So can objects. Elegance we are even informed by another brand, is an attitude. But who indulges in elegance? We indulge in a tub of ice cream, in pampering ourselves, in excesses that we know are maybe not good for us. But how can you indulge in elegance? Bizarre.

Globally yours – this, for an airline. Actually I’ve always wanted to own an airline, like Sir Richard Branson, it looks cool. ‘I’ve got my own airline’. So, does this slogan mean that the airline advertised is mine? I was so excited when I saw it. No only that, I own it everywhere…the world over. Or are they trying to say something else?…

Quietly brilliant – now this was plastered on a gigantic billboard outdoors so I hardly call that quiet. If they want to say that the brand is brilliant…that the thinking and technology behind its products borders on genius (bit of a tall claim in today’s me-too world, wouldn’t you say? With the exception of one or two pioneering brands..not this one though) then fine. But the fact you are the spending advertising dollars announcing that makes the slogan a bit of an oxymoron..

Shaping timeless beauty – what??? How? We all know that ‘timeless beauty’ is up there with ‘the art of’ as one of the advertising cliches of all time, but how do you shape it? Something might be beautiful and have a timeless quality about it…but are we seriously meant to envisage a secret workshop somewhere where skilled craftsmen and women sit painstakingly ‘shaping timeless beauty..’? It’s a bit Harry Potter I must say.

Designed for humans – okay, this is for appliances and I think I know (putting my strategic hat on for a second) what they’re trying to say. They’re trying to say that most technology today is complicated and not suitable for normal people who are not techno-geeks. But for a start that’s an outdated territory because today’s gadgets are generally so simple even idiots who don’t bother reading instruction manuals (er..like me..) can usually just plug in and play. So it’s not exactly USP stuff. More than that, I have not seen too many cats and dogs wandering around with headphones on of late, or any giraffes having a chat on their handphones, so…it just sounds silly.

Of course it’s easy to criticise and I’m sure at some point I’ll be called upon to embarrass myself with some unintelligible waffle of my own sometime in the near future. I just hope and pray that it’s not on display in giant letters 50 feet above the ground next to the expressway.

Year: 2012

The great divide

Is copywriting all nonsense?