Looking for a New Year resolution and can’t be bothered to join a gym, quit smoking or go on a diet? Well, here’s a thought, how about for one year – just one year – you abstain from using clichéd business imagery. You know the ones: suited businessman inexplicably wearing boxing gloves/spikes or skateboarding, handshakes across the globe, bespectacled young lady trying to answer 15 phones at once while sporting a constipated grimace. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up such images as they’re as rampant in B2B as mega-watt smiles are in Colgate ads.
But when you step back and look, really look at them, their appropriateness soon fades and their complete absurdity manifests itself. Andy Hair, creative director of EHS Brahn Leeds, says, “They are impenetrable images that people can’t relate to. Why are they [the brand advertising] talking to me in this strange way?”
Why indeed?
Some may say that this has become the B2B marketer’s default way of doing things – ‘let’s do a new campaign, right let’s get an image’ and the whole creative is based around this vapid picture. Mickie Titterton, creative director of agency Meerkat Culture, recalls something a photographer said to him recently; “he said that the market is flooded with usage free imagery and I agree, companies are designing something around an image rather than a creative concept.”
So this year, if you’re committed to giving up the stock, you’ll have to do things a little differently. We’re not talking about exotic photo shoots or getting Vinnie Jones to endorse the product. It’s more about getting creative with the resources you have: data/insight and your brand. Then test the parameters – first prize goes to the company who gets a letter from the ASA.
Engaging the gatekeepers
So, you have already got a New Year resolution and you’re thinking ‘I don’t need this, anyway this is my year to crack search marketing’.
But consider this, good creative – unlike search – is straightforward: people like it or they don’t. There are no algorithms, keywords or page rankings to factor in. But then one could argue that creating cut-through is actually a science in itself.
When KPMG Consulting launched a multi-million pound e-Finance Solutions software package it had to get the message in front of the CEO, FD and head of IT. However between the two lay the PA, aka the ‘gatekeeper’.
David Harris, creative founder of Lida, the agency that executed the campaign, shares his insight on the PA.”They divide the post into the urgent pile, the personal file and the remainder – essentially what looks boring – goes in the bin pile. They make the decision [on what the FD/MD sees].” And, while the FD might love nothing better than to peruse a white paper stuffed into a manila detailing how much money he can save it will never happen because it wouldn’t make it past the bin pile.
Instead Lida sent each target’s PA a huge jar of sweets, anticipating that when the goodies created a stir at 11am, the FD/MD/CEO might be moved – like the rest of the office – to come over and ask, ‘Can I have one?’ Dipping into the jar of liquorice Allsorts the CTO may have read the simple message about how easy the system is to integrate, and the FD may have chuckled at the message on the jar of jellybeans ‘you’ve got more important things to do than count them’. The jar was accompanied with an invite to see a demonstration of the software and the sales target was beaten by 279 per cent.
Getting inside the target’s mind
Wooing the gatekeeper with a jar of Smarties is easy in comparison to cutting through the ubiquitous visual language of advertising. This is where knowing as much as you can about the target will make the difference, thus wowing them with what you know rather than what you got. Knowing that they are financial directors in construction companies is not enough; know all about them – their needs, their goals, their priorities, their constraints, their habits.
The latter may be a coffee habit as Hugh Bishop, chairman of Meteorite, discovered amongst the IT set. Working on a campaign raising awareness of Nokia’s Business One Server Meteorite had to engage the techies. Bishop, “We asked them ‘when do you stop and think?’ and found that it’s when they drink coffee. We sent them a sachet of Starbucks coffee and a mug along with all of the information so they could sit down and read and drink.” Though he wouldn’t dream of using this approach on the MD who’s main constraint is time: “Send him a postcard with an emotive front shot – they won’t read a brochure.”
Whether an image of an obese man with his head in a bowl of cornflakes counts as emotive is debatable but it certainly struck a chord with C-level executives in the UK’s FTSE top 200. American software provider Change Point charged Birddog with targeting the ‘chiefs’ but brought some of its own ideas to the creative briefing. Scot Mckee, MD of Birddog, remembers how the client planned to use images of oak boardroom tables, but he had other ideas. The creative team looked at the software, the audience and decided that the key message would be ‘pain relief’.
McKee explains, “With research we found that these people have big problems. Their issue is ‘how do I fix my company?’ They’re not interested in the latest piece of software, they want pain relief.” McKee felt – and evidently convinced the client – that this image represented how the target feels all the time and thus one they could relate to.
The campaign worked. Change Point’s awareness increased by 85 per cent in one week, whether that’s because the audience empathised with the visual or were just perversely engaged by the blubber we’ll never know.
This case is interesting because the client came to the agency with its own idea of how the message should look, yet the end result indicates what a long, long way they came from showing a boardroom table. Paul Tullo, creative director of TMW, points out, “We [agencies] have a creative department, not just a design department – it’s about creating an idea.” Let them create.
Simply product
You may have noticed there’s been very little mention of products and for good reason – they’re boring. So far, all of these campaigns have either engaged emotionally or physiologically. No case studies emerged where the audience was blown away by creative showing a printer – this style of advertising will only ever work for M&S food.
Mickie Titterton of Meerkat Culture, makes an analogy between the client’s misplaced predilection for showing the product as them being obsessed with the ‘sausage’ (ie. product) when it’s the ‘sizzle’ that sells. Identifying the sizzle means looking at all of the product features, combining this with audience insight and then working out what will excite the latter. Expect the interminable list of features to diminish rapidly but what you’re left with should be the killer hook that will engage the audience.
David Harris of Lida compares this process to talking about his children, “I’ve two children and I love them to death but I don’t want to bore people with every little detail – I’d rather recount a funny anecdote that will engage someone.”
Evoke the brand’s personality
Identifying the killer hook means you’re halfway there – the message is relevant – and all that’s left to do is execute it. So will it be tits or ass? Well, neither because the creative must reflect the brand. If you happen to be a porn producer distributing to the reseller the aforementioned is perfect. However, if you’re a bit more corporate, a bit of a more reliable-image type then maybe not.
Paul Burgess, group creative director at Loewy, advises, “Think about how you want to be perceived and project that through the creative.” It’s all about personality and in many respects it’s no different to the schoolyard or the nightclub. Burgess comments on the different ways brands get noticed: “Some shout louder than everyone else, others are more daring – they shout willies when the competition is still going on about boobs – while at the other end of the spectrum are the quiet, confident types who project a serene calmness.”
There are also the clever brands like The Economist who’s advertising is a private joke between it and the readers. The audience has to decode the message and this is crucial to its success. Jacqui Kean, brand marketing manager at The Economist, says, “The ad is saying something about the product, but also giving a reward to people who work it out, so they feel as if they are in a virtual club of Economist readers.”
Burgess adds that this form of humour is known as ‘smile in the mind’ in design circles. The joke is not immediately apparent – classic examples include ‘I never read The Economist…management trainee aged 42’ or ‘You can so tell the people who like don’t read The Economist’. The objective is to alienate those that don’t get it while creating empathy with those that do. Since the initial idea for the campaign was introduced by adman David Abbott 20 years ago, sales have increased from 70,000 to nearly 500,000.
Because it’s worth it
When you do something risky with creative it’s inevitable that some people will object. It may be a member of the board, or it could be 20 per cent of the target audience, but don’t let that rein you in. Mckee implores, “follow the objective vision of many opposed to the subjective vision of a few.” Burgess adds, “you risk losing that 20 per cent but the 80 per cent will be more on side – the bolder you are the more buy-in you get.”
A common thread links all of the campaigns cited – simplicity. With KPMG it was using the age-old tactic of distraction with a packet of sweets and with Change Point it was stripping the offering down to two words – no blurb, jargon or stats.
Veteran adman Nigel Bogle, co-founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, was recently quoted saying, “Advertising teaches you the best ideas are the simple ideas. I’m constantly saying to people ‘it’s too complicated’.” Getting to that simple idea requires a lot of work: it means knowing the offering inside out, knowing almost classified information about your target and then honing all of this to create the best execution. A slightly more challenging task than clicking into Getty and purchasing a shot of a laptop but one that should pay-off. Stuart Woodington, creative director of Presky Maves, concludes, “say no to handshakes and f-off to laptops.”
Make this your marketing mantra for 2006.