Campaign Planning doesn't proclaim to be any sort of creative authority. But it is fun to rank and weigh the industry you're passionate about.
ACME Ad Studio (the creative showcase version of this site) has been posting great work on Tumblr from around the world almost daily since January so it was wonderful to look back at all of it.
Below are the ads that re-stood out again. Smart, well produced, strategically insightful. Enjoy.
Nike Jams Count // The editing is incredible with a terrific tie to keeping track of workouts--whatever they may be--with FuelBand.
TNT Push To Add Drama // Part flash mob, part something else. Filmed in Belgium this was the highest viewed video on YouTube in April (not including music videos).
Stove Top Stuffing Meatloaf Pilgrim // When was the last time a Stove Top Stuffing ad caught your attention?
RAM Tommy and the Ram // Some people don't like this spot, but I sure do. So Friday Night Lights.
VW Crash Course to Shine // NikkiTutorials has over 176k subscribers on YouTube. Stay with this video until 0:47.
Ken's The Best Salad Dressing // Proof that great creative doesn't have to be elaborate and smart media can be 15 seconds.
LG Smart Thief // The video has no sound as it sells the world's slimmest TV. (I like the word "slimmest." I hope the brief said "slimmest" versus "thinnest"--it takes it to whole new area.)
VW The Bark Side Teaser // The only thing that trends as much as kids? Dogs. The perfect follow up to "The Force".
Prudential Day One // The most real and enviable retirement campaign I've ever seen.
NSPCC The $#*! Kids Say // Don't wait until you're certain.
Rolling Rock Uncomplicate // With nearly 400 likes and RTs on ACME Ad Studio (the most of any this year) this seemed to strike a welcomed chord with folks...
Mercedes Invisible Car // Fantastic technology but not just for tech sake--there's a point to the technological trick for selling F-Cell hydrogen technology.
The Guardian Three Little Pigs // For open journalism and we'll probably see it again at Cannes.
When Mitt Romney won Florida this year in the GOP primary, Kantar Media reported that just 0.1% of his $15 million in ad spending went to pro-Romney ads. Which basically means that voters saw one measly positive ad while all others were negative, pointing out the flaws and irresponsibility of his opponents.
And yet, he won.
Most political marketers concede that negative advertising works. But why? And if it works so well, should marketers use it more for their brands?
The Passive Audience
Negative political advertising is largely targeted to the casual observer. A well-crafted visual or soundbite--swift boats or Ronald Reagan's bear--can really stick with people. Such was the case in California's 2010 Gubernatorial race when negative Meg Whitman ads showed a vulture picking at a carcass while a voiceover talked about her support of Goldman Sach's so-called vulture funds. Very visual.
While voters always report to disliking negative ads, sadly, they are the ones that tend to stick in the mind during campaigning, counting on the fact that voters are not paying much attention to the facts and policies of the candidates.
Consumers, like voters, are passive, too. We quickly make our choices at the store and in the mall without a ton of thought. On this level alone, using the political ad model might work.
But for brands it's not that simple.
Components of Negative Brand Marketing Campaigns
Chevy struck at Ford on the 2012 Super Bowl. Interestingly, people didn't overly embrace this particular spot. This is largely because if advertising is going to attack a competitor there are two cornerstones of negative advertising that have proved to work in politics that Chevy didn't do.
First, the Chevy ad wasn't based on any factual evidence. For negative ads to work they need to be based on some negative data point, not just opinion.
Secondly, the Chevy ad was polished and well-produced. Negative political ads typically look like they were cobbled together for fifty bucks. This allows them to convey the feeling that the negative information the audience is hearing about has been unearthed quickly and is incriminating. In society it's always the candid photographs and the grainy videos that reveal the sneaky stuff going on.
Those two elements are key for negative advertising and most marketers, thankfully, don't want to produce work like that for their brands.
Sometimes brands do reach for negative facts and produce less costly work that's negative. The soup category did this in 2009. Campbell's attacked Progresso. Progresso then said Campbell's used MSG and both companies reported sales increases around 5%.
But before people cite this as support for negative brand advertising it's important to remember the year and the category; 2009 was a recession and categories like canned soups, meats, dry grains and pastas were all up between 3% - 7% as consumers cocooned at home and saved money by eliminating other products from their shopping lists. Was it the negative ads or the category growth that was responsible for the +5%?
Then there's the classic 1996 fight between Advil and Tylenol. It got nasty. Advil started the attack about how Tylenol could cause liver damage in heavy drinkers. Tylenol responded and increased their ad spending that year to $212 million. The brands went so hard at each other that people were scared away from the category. Networks refused to air the work. The results? Before Advil proactively attacked their 1995 sales were off 5.6%. After their 1996 attack campaign they were down again 6.8%.
