Dan Douglass on direct

Dan Douglass

Fewer than one in 5 conventional ad campaigns now has any effect on brands or sales. Unsurprisingly. As John Naish writes in 'Enough' , 'we are bombarded with up to 3,500 sales shots each day, or one every 15 seconds of our waking lives... And more new information has been produced within the past 30 years than in the previous 5,000'. So we planners and creatives are not just about promoting our brands, but mitigating communication fatigue. Given this responsibility, please tell me why it is that, in the vast majority of cases, you can recall the campaign creative but not the brand? Scenario one: Man pulls up on a road in his car, gets out, pulls down (or pulls up?) a new backdrop and drives on into a new horizon. Scenario two: Man explains the birds and the bees to his son as he drives along - we can't hear what he's saying but his body language is pretty direct. The gag? When his son asked him where he's come from, he's talking geography not biology. Scenario three. Buildings anthropomorphize, trying to swat and block the passage of a car through the city. But the car is so agile that it evades all the obstacles put in its way. Can you actually recall the brand in any of these scenarios - all of which involve sizable production budgets, hefty production values multi-locations and mega peak-time media spend? If, like me, the answer is 'no', then it's insane. Because it means that agencies are serially failing. Yet I know that a car racing a jet is Saab, I know that a car made as a cake is Skoda, I know that no car and a choir is Honda. I recall the brands because the creative embraces a core brand truth and a strong idea that aids comprehension. And comprehension should be the North Star of any campaign. Message to creatives - aim for the star and you'll reach the moon, aim to deliver comprehension and you'll not only deliver awareness, you'll deliver sales into the bargain.