Last week Russell Davies, former global planning director of Nike and former head of planning at Wieden + Kennedy, was a presenter at the DigitalAge Conference in Istanbul. Because some of my friends have spoken highly of Russell’s thinking, I dropped by with MB colleague Joseph Ciprut to hear him speak. Russell did raise some important and challenging issues in his presentation, but some of what I heard made me wonder whether many of his ideas were simply designed to promote creativity at the expense of the media budget.
The conference, organized by MediaCat and sponsored by MSN, was reasonably well attended and the audience seemed appreciative of Russell’s presentation. Indeed, many of the points he made were incontestable. For instance, who would argue with his assertion that the world of marketing today is getting increasingly “blurry,” or that “brands must seek to be interesting and/or useful”?
So when it comes to the big picture, I agreed with most of the points Russell made. But the various examples he cited, while highly creative, did not hang together for me as the basis of a coherent engagement strategy. And a few things he said just didn’t ring true.
For example, one of his opening statements was “The future of marketing is to get above-the-line costs down to zero.”
To back up this point, Russell used the famous YouTube video titled “A Comcast Technician Sleeping on My Couch” as an example of how consumers are using the tools of advertising against brands. He stated “Everyone gets equal status online.”
Sorry Russell, I can’t agree. What everyone gets is an equal opportunity to have their say online. Whether people actually take any notice and engage with the content is a completely different matter. Most brands have no hope of ever reducing their above-the-line marketing costs to zero, because there are not enough people who want to seek these brands out or talk about them. A growing body of evidence suggests that viral alone cannot hope to build any brand, even one that’s strong, interesting and relevant. (See my previous post on this subject here.) Whether we like it or not, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like many people, Russell seems to have let his dedication to creative and engaging marketing deprive him of his sense of scale. Is it really enough that a minority of potential brand buyers engages with the most compelling content? Should there not be a strategy in place to engage everyone who might buy the brand?
For instance, I believe I heard Russell say that the wonderful two-minute “Cog” ad for Honda burnt through its allotted media budget so fast that it was only on air for a few weeks. There is absolutely no doubt that it is a great ad, but how many of the target audience actually saw it (as opposed to all the marketers exposed to it at conferences)? According to Russell, most people have only seen the ad because someone in the United States liked it so much they uploaded it to a server for free. It was very nice of that person, to be sure, but a compelling media strategy cannot be built on random acts of kindness.
Now, I totally agree with the following statement (which I think I managed to capture correctly):
“What people want is depth, humor, irony, anger, romance, drama, involvement.”
That has been true since the dawn of time. That’s why people always appreciate a great story.
But Russell then stated, “No one ever comes out of a movie saying that was great—it was really clear.” True–I have never heard anyone say that. But I have heard many people come out of a movie saying they hated it because they had no clue what it was about. It’s fine to set up a complex web of feelings in an ad, including mystery, tension, and even some negative emotions, but these must be resolved in such a way that people feel moved, not confused. (Click here to see my previous post on this topic.) Confusion is much more likely to put people off a brand than to attract them.
And while we are on the subject of confusion, I wonder if I’m confused about something myself. I could have sworn that Russell said that Honda’s cartoon ad for their new diesel engine was successful because it used negative emotions, specifically “hate.” But what’s negative about it? Though built around the word “hate,” the song and the ad are playful. I’ll bet the vast majority of people see that ad as an entertaining and amusing analogy–about as far removed from hate as engagement is from complete boredom.
Finally, Russell believes brands need to be “always in beta.” Taking a lesson from online brands, he recommends doing things quickly and not worrying about the consequences. The logic behind this approach is that the more tries you have at something, the more likely you are to succeed.
No doubt this is music to the ears of many creatives, but it’s anathema to CFOs. Unless you want to see your marketing funds disappear into the sales promotion budget, I’d suggest you ignore Russell’s advice. Besides, marketing does not happen in a vacuum. What happens to all the unsuccessful attempts to engage people? Do they put people off the brand? Do they give the competition another chance to win people over? By all means create hundreds of ideas, but test them before you commit money to production.
Russell would no doubt disagree with me on that one. He showed video of young people’s faces watching a Nike basketball ad to demonstrate that the ad engaged and moved them even though it didn’t have any explicit message. He said “You can’t test this with traditional market research.” But if they felt the emotion so much that it was obvious from their expressions, I say they could certainly have described those emotions after the event.
As Kenneth Cole said at the Marka conference later last week, “Content is everything – except it fails when the context is wrong.” I could not help feeling that many of the examples of creative marketing Russell used to justify his beliefs fell foul of not considering the wider context. The creative, while powerful, lacked a proper strategy for dissemination. Thus it was less effective than it might have been.
Random acts of kindness certainly do make the world a better place. Random acts of creativity, however, are not enough to build a strong brand. Russell’s examples placed too much emphasis on creativity alone without enough consideration of how to get that creativity in front of the target audience. This may have been more by accident than design but it still leaves what I believe to be the wrong impression.
As Russell himself pointed out, most people are only really passionate about two or three brands. But how many do they buy in the course of a year? Hundreds. If you choose to rely on your customers to create and disseminate your marketing for you, your brand will be subject to the vagaries of their interests, whims, and short attention spans.
Therefore, most marketers need a coherent plan to ensure that people will engage with their brands at every step along the path to purchase. Creativity, while a key ingredient in the marketing process, cannot be the only one.