Unlike politics, the evidence supporting brand sales success from negative advertising is thin.
Litigation
It's important to note that politicians don't have the litigation that brands do over false claims and misleading information. In politics, a voting record is a voting record. They're also open to the public as public figures. Brands are different. Litigation is a business tactic and an expensive distraction. Does it make sense to spend money on ads and then spend again--oftentimes significant legal fees--in defense of the ad?
Brands are extremely litigious. General Mills, Whirlpool, Cadbury, Pepsi and the like all challenge claims made about them by their competitors.
The likelihood of legal fallout over negative attack ads is strong. So a portion of any increased sales would need to be planned for such defense. The evidence doesn't prove significant sales gains from negative ads themselves but it does prove an increased likelihood of litigation which comes out of the bottom line.
This is why when attacking a competitor it's important to stay positive and keep the facts away from things that could hurt the whole category. Like this.
Politicians And Brands Are Asking For Different Behaviors
In politics the consumer action is unique; one candidate will end up obliterating the other from contention. The end goal is to make one decision (a vote) where the victor takes all while the loser goes away. And it is in this nuance that political advertising is different from brand marketing... Coke cannot suddenly obliterate Pepsi on November 6th.
That's good. When it comes to products and services consumers actually want multiple products. As Martin has showed us time and time again, consumers are not monogamous; we buy multiple brands within a category. And while we do have a preference for one brand we typically don't "hate" the other. We like choice. And we like to feel good and positive about the things we shell out our cash for.
Attack Ads Aren't Necessary For Brands
So let's recap. When it comes to attack ads, in order to be successful a marketer should produce a crappy-looking ad in order to be taken seriously. When they do that they need to painstaking craft facts that somehow hurt the competitor but not the category. Then they have to plan for and fund probable litigation to defend it. And once it's all finished the competitor is still there, which we, as consumers, kind of like. All of this in addition to the fact that negative ads don't rally a company internally around the purpose of the organization, a key element of successful marketing.
Negative brand ads just aren't necessary. Leave it to the politicians who are convinced they need them. The world is chalked full of successful marketing case studies about brands who get close to their customers, put forth innovative products worth talking about, find motivating insights and use positive creativity to build their business.
And by the way, much like the Advil vs. Tylenol case study, one can't help but wonder if all that negativeness is indeed hurting the category: as negative political advertising has continued to rise, voter turnout has continuted to decline.
Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
-Anton Ego, in Pixar's Ratatouille
What unique traits reside in highly successful creative people? There must be something special that Picasso, Madonna, Yo-Yo Ma, Arthur Miller and others all possess that the rest of us do not...
Scientists have studied this for decades but they've largely been unable to come up with something concrete. There's no specific Myers-Briggs personality type, family background or different brain chemistry that separates highly successful creative people from everyone else. Yes, they tend to be a little more open to trying new things than the average person but that doesn't over-index to any significant degree.
So what is it? There must be something.
Turns out there is one thing: Grit. And if you're as curious about that as I am, or believe in that as strongly as I do, then you can read all about it in Jonah Lehrer's new book, Imagine. Successful creative people possess the powerful combination of having more grit and persistence than their competitors.
Jonah articulates this well:
"The reality of the creative process is that it often requires persistence, the ability to stare at a problem until it makes sense. It's forcing oneself to pay attention, to write all night and then fix those words in the morning. It's sticking with a poem until it's perfect; refusing to quit on a math question; working until the cut of a dress is just right. The answer won't arrive suddenly, in a flash of light. Instead it will be revealed slowly, gradually emerging after great effort."
Answers that arrive suddenly when the mind is relaxed (such as in the shower or on a road trip) is what gives someone insight and clarity. But what really matters is the hard work after that. Yes, one has to have the skill but it's talent plus grit that equals creative success. And if you believe Jonah, as I do, the higher the level of one's grit, the greater the likelihood of success.
This goes for creativity as well as for most professional endeavours. Sports fans know this from following the NFL Combine, an annual event where potential college recruits show up to partake in all sorts of physical activity in front of NFL scouts--from the high jump to the forty yard dash and beyond.
What's been observed throughout the years is that there's very little correlation between success at the NFL Combine to success in the NFL. Physical outperformance alone doesn't cut it. Take Tom Brady. There are definitely more athletic quarterbacks than Tom, but he's a champion because of talent + grit. And it's always worth remembering that Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round of the 2000 NFL draft as the 199th pick.
How's your NCAA bracket ending up? Hopefully good, unless you're in one of my ESPN bracket groups in which I hope you had Duke going to the Final Four. But if you created a bracket, or are just a college basketball fan, you've probably been watching a lot of TV. And while you've been watching no doubt you've seen notable amounts of advertising from two categories: fast food and insurance.
What's happened in the insurance advertising category over the last eight years is worth noticing. What started with Geico has really pushed Allstate, Progressive, Farmers and State Farm to all do great advertising. Like a good college athletic conference, each school pushes the others to higher performance.
Geico in 2006...
On the contrary, what's happened in the fast food category during this same period is also worth noticing.
There was a time when some of the best advertising was found in fast food. But it's been different recently, hasn't it? Either largley one-dimensional about the food or just not being highly relatable...
We have reached a strange time when insurance advertising is more interesting than fast food advertising.
This is largely because the insurance category is doing three things at a stronger level: using emotive power to change behavior, producing creativity that uniquely links, and tapping into pop culture.
1. Using Emotive Power to Change Behavior.
At a presentation last week, Ipsos ASI showed a chart of the Super Bowl ads that were most re-transmitted online after the game. The takeaway: The higher the emotive power of the ad--Chrysler and VW--the more it was shared and liked. This is important because consumer attention on YouTube is 1.5x higher than on TV.
(Important: Emotion is that which is stirred within and relatable to consumers. Not the emotion of brands themselves.)
Emotion is one of the strongest ways to affect behavior change. And that's what advertising is largely trying to do. Where advertisers get stuck sometimes is that we think we're trying to change attitudes, which is very hard to do. The Ad Contrarian discusses this in the most concise way I've seen. (He wrote a great book... It's free and downloadable.) Some examples he cites:
It's easier to convince you to eat a Big Mac than to convince you that eating a Big Mac is a good thing to do.
It's easier to convince you to go to Las Vegas than to convince you that going to Las Vegas is a wise thing to do.
I think about milk marketing that way: it's easier to convince you that you should always have milk in the house than it is to convince you that good health requires three servings a day.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith said it well: Faced with the choice of changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
Allstate really gets this. They put forth great emotion to connect and relate to people's worldviews to affect behavior...
2. Producing Creativity That Uniquely Links
According to Ipsos, fifty percent of the time an ad proves ineffective it's because the audience fails to link the advertiser to the advertising. What produces this? The first answer is lousy advertising. If it's not interesting, relevant or intriguing, why should someone pay attention?
But the second reason this happens can be seen in those unfortunate cases when great work is produced but it's not uniquely tied to the brand; people can recall the ad with precision except for who's responsible for it.
Both of these challenges are overcome by good creativity.
Millward Brown, the prominent research firm famous for creating the Awareness Index to measure advertising efficiency, just evaluated a collection of award winning campaigns from the Effies and IPA awards (awarded for sales effectiveness) and Cannes Lions (awarded for creativity) and had this to say at the end of their data analysis of all three award shows:
It has long been known that advertising needs to be underpinned by an appropriate strategy. This analysis adds another factor: branding. It is all very well for an ad to leave vibrant memories, but do these memories link to your brand uniquely?
Branding has nothing to do with repeating the brand name and showing packs; it has everything to do with making the brand the centre of, and the reason for, the creative idea. The Marlboro Cowboy, the Andrex Puppy are excellent examples of well-branded advertising.
Which brings up Progressive and Geico who do a nice job linking the work to the brand in ways that create brand salience in the mind.
A great definition of salience was just explored by Martin on Canalside View which broke it down into five categories of definition:
Prominence - the prominence of the brand in memory relative to its competitors.
Accessibility - the accessibility of memory content relating to the brand.
Associations - the quantity and quality of associations in the mind.
Order - the degree to which the brand comes to mind in buying or consumption occasions.
Familiarity - the ‘size’ of the brand in one’s mind that allows the brand to come forward in response to recall cues.
Martin summed this up nicely by taking "vivid memories" to the next step:
All this reminds us that the real communications goal is not so-called ‘engagement’, but the creation of vivid memories - and their activation in moments of purchase or consumption.
3. Tapping Into Pop Culture
Brands have always had the ability to partake in pop culture through sponsorship and association but it's been difficult to measure. Today, we can apply metrics about how engaging with pop culture events creates an advantage.
For example, in February Buddy Media reported that major brands who posted Super Bowl-related messages on their Facebook pages before the game had 60% greater engagement than posts unrelated to the game.
This is supported by what we see at DC. Whenever we work on social campaigns the content that directly ties the product or service to positive events in pop culture performs three times better in engagement metrics than standard posts.
Planning ahead for pop culture moments, and creating specific work around that, is smart. The most famous example is probably Write the Future, created specifically for the World Cup.
During the NCAA Tournament both State Farm and Allstate created good work just for the event...
By contrast, fast food just ran their regular spots...
In thinking about what makes good and effective advertising, a post years ago might have used fast food as examples throughout.
But it just flowed easily to use insurance instead...
So the secret's out on why agencies are built the way they are. For many years when people in other industries walked through good ad agencies and design firms an interesting discussion would typically follow about the space itself... Why is it built so differently than other offices?
There are three things that can impede creative thinking at work. And a creative company is constructed--from the building to the culture to the day-to-day processes--to help navigate them. The better these impediments are managed, the greater the odds of creative success.
Finding the Moment of Insight.
Gladwell wrote once that insight seekers need to determine if they're solving a puzzle or a mystery. The difference? A puzzle is a business problem with missing pieces (e.g. go field more research) where a mystery has all the information there it just needs to be looked at from a renewed perspective. Agencies solve both but mysteries are more frequent.
It's worth mentioning that mysteries are often the most difficult creative problems to solve because at first they seem impossible. How will it be different this time? But a moment of insight changes all of that. Like the moment a 3M engineer figured out the use of an extremely weak glue (while sitting in church) which led to the production of Post-It Notes.
Insights often come in the strangest places, don't they? In the shower, walking the dog, making breakfast in the morning. Basically doing things that aren't related to a job description. Why does that work? The answer apparently lies in science. The moment before an insight appears a part of our brain, called the superior anterior temporal gyrus (or the "aSTG"), exhibits a spike in activity and this region in the right hemisphere excels at drawing together distantly related information. And it turns out there are certain things that make people more likely to have an insight...
One study found exposure to non-related humorous videos increased insight success rates by 20%. Another study found that alcohol consumption actually helped with solving complex word problems.
What explains the creative benefits of relaxation and booze? The answer involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. Although we live in an age that worships focus—we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate—this approach can inhibit the imagination.
And this is why relaxation helps: It isn't until we're soothed in the shower or distracted by the stand-up comic that we're able to turn the spotlight of attention inward, eavesdropping on all those random associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain's right hemisphere. When we need an insight, those associations are often the source of the answer.
So why do places like Deutsch offer pool tables and Google have ping pong? (Aside from creating a more fun work environment.) For just this reason.
Keep On Going.
It's hard to find more passion than someone who keeps turning and churning creative ideas in search of the answer. Sometimes one has to watch the hours--you're intensely working on a solution on Tuesday afternoon and suddenly it's 7:30 at night. (Boston Consulting Group has set up alerts that when employees consistently hit over 60 hours/week their managers are alerted to help avoid burn out.)
But creative people know when they're close to the answer... They just may not know how close. Einstein famously remarked that "it's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." Creative companies have to feed this ability. Part of this is having a safe place to work late into the night without worry. Another part is allotting enough time and alertness to do the creative necessary justice. Drake Cooper keeps the now-famous Red Bull fridge stocked for us all.
And then there's fear. As legendary creative Harvey Gabor says midway through his Re:Brief ad: "The fear will make you work harder because you've gotta present stuff to the client... the neurotic parts (of the job) make you work much harder."
It's that sort of mentality that often leads to greatness. There's the famous example of Milton Glaser whose original cursive "I Love New York" slogan was approved and ready to print but he just wasn't satisfied. So one day he drew this:
And then of course there's Helmut Krone who would toil in his office for hours and hours at DDB to produce beautiful, unmatched art direction during his time:
When you're close to greatness, always keep going. It has a funny way of not being there again in the morning.
New Raw Materials.
"Creativity is just connecting things." That was Steve Jobs' approach. It's true--the best ideas often come from far off, otherwise unrelated things.
In 2010, Newsweek produced an excellent piece on creativity in which they said:
The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).
They're right. And to succeed creative companies have to be the ultimate space of openness and convergence. All thought is allowed and you have to let those raw materials inside, like what DTAC has done in their Thailand office:
And like Melbourne's ANZ Centre:
It certainly doesn't need to look that pretty but the more we associate ourselves with things outside of our immediate area of specialty the more innovative we become. This probably seems intuitive but it's backed up by research. Consider a recent study of 766 Stanford MBA graduates turned entrepreneurs--those with the most diverse friendships scored three times higher on metrics of innovation.
These three types of creativity--Finding Moments of Insight, Keep On Going and New Raw Materials--all live and thrive at creative companies.
And now, since we're at it and all, there's a final thing not in the article that must be included:
Teamwork & Collaboration.
In July of last year, the same author of the NY Times piece wrote a post surrounding The Auteur Myth--the idea that true creative greatness is rarely done alone:
I certainly don’t mean to disparage the genius of Hitchcock or Steve Jobs or to defend uninspired data driven design. But it’s also important to remember that nobody creates Vertigo or the iPad by themselves; even auteurs need the support of a vast system. When you look closely at auteurs, what you often find is that their real genius is for the assembly of creative teams, trusting the right people with the right tasks at the right time. Sure, they make the final decisions, but they are choosing between alternatives created by others. When we frame auteurs as engaging in the opposite of collaboration, when we obsess over Hitchcock’s narrative flair but neglect Lehman’s script, or think about Jobs’ aesthetic but not Ive’s design (or the design of those working for Ives), we are indulging in a romantic vision of creativity that rarely exists. Even geniuses need a little help.
There it is. Four things to foster creativity.
So now everyone knows why good agencies are built the way they are.
"You had a new character added to the mix, which consumers asked us to add. We did a fair amount of teasing leading up to it, to build anticipation. And fundamentally it was a fun ad. The music didn't hurt, with the LMFAO song. That certainly helped to contemporize it. And I think BBDO just came through with a really entertaining spot. I think it brought a smile to your face, and you really want to share it with someone else."
That's Debra Sandler, Chief Consumer Officer of Mars Chocolate of North America as quoted by Adweek this week upon hearing the news that M&M's "Just My Shell" was crowned the winner of YouTube's 2012 Super Bowl Ad Blitz.
Great quote. It's as simple as all of that.
What's cool to note about YouTube's Ad Blitz for choosing the winners is that videos were viewed 133 million times as of Feb 12 with 82% of views happening on Super Bowl Sunday plus the following Monday and Tuesday. 18 percent of views were from outside the U.S.
Since 1975 Bruce Springsteen has been popular never veering far from his core sound and message despite four decades of constantly changing music trends.
Recently Bruce was interviewed in anticipation of his new March 6th album. He provided a unique viewpoint on his own music:
"Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire."
That's terrific. And insightful. Check out some lyrics...
Born To Run--1975
The highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide Together wendy well live with the sadness Ill love you with all the madness in my soul Someday girl I don't know when were gonna get to that place Where we really want to go and well walk in the sun But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run
Glory Days--1985
Well there's a girl that lives up the block back in school she could turn all the boy's heads Sometimes on a Friday I'll stop by and have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed Her and her husband Bobby well they split up I guess it's two years gone by now We just sit around talking about the old times, she says when she feels like crying she starts laughing thinking about
The Rising--2002
Can't see nothin' in front of me Can't see nothin' coming up behind I make my way through this darkness I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me Lost track of how far I've gone How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
In each case: pessimism and optimism together.
And so timely. After all, what defined pessimism and optimism during the eighties was different than what defines pessimism and optimism today.
What's interesting to note is that Springsteen has remained consistently relevant because he stayed centered on the core message which was only possible by staying close to what the current definitions of the pillars were: in this case, pessimism and optimism.
Which means that it's possible to combine amazingly opposite things together and create something unique if one stays incredibly close to the pillars.
"To think how far those letters traveled to me was amazing, and to have something he had touched so close to me was more than amazing."
-Sasha upon receiving letters from her Marine fiance in Afghanistan
Imagine, if you will, that tomorrow a new service was invented. The plan was to enable the possibility to deliver physical items to every home in America. As a marketer, you could tailor what arrived based on zip code and you could personalize everything so they were addressed to the person living there. You could send packages or letters or post cards.
If this was new I cannot imagine the potential of creativity and PR and innovative customer relationship blog posts that would pop up. But alas, this isn't new and the only thing anyone can seem to write about today is the dismal state of the postal service and how everything digital is killing it.
To paraphrase the always wise Russell Davies: Don't mistake something that's shrinking as something that's small.
But we have largely forgotten about it. The US Postal Service now says almost two months pass before the average household gets a personal letter, compared with two weeks 15 years ago. Also, only 4% of household mail comes from another household.
And yet we still like it. Nearly two-thirds of standard mail is read or looked at. Valpak reports that often 90% of envelopes are opened. By contrast, email marketing typically averages around 11%.
Fifty percent of us actually prefer direct mail to email. This might be hard to believe. And many companies don't believe it until it's too late. Such was the case of Per Annum Inc. who was spending $20k annually sending personally signed letters to their customers. After thinking this was wasteful the company transferred the letters to emails which resulted in a 25% drop in orders.
The mail simply allows us to convey a level of emotion and tangibility that digital can't do.
Imagine you're an emerging illustrator and that your hero is John K, the creator of Ren & Stimpy. You gather up some courage and send him your drawings. