Knee-Jerk Thinking

 You know when you go to the doctor and he checks your responses? He gets out a little rubber hammer, taps your knee, and your legs flies up in the air. This is called a knee-jerk response.

Amazingly, this is how most people in our business think advertising works.You run a good ad, sales fly up. You run a bad ad, they don’t. No one thinks there might be other factors having just the teensiest-eentsiest little effect on sales.

Like maybe pricing, or product-quality, or distribution, or customer service, or seasonability, or availability. No, none of those trivial little things have anything to do with whether a product or brand sells or not. The only thing that can affect sales is advertising.

Good ad: up.  Bad ad: down.

Personally I think this is not so much a knee-jerk response as a jerk response. There are so many factors effecting sales, the real question is
how and where can advertising help. Advertising can’t do the whole job from factory to consumer on its own.

So precisely how and where should we use it? As always, it depends. We can’t go on auto-pilot. We have to reinvent the wheel every time. Here’s an example.
We got a premium beer account: Marstons Pedigree. Sales were falling so we started with the basics: the product. We found out that Marstons Pedigree is the only beer in the UK that’s still brewed in wood. Isn’t that a fantastic story?

Apparently the yeast they use is too delicate for the large metal  vats that most brewers use, so it’s brewed in a network of smaller wooden barrels.What a great fact.
So we did a TV campaign about it being the only beer that’s brewed in wood. We shot it with Paul Arden, it looked great. But when the ads ran, sales still kept going down. I thought, this can’t be right. We’ve got a great proposition, lovely commercials, why haven’t sales gone up?

Then a lightbulb went on in my head. I thought, how do people actually buy beer? If I persuade someone that Marstons pedigree is a better beer, do they
walk the streets searching for a pub that sells it? No, of course not. First they choose the pub, because their mates are there, and they’ll have a good time.
Then they choose from whatever beer is available in that pub. Roughly speaking, there will usually be about five fonts on the bar. Two lager fonts: a cheap one and a premium one. Two bitter fonts: a cheap one and a premium one. And a stout font (usually Guinness).

So they’ll make their choice from what’s available. Which means the issue isn’t talking the drinker into WANTING our beer. The issue is talking the landlord into STOCKING our beer. So the advertising is actually a trade campaign disguised as a consumer campaign.

We need to use the advertising to support the sales force. The sales force are the guys who are traipsing around pubs all day. Trying to tell the landlords why they should take the London Pride font off the bar, and put a Marstons Pedigree font on the bar instead.  And the problem with TV advertising for beer is what? Obviously the landlord isn’t watching TV, he’s busy working in the pub. So what medium could we use that would get to the landlord? What medium would convince the landlord that his regulars want Marstons Pedigree?

Well the landlord has to walk to and from his pub. And all his regulars have to walk to and from his pub. So how about if we change the media from a TV campaign to a poster campaign? Then we could run the ads in the streets all around the pubs we’re targeting. Not only will the landlord see tons of advertising, but he knows all his regulars will too.

So that’s what we did. We changed the media, and the sales force began to get more pubs stocking Marstons Pedigree. So sales went up.Not because of how good the ads were. But because of where they ran. Not because we made consumers trudge the streets looking for our brand. But because we helped the sales force sell it in.

So it was available where customers were drinking. We didn’t use knee-jerk thinking. We used our loaf. We worked out how to take advantage of the situation that existed. Rather than just carrying on thinking advertising is always the only factor responsible for sales.

There’s a lot more going on in the world than just advertising. If we realise that, we've got a much better chance of being effective.

Semiwhatics?

One day, years ago, my Uncle Mick said to me: “How’s your advertising agency going, Dave?” It was GGT at the time, and I said: “Yeah, it’s going great Uncle Mick.”

He said: “What are the blokes you work with like?” I said: “They’re brilliant. There are guys from: Yorkshire, Manchester, Newcastle, all over the country.” He said: “You all get on okay?” I said: “Yeah, they’re a good laugh. Except they make fun of my accent.”

Uncle Mick was shocked. In broadest cockney, he said: “But you ain’t got no accent. You talk normal like what the rest of us do.” And I realised, it’s all comparative.