Tags: Millward Brown, Nigel Hollis, Russell Davies, creativity, viral communication, consumer generated content, Honda Cog
(33 votes, average: 3.09 out of 5)
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December 18th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Hello Nigel, Another interesting post, but how exactly does one “drop by” a conference in Istanbul? On my map, this place is a long way off the camel trail! Best wishes for all the holidays! Mike
December 18th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Hi Mike, you do have to be in Istanbul to start with and Joseph was kind enough to organize it. Cheers, Nigel
December 18th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Hi Nigel,
Russell sounds more like a creative director than a creative planner. The world he is imagining is “imaginary”.
The brands would need mainline advertising as viral is not going to replace advertising ever.
You are absolutely right when you say that creativity can be appreciated when it’s seen. The virals are not going to get you there.
From an extremely creative oriented agency, we shouldn’t be expecting something else?
December 19th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Although I wasn’t there, I’ve read a lot of what Russell’s written in the past. And I suspect that some of what he was doing (and what you yourself like to do, Nigel!) was taking up a deliberately extreme position. Or, as one of my clients used to like to say ‘overmaking the point to make the point’. Amongst other things, it’s a good way of actually creating the hundreds of ideas you talk about.
If you’re charged with creating something new, setting yourself an extreme challenge is one of the best ways of forcing yourself out of an established way of thinking. I personally like the idea of trying to reduce your media budget to zero. You’ll almost certainly never achieve it. But if you HAD to do it, wouldn’t you go about things differently? Wouldn’t it force you to consider some routes that a ‘business as usual’ approach would never throw up?
Sometimes it’s good to imagine yourself into a new place and work backwards to see how you might have got there. You never know, you might just make it…
December 19th, 2007 at 7:30 am
“Taking a lesson from online brands, he recommends doing things quickly and not worrying about the consequences.” As a creative guy, I think this is a ridiculous approach. The fact that new media opportunities are popping up everyday isn’t a reason to use them. At our little company, we’re about to try using Twitter, but we have a plan. We didn’t convince the client to use Twitter, we convinced the client to agree to a plan that used a tool to execute the plan.
There are lots of opportunities to engage customers these days. It seems to me, there’s a lot more work for planners, and there’s a good case to be made for creative people to also think strategically about new media.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Thanks for the comments everyone.
Dave, I am flattered that you think I take a deliberately extreme position, most times I think I am being far too conformist. You make a very good point about setting extreme challenges and I agree that it is a great discipline to make poeple think outside the box. However, this was not how Russell’s presentation came across and that is why I reacted badly to it.
As Matt says, you need to know what problem you are trying to fix and then set out to identify the right tools to do it. By contrast, the impression from Russell’s presentation was “the world is changing” and his solution was to “hire a great creative to do some cool stuff.” If I am wrong then maybe Russell will stop by and tell us himself.
Thanks again, Nigel
December 20th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Nigel,
Another way to put a constructive spin on Russell’s comments would be to suggest that we need as many *creative solutions* to the problems of marketing today as we can get.
Having too many creative *ideas* won’t help any brand. The most successful brands I see in my work are those that have a single brilliant idea and many, many ways to execute it - including consumer-generated elements.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Fair comment, Graham, we do need creative solutions.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Creativity is essential to building and connecting on an emotional level that engages the reader or user to a point that goose bumps raise on the back of their necks and they feel good deep down inside.14
December 21st, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Hi tmosley,
Thanks for the comment but I have trouble responding to your assertion.
On one hand, I want to say, of course creativity is essential! All our research data tells me that. (But as I tried to say in the post it isn’t the only thing that is essential to effective marketing).
On the other hand, it really makes me wonder what you mean by creativity.
Let me ask you, is the design of an Audi TT, iPod or Icebreaker underwear creative? If so, I agree that creativity is essential.
Each of these brands has created a deep bond with me because it delivers a sense of satisfaction that I don’t feel from using alternatives (or even thinking about using alternatives). It is the sense of satisfaction that comes from something that delivers on its promise, whether that is the exhileration of driving, the joy of listening to ones own music anywhere one wants, or simply being warm when its cold. I have seen ads for each of these brands I am sure, iPod for certain, but how essential is that to my continued enjoyment of these brands? Not a lot.
If by creative you only mean an ad - be it video, online or direct - then I think essential is overstating the case because unless you have a product that also delivers the creativity will be wasted.
Nigel
December 22nd, 2007 at 12:37 am
Hi Nigel. The product has always been at the heart of marketing. As indeed is distribution, pricing, communications and probably people. (The 5th P if you will).
You say ‘most brands have no hope of ever reducing their above-the-line marketing costs to zero’. Yet a quick glance at the new global order of Google, Skype, Ebay, and Amazon suggests otherwise.
I have no idea what anyone would be doing with Twitter in a marketing communications plan. I can see a time when contextual advertising will be served up with the tweets but that’s about it. Merry Christmas Nigel.
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
Is it smart planning if you spend a fortune on media buying but nobody’s paying attention?
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I almost feel like this string is looping back on itself!
Hi John, I assume you mean that buying media without great creative is a waste of money? If so, I agree. But isn’t that the point? This is a chicken and egg issue. You need both great creative and good media planning, i.e. reaching the right people with sufficient scale to make a substantial difference. Over-emphasis on either one is just self-defeating.
Hi Charles, it seems to me that the new global order you cite are a distinct type of brand, free/cheap online channels to content, which are likely to remain in the minority for the foreseeable future. I do not believe tangible brands that require physical distribution can expect to emulate the success of brands like these. You might have mentioned Starbucks in the same breath a year ago, but now their distribution runway is coming to an end what are they doing? They are resorting to above the line advertising to hold their ground.
To Dave’s point, I guess the question is could Starbucks achieve their goals by less traditional means? Apparently they think not.
Thanks for the comments and Happy Holidays everyone.
Nigel