Sometimes it pays to keep your creative ideas under wraps
I recently spent two days with a group of design students at a London university and set them a challenging brief. Could they come up with an advertising campaign that would reverse the fortunes of US Presidential candidate, John McCain? I asked them to set aside any preconceptions, as if they held opinions about the US elections, I judged it likely that they would be favourable to McCain’s Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.
Behind in the polls, the self-styled ‘maverick’ McCain seems unable to reach out to undecided voters and even has trouble retaining the rock-solid Republican base. He’s battling against the unpopularity of George Bush and a financial crisis on a scale unseen since 1929. Can advertising really make a difference in this kind of context?
Much to my delight – my creative delight, that is – the students came up with range of interesting ideas to boost McCain’s flagging campaign in the dying days of the election. “Nothing comes between me and my country” read one of the lines, showing a picture of former fighter pilot snuggling up in bed with an American flag. Another pair of would-be creatives came up with the slogan “I’ve been there” – demonstrating McCain’s heritage not only as a warrior, but also as a family man and Senator.
Two of the young designers likened the Republican candidate to a trusty pair of denim jeans or the reliable “little black dress” – something that was always there and could always be called upon. Another group changed his name to read McCan, emphasising how his experience could be brought to bear on the problems facing the US today. Perhaps my favourite was line which read “The everyman for everyone”. It was accompanied by a TV storyboard that was plausible enough to be presented to staffers at the McCain-Palin war room tomorrow and reinforced the notion of Obama as an aloof intellectual standing against someone who was just a regular guy.
Enough to turn an election around? Maybe not. But I’d bet my bottom dollar we could knock a point or two off Obama’s lead. My own political leanings mean that I’ve tucked the ideas safely away in a locked drawer until after 4th November.
© Phil Woodford, 2008. All rights reserved.
In 1968, David Ogilvy wrote a letter that was distributed at New York's Grand Central Station to help raise money for an African-American college fund. The opening line asked readers to look out of the train window when they reached 108th Street. Seeing with their own eyes the homes of the impoverished black students, they donated $26,000 in one evening. A simple idea that proved incredibly powerful. And an inspiration for this blog on advertising creativity around the world.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
The credit crunch needn't be a creative crunch
Not a lot of blog activity this year, I’m afraid, due to pressure of work. Exactly how long the work will keep flowing though is something that’s quite difficult to predict. We’re clearly entering a significant period of recession and one of the first industries to feel the pinch is always advertising. In fact, advertising spend is usually a very good barometer for the overall health of the economy.
At the UK Conservative Party’s annual conference earlier this month, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne made an interesting observation: "In the private sector when times are tough you take out the overheads. The consultants are sent packing and the advertising budget is cut. Government should do the same. We are going to put caps on Labour's wasteful consultancy and advertising bills."
At one level, of course, Osborne is right. Businesses do cut back on advertising in a recession. But it’s a mistake to view this practice uncritically and assume that their decisions are somehow based on logic or common sense. In a time of intense competition – when many businesses are fighting for their very survival – effective marketing communications can make the difference between life and death. Some would argue that it’s the time to expand the advertising budget rather than contract it.
Creative agencies and media buyers find that fewer clients are spending. And those who are tend to be spending less. Although this can be disconcerting – perhaps the money isn’t there for that high-profile TV or poster campaign – every creative cloud has a silver lining. We’re all forced to think more laterally about communication strategies. For people such as me who work on behalf of a number of smaller, niche design, advertising and direct marketing agencies, it’s no great shock, as I’m frequently told that budget is non-existent anyway. And that’s in the good times.
The good news for marketing communications professionals is that the landscape of the late noughties recession will be completely different the one we encountered in the early nineties. Seventeen or eighteen years ago, email hadn’t yet become a ubiquitous feature of business communication and the web was something only familiar to computer geeks and nuclear scientists in secure bunkers. These technologies mean that an advertising message can now potentially be sent instantaneously and at virtually no cost. So cutting back on advertising spend needn’t necessarily mean cutting back on advertising.
My prediction (hardly a revelation) is that for the next 18 months we’ll see a further downturn in traditional press and TV advertising, which spells bad news for mainstream media outlets, media buying agencies and publishers. But we may well see an upsurge of interest in the already booming media of email, online forums and social networks. TV and press advertising tends to be based on a tried-and-tested formula, whereas credibility and effectiveness in the newer media demand more inventive and ingenious solutions. Perhaps there will be work for the creatives who can supply them?
© Phil Woodford, 2008. All rights reserved.
Phil Woodford lectures in advertising and marketing in the Faculty of Continuing Education at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Not a lot of blog activity this year, I’m afraid, due to pressure of work. Exactly how long the work will keep flowing though is something that’s quite difficult to predict. We’re clearly entering a significant period of recession and one of the first industries to feel the pinch is always advertising. In fact, advertising spend is usually a very good barometer for the overall health of the economy.
At the UK Conservative Party’s annual conference earlier this month, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne made an interesting observation: "In the private sector when times are tough you take out the overheads. The consultants are sent packing and the advertising budget is cut. Government should do the same. We are going to put caps on Labour's wasteful consultancy and advertising bills."
At one level, of course, Osborne is right. Businesses do cut back on advertising in a recession. But it’s a mistake to view this practice uncritically and assume that their decisions are somehow based on logic or common sense. In a time of intense competition – when many businesses are fighting for their very survival – effective marketing communications can make the difference between life and death. Some would argue that it’s the time to expand the advertising budget rather than contract it.
Creative agencies and media buyers find that fewer clients are spending. And those who are tend to be spending less. Although this can be disconcerting – perhaps the money isn’t there for that high-profile TV or poster campaign – every creative cloud has a silver lining. We’re all forced to think more laterally about communication strategies. For people such as me who work on behalf of a number of smaller, niche design, advertising and direct marketing agencies, it’s no great shock, as I’m frequently told that budget is non-existent anyway. And that’s in the good times.
The good news for marketing communications professionals is that the landscape of the late noughties recession will be completely different the one we encountered in the early nineties. Seventeen or eighteen years ago, email hadn’t yet become a ubiquitous feature of business communication and the web was something only familiar to computer geeks and nuclear scientists in secure bunkers. These technologies mean that an advertising message can now potentially be sent instantaneously and at virtually no cost. So cutting back on advertising spend needn’t necessarily mean cutting back on advertising.
My prediction (hardly a revelation) is that for the next 18 months we’ll see a further downturn in traditional press and TV advertising, which spells bad news for mainstream media outlets, media buying agencies and publishers. But we may well see an upsurge of interest in the already booming media of email, online forums and social networks. TV and press advertising tends to be based on a tried-and-tested formula, whereas credibility and effectiveness in the newer media demand more inventive and ingenious solutions. Perhaps there will be work for the creatives who can supply them?
© Phil Woodford, 2008. All rights reserved.
Phil Woodford lectures in advertising and marketing in the Faculty of Continuing Education at Birkbeck College, University of London.
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