Uncle Mick, all my family in fact, had lived their whole lives where everyone spoke like them. So, because there was no comparison, effectively there were no accents.

For a thing to exist as an entity it has to be defined by that around it which isn’t it. Freud calls this the move from Id to Ego. When we’re born, all we know is consciousness. We don’t know some of the things we experience are us, and some aren’t. Gradually we learn that we are defined by the skin that surrounds our body.

Anything inside that skin boundary is us. Anything outside it isn’t us. Talking about skin and identity, I’ve talked to some of my black-British friends about this.

They say that when they grew up they just felt black. Because that’s what made them different, so that was what defined them. The first time they left the country and went abroad, they felt British. Because, in that situation, that was what made them different and defined them.

If no one ever tells you you’re different, you never know. I never knew a lot of the language I grew up speaking was slang. It was just language.

The first time this happened to me, I went for a job interview in the West End. I put on a suit and tie and shined my shoes. At the end of the interview the man asked me if I had any questions. Trying to sound like the posh people on the telly, I said, “Can I just have a butcher’s at the contract please?”

It wasn’t until years later I read a book called “Cockney Rhyming Slang”. I found out “butchers” was short for “butcher’s hook” which meant “to look”. I didn’t know it was slang. Where I grew up it was just language. It can get confusing.

Gordon Smith and I once had a PA, an amazingly posh (I was going to write ‘bird’ but she was too posh) woman called Nicola Jane. Nicola Jane had been to finishing school in Switzerland.  It was like having Penelope Keith sitting at a desk just outside our office.

She was trying to learn the way Gordon and I talked, because I’m sure she thought it was technical language. I heard her on the phone to the garage one day, enquiring about Gordon's car. In a cut-glass accent she said, “Mr Smith wants to know what time his jam-jar will be ready.”

And that’s language. Semiotics if you like. Symbols that are strung together to convey a meaning between people. Defined by what works. Not just by a set of rules. It’s not enough to speak correctly. To communicate you need to be heard correctly.

The first dictionary didn’t even exist until 100 years after Shakespeare finished writing his plays. In (I think) ‘King Lear’ one word is spelled three different ways in different parts of the play. What do you reckon, if Shakespeare had had a dictionary his plays might have been better?

What a shame he didn’t know how to write better English. And how strange that our greatest ever writer did it all before the books came out
with all the rules in. But you see what happens. First we have the great exciting creative revolution. Then someone comes along, analyses it, makes up rules about, and kills everything stone dead.

Because now everyone’s learning the rules, and measuring everything against the rules. Instead of doing whatever it takes to get the effect you want. Now following the rules matters more that getting a result. Because there are lots of awards for people who can follow the rules. And it’s all very slick and professional.

But somehow it’s hollow, and it’s not for ordinary people anymore. Somehow the fun’s gone out of it. Sound familiar?

Where's the advertising in online advertising?

(I've copied and pasted this from a great blog.It's full of radical common sense because it's written by a guy from Brooklyn.)

I have an odd thought about online advertising. What if there's no such thing? What if it's really a whole lot of other things? Let's start at the beginning. In TV, radio or magazines, product marketing is primarily one thing -- ads. Sure, there is some product placement and some pr, but 98% of the "marketing content" is ads.

On the web, it's different. There are social media. There are sites and viral videos. There are banners. There is search. Marketers lump this all together and call it "online advertising" -- but I'm not sure any of it is advertising.

Websites are more like brochures than ads. Social media is closer to pr than it is to advertising. Viral videos are more like guerilla tactics and wild postings than ads. Search is closer to a yellow pages listing than it is to an ad. A banner is more like a direct mail piece than an ad.

So where's the advertising in online advertising? Maybe what we're calling "online advertising" is really pr, sales promotion, listings, direct response and guerilla tactics, and just about every form of marketing- communication except advertising. And maybe we've got the model all wrong.

When this whole thing started, we had stand-alone online agencies. Now online is integrated into the fabric of most agencies.
But what if both these models are wrong? What if social media would be done better by pr shops? What if websites were created by sales promotion agencies? What if banners were done by direct response agencies?

What if the key competence isn't knowledge of the medium, but knowledge of the discipline? Of course, the correct answer is that the key competence is neither of these. The key competence is creativity. The work will go where the creativity is, whether we call it "advertising" or anything else.

 


 

The punters have been left out of the loop

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, reading the Saturday paper. At the same time, I’m on the laptop checking for emails. At the same time, I’ve got the radio on in the background. At the same time, my wife is talking to me.

SFX: Ring ring….ring ring……
Me: “Hello?”
Voice: “Hellothisisvishnaspeakingfromthenhshealthtrustincamdenwouldyoube
willingtoanswerafewquestions?”
Me: “Sorry I didn’t get that.”
Voice:“Thisisvishnaspeakingfromthenhshealthtrustincamdenwouldyoubewilling
toanswerafewquestions?”
Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Could you say it again more
slowly please?”
Voice: “(Sigh) This is Vishna speaking from the NHS Health Trust in Camden.
Would you be willing to answer a few questions please?”
Me: “Oh hello Vishna. Sure, okay, go ahead.”

And we start going through the telephone survey. Notice how much time was wasted. Hethoughthewasbeingefficientbysayingeverythingasfastashecouldwithoutleavinga gapforbreathorpunctuation. (He thought he was being efficient, by saying everything as fast as he could, without leaving a gap for breath or punctuation.)

Theproblemwiththatisyouhavetosayeverythingtwicebecausethatsnothowordinarypeopletalk. (The problem with that is you have to say everything twice, because that’s not how ordinary people talk.)

Youshouldconcentrateontheeffectivenessofthewayyou’rebeingheardratherthanjustontheefficiencyofthewayyou’respeaking. (You should concentrate on the effectiveness of the way you’re being heard, rather than just on the efficiency of the way you’re speaking.)

It’s literally a waste of time.In our terms, a waste of media. But that’s how it is. Everyone is on broadcast rather than receive.

Agencies and clients only think of how they want themselves to be seen. Rather than on what the consumer will take out of it. I’m sure that in his call-centre training room Vishna got a very good grade for his phone communication skills.

Everyone was quiet, everyone knew the script he was going to deliver. It was just a matter of getting it all out as fast as possible with no mistakes.  That’s a little different to the way it works in real life.

But it’s just like advertising. Where everyone sits in the meeting room waiting for the first showing of the finished ad. They all know the script. They’ve all been to the pre-production meeting. They’ve all seen the animatic. They’ve all seen the rough cut.

They’ve all heard the suggested music track and approved the voice over. Now they’re dying to see what great little subtle touches the director has added. How he’s moved the idea on.

“Has everyone got teas and coffees? Okay, all ready? We’ll play it straight through, three times, and then we’ll discuss it.”

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the environment it’s got to work in? Where everyone will be sitting on the ege of their sofas, carefully watching the TV, waiting for the ad, so they can discuss the subtleties of the cut?

It doesn’t? Well I’m shocked. But then maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that all those subtle little award winning pieces of film don’t cut through in the ordinary environment.

Maybe that’s why they have to have two or three times the amount of media spent on  them to be effective. Just the way the call-centre monologue takes three times more airtime to get its message across.

Do you suppose that could be the reason most advertising works about as well as a call  centre monologue? Do you suppose it could be that most advertising is only done for other people that work in advertising to judge?

Not for ordinary people. Just the way most call-centre operators learn to speak the way other call-centre operators speak? Not the way ordinary people speak.

See, here’s what I think. I think the ordinary people, the punters, the consumers, with their dull grubby little uninteresting lives, have been left out of the loop.

Andy McNab on Advertising

I was talking to a class of about 30 students from Newcastle the other night. They were very quiet, as most students are nowadays.

They were waiting for me to tell them the right way to do advertising. They’d probably seen half a dozen other creative directors on their trip
down to London. I’m sure everyone had given them their version of the right way to do advertising.

The students thought all they had to do was listen. So they sat there listening. No one said a word. Everyone was too bored or frightened to speak.

And it was dull. Dull for them. Dull for me.

I tried to make the point that learning isn’t passive, it’s active. You can’t learn just by listening to someone else.

Mark McCormack, the sports agent, wrote a book about his profession: 'What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School'.
Someone said to him, “Yeah, but you’re not going to give away any of your real  secrets in your book are you?”

McCormack said, “Put it this way. Jack Nicklaus could tell you everything he’s ever learned about golf. Then he could still take you on any golf course
and whip your ass.” Making the point that you don’t get great just by listening to other people.

So having another dull class wouldn’t work. And also, being dull isn’t a good start for their chosen career.
Dull doesn’t work in advertising.

As Bill Bernbach said: “Hard sell may not always drive out soft sell.
But in advertising, as in life, the energetic always displaces the passive.”

So I talked about energy, and being outrageous. I talked about the fun and excitement of being outrageous.
The rush of doing something you’re not supposed to do, and getting away with it.

I told them, for me, that’s what great advertising was about.All the people I really admired: Bill Bernbach, George Lois, Charlie Saatchi,
Paul Arden, and Ed McCabe were the outrageous ones.

I asked them if they’d ever done anything outrageous. One guy said he’d been expelled from school.
I asked what for. He said he hated his teacher, and his teacher loved his tree.

So he’d burnt his tree down. Well fair enough, that’s outrageous, so it’s a start point.
The problem is it doesn’t really have a purpose. It’s undirected outrageousness. Better to take that rebellious energy and put it to a purpose. Like Andy McNab.

He was growing up to be a violent criminal in South London. He says that if he hadn’t found the army, and the SAS, he would certainly have ended up in prison.
But the special forces gave him a direction for that energy. He stopped being violent for no reason. He began to control it and it gave him two very successful careers.

One in the special forces, and one as an author. So if we can find a natural rebelliousness within ourselves.
(And presumably that’s why we went to art school.) If we can harness that, we have an energy that we can turn into something useful.

Something exciting and different. We can be outrageous to a purpose. That, for me, is great advertising.

The creative map

One of the greatest pieces of visual communication is the London tube map. I never really appreciated it until I was taught about it, at art school in New York.

Cities the world over copy the basic principles of this design. New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Singapore. And yet I grew up with it, so I never thought anything of it.

What’s so good about it, it’s just a map? Well no actually, it isn’t. It’s not a map. The routes that the tube lines follow, bear no relationship to where they actually go.

The distances bear no resemblance to reality either. Even the Thames isn’t that shape in real life. According to this ‘map’ every tube line is perfectly straight or smoothly curved. And every line goes either vertically, horizontally, or 45 degrees. No variaton.

Now of course that isn’t anything like the reality. If you’ve ever seen a map of the actual tube lines, it’s like a cross between
a spider’s web and a cracked windscreen. But the man who designed this map wasn’t a cartographer. He wasn’t even a graphic designer. He was a draughtsman, called Harry Beck.

So he didn’t do a map, or an attractive layout. He did a wiring diagram. If you’ve ever tried to trace the electrics on a car you’ll know what I mean.

The diagram doesn’t show you an accurate drawing of the route of the wire. It shows you a start point at (say) the battery.
Then a straight line to the end point at (say) a bulb. You don’t need a map, you go to the car and trace the actual route yourself. That’s how the tube ‘map’ works.

You’re underground, everything is identical: just a tunnel. It doesn’t matter what’s going on above. You need to know the start point, and the finish point. In the simplest possible way. What an absolutely stunningly brilliant piece of thinking.

The tube map isn’t a map. It’s a wiring diagram. Before he did it, it was a ridiculous thing to even suggest. Since he did it, everyone in the world copied it. Isn’t that a great lesson for us?

People can’t agree with a great thought before it’s done. Because, if it’s a great thought, it breaks the rules. And you can’t agree that breaking the rules makes sense because it doesn’t.

Following the rules makes sense. That’s why we have rules. Breaking the rules won’t work. Until it does. Then everyone can agree.

And, of course, it’s the same in advertising. Breaking the rules won’t get any agreement. If you ask for permission you won’t get it. But once you break the rules, and it works, people can see it makes sense. Then that becomes part of the new rules.
Which can’t be broken. That’s how it goes.

If you wait for permission, you’ll never get into trouble. You can’t be wrong, but you can’t do anything truly exciting either.
Helmut Krone was one of the greatest art directors ever. He did two of the all-time best advertising campaigns. He said, “If you can look at something and say ‘I like it’ then it isn’t new.”

Don't win an account, create one

One of the best things we did at GGT was the LWT poster campaign. It ran for several years and we did over 70 posters, at the rate of one a week. It won gold awards several year’s running.

It was a really creative campaign. But most of the creativity didn’t come from the creative department. Most of it came from the media department.

It started with Mike Gold, our media director watching News at Ten. At that time China was shut off from the rest of the world.
The only news the Chinese people got was government press releases. These would be posted on the spot on a particular wall, at the same time every week. People would stand by the old poster waiting for the new one to be pasted over it.

Goldie thought this would be a great idea for 48 sheet posters in London. If we kept the same spot, but changed the poster every week, people would look out for it.

In those days you could print a black and white poster in a week. But it took six weeks to print and change a full colour poster. And the client wanted their logo in red and blue.

So how could we print a colour poster every week? We figured we could pre-print lots of posters, with colour logos around the border, and store them in a warehouse.

Then, as we needed them, just print a black and white picture in the middle. We’d effectively get a colour poster in only a week. So that’s what we did.

Every week we would pick the hottest news story and do a poster about it. Like the cover of Private Eye.
It was so unusual and topical we got coverage in all the news media. The posters often ran as stories in The Sun.

But you know what the cleverest thing of all about it was for me? We never had the account. The LWT account was at an agency called TCB. It had been there years and they didn’t want to move it.

So Mike Gold took the LWT client, Ron Miller, to lunch. He said, “You know all that money you spend on your trade ads in Campaign? Trying to talk agency media departments into putting their advertising on LWT?”

Here’s a much better idea.  Don’t do those trade ads in the trade press. Put that trade advertising money on posters instead. We’ll run really exciting posters that change every week. Everyone will be talking about it, and LWT will seem like a more exciting place for agencies to run their commercials.”

Ron Miller said, “I like it, but I can’t afford a poster campaign.” Goldie said, “We’ll only buy the posters next to advertising agencies. No one will notice, they’ll think it’s a consumer campaign running everywhere. And it won’t cost anymore than the ads you’re currently running in the trade press.”

So that’s what happened. The LWT campaign won loads of awards. Everyone in advertising was talking about it. Media departments began to shift their advertising into LWT. And nobody knew it was a trade campaign. And nobody spotted that we didn’t even have the LWT account.

The creative department won a lot of awards. But actually it should have been the media department that picked them up.
Actually it should have been Goldie.

The Budweiser theory

Budweiser got to be the biggest-selling beer in the USA by being everyone’s second choice.

How it worked was like this. I’d take the station-wagon to the supermarket on Saturday. Being a bloke, I need to stock up on beer for the week ahead. My favourite beer is Pabst, so I get a case of that.

But Pabst is a bit too malty for some people. So I’d better get a case of Budweiser as well, in case any guests come
round. Budweiser is quite bland, it’s no one’s favourite, but nobody objects.

At the same time, across town, you go to the supermarket. You’re stocking up for the game on TV, so you get a case of your
favourite beer: Rheingold. But Rheingold is a bit too gassy for some people. So you’d better get a case of Budweiser as well, for guests.

Now the net result of that? Your favourite beer sold one case. My favourite beer sold one case. Everyone’s second choice sold two cases.

The cake manufacturer, Sara Lee, also built a huge brand using the  Budweiser Principle. Sara Lee are perfectly pleasant, slightly bland, pastries that no one would object to.

So they made that their campaign. “Everybody doesn’t like something. But nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee”. The commercials would feature people missing a bus, or getting caught in the rain, or stuck in traffic.

But cheering up when they got some Sara Lee. It makes a clear positive out of being the thing that no one objects to.

That was how John Major ended up as Prime Minister. Michael Heseltine had managed to get rid of Maggie Thatcher, thinking
he would be the next PM.  Thatcher and her followers would die before they’d let him have the job.

They had to find someone, anyone, else. All that was available was a seemingly pleasant nonentity, who had nothing much going for him, but nothing against him either.

He wasn’t anyone’s first choice. But he had one very attractive feature: he wasn’t Michael Heseltine. Unsurprisingly this is how a lot of things in life work.

Take awards for instance. Truly powerful ads may turn off as many people as they turn on. You and I may disagree violently.
I hate the ads you love and I won’t vote for that, ever.

You feel the same about the stuff I love. But there’s another campaign that neither of us mind. We don’t love it, but we don’t hate it. And we each prefer it to the other’s favourite campaign. It’s a compromise we can both live with. And so, sometimes, that’s what wins the award.

Basic Gestalt

Hold up four fingers on one hand. How does your mind organize that? One group of four, right? Now hold up three fingers on one hand and one finger on the other. How does your mind organize that?

Two groups, right? One of three, and one of one. Notice, in each case, your mind doesn’t organize it into four separate fingers. What your mind does is form things into groups. So it can handle them more easily. That’s a very basic form of Gestalt.

That’s how the mind works, forming things into groups. So what use is that to us? Well, once you know the mind forms things into groups, you know what’s going to happen to your advert. If it’s anything like any other ads, it’s going to get formed into a group with them.  So instead of being an advert on its own, it just becomes part of a larger group of adverts.

And that’s what happens to most advertising. It looks similar, so it all just gets lumped together. These are the numbers.
4% of advertising is remembered positively. 7% is remembered negatively. 89% isn’t noticed or remembered. Because 89% of it all looks roughly similar, so it all just gets lumped together. And, once you get lumped together, you’re dead. You may as well have kept your money in your pocket.

Last year £18.3 billion was spent on all forms of advertising and marketing. £16.2 billion of that wasn’t even noticed. It’s better to be in the 7% that gets remembered negatively, than the 89% that doesn’t even get noticed. At least the negative stuff was noticed, so it has a chance of working.

Faris Yakob is a very interesting new-media guru. He said, “In a world of over-supply, differentiation is everything.” In other words, standing out is the most important thing you can do. But hang on, I thought that was old advertising thinking. I thought interruption was the old fashioned model. I thought nowadays empathy was everything. But no, there it, “…differentiation is everything.” 

Bad news for the £16.2 billion that thought empathy was everything. How I explain Gestalt to students is like this. Here’s a brain and imagine it’s got 19 black letter Xs in it. Then you come along and add your black letter X. Yours is now one of twenty, so you’ve got a 5% share of mind. But supposing instead of a black letter X, you add a red letter O. Now yours doesn’t look anything like the other 19. So what the brain does straight away is organise all the letters into two seperate groups.

One group of black letter Xs. And one group of red letter Os. Each group now gets 50% the brain’s attention. And, since you’re the only one in the red letter O group, you get 50% to yourself. So, simply by being different from everything else, simply by refusing to allow the brain to group you with the rest, you increased your share of mind tenfold. You went from 5% to 50%. That’s basic gestalt. It can save your advertising being part of the £16.2 billion that isn’t noticed or remembered. Now on it’s own, of course, that’s not enough. But it’s not a bad start.

Same side, different priorities

John Webster, BMP’s creative  director, was really pissed off. He’d just had a huge row with Stanley Pollitt over a TV campaign.

John  said, “Bloody planners: you don’t understand what it’s like being creative. We give birth to a tiny little baby.
We nurture it, help it grow, prepare it so it looks its best. Then, when we’ve done absolutely everything we can do to make it as perfect as possible, we lay it in front of you. And what do you do? You stamp all over it in bloody great boots and kill it.”
And Stanley said, “That’s because to us John, it looks like a tarantula.”

I think that sums it up. Everyone’s doing their job, we just see our jobs differently. It reminds me of the armed forces.
The Air force, the Army, and the Navy are fiercely competitive with one another. But ultimately we’re on the same side.

When I was a junior creative at BMP, the managing director David Batterby, explained it to me as being like a rugby match.
He said, “When we’re in the middle of a game, we need to win.  And if you’re in my way, even if you’re on my side, I’ll step all over you to get the ball across the line. Then after the game, when we’ve won, I’ll apologise, and we can all be friends again.”
Of course there will always be different agendas for the different disciplines.

But a lot of these problems go away if we’re clear up front what the overall agency agenda is. In the old days at Saatchi, they apparently had a simple way of deciding which clients to take. They said, “Every client has to have one of two things. Either we have to be making money, or we have to be doing great work. If we’re not doing either of those things, we don’t want it.”
I think those are great criteria.

If we’re clear about that we can do the right work for the right client. I think it also helps to understand what each department’s criteria are for their own job. Account handling basically wants to keep the client happy. Their job is to protect the income.

Without the client you aren’t going to be doing any ads.

Without the income you aren’t going to have an agency.

So that’s the most valid criteria of all. Planning basically wants to protect the brand. Their job is strategy, to have a plan of where everything’s going. And consumer feedback, making sure what’s being done works with the people who’ll be parting with the cash.

Obviously very valid criteria. Creative basically wants to win awards. They want to do ads that get as much publicity as possible. Because 90% of advertising doesn’t get noticed and, if no one notices the ads, they can’t possibly work.
So standout and impact are obviously crucial.

All of these are laudable. But no single one, on its own, is the holy grail of advertising. In different circumstances, each of these is a perfectly valid criteria for what we do. It only goes wrong when you don’t honestly establish the criteria before you start. If we know and agree what we’re doing, we can all work towards it. If we don’t, we’re all working towards different ends.

And that’s when creative’s baby becomes planning’s tarantula.

"The wise man knows he doesn't know. the fool doesn't know he doesn't know." (Lao Tzu)

There are some great talks on ted.com.One of my favourites is by Sir Ken Robinson. He’s an educational guru, and he gives a talk called, “Is Education Killing Creativity”. The most touching part comes at the end.

He talks about a little girl who was very disruptive at school. In class she was always chattering, moving about, fidgeting.
She’d had to move school several times because of this problem. One day her mother was at her wit’s end when the headmaster called her in.

She sat with her daughter in his office waiting for the inevitable litany of reasons why he couldn’t have his daughter at his school. Waiting for him to suggest medical treatment: drugs that would calm her down and make her behave. But this headmaster didn’t do any of that.

He said to the girl, “Your mother and I are just popping outside for a chat. We won’t be long.”

Then he got up to leave, but he turned the radio on before he did. Outside the room he said to the mother, “Just watch this for a moment.” And they looked through a little window at the girl. At first she sat there, listening to the music on the radio.
Then she started tapping her feet, Then she stood up and began moving, swaying to and fro. Then she began moving rhythmically all around the room.

The headmaster turned to her mother and said, “Look, you haven’t got an unruly child, you’ve got a dancer. She needs a school that caters for her talent.” And that’s what happened. The mother put the little girl in dance school. For the first time in her life, she was with children like her, and she fitted in. First she became a ballet dancer, then eventually a famous choreographer.

And now she is worth millions, and arranges all Andrew Lloyd Webber’s productions. All because one headmaster saw an opportunity where everyone else only saw a problem. Because he wasn’t trying to make her fit the norm. He wanted to celebrate what made her different.

Not to perform down to the level of everyone else, but to maximize her uniqueness. When I went to school in England, it was all about finding out what you were bad at, and concentrating on making you better at it.

When I went to college in New York, it was all about finding out what you were good at, and making you great at it.
The first system sees being different as a problem.

The second system sees being different as an opportunity. Finding a way to turn it into an advantage.
Another word for it would be creativity. Isn’t that what we ought to be doing? Not fitting in with everyone’s perception of advertising but standing out from it. Not being frightened of being different, but celebrating it.

The numbers are: in the UK last year £18.3 billion was spent on all forms of advertising and marketing communication.
Of that, 4% was remembered positively, 7% was remembered negatively. But the really shocking fact is that 89% wasn’t noticed or remembered.

Peter Wood founded Direct Line, and then founded eSure. A few months back I asked him if he wasn’t embarrassed that his Michael Winner ads had been voted ‘the most irritating ads on TV’. He said, “Before you ask me that, ask me what they did for my business.” That’s a man who understands the first job of advertising is to make sure you’re not part of the 89%.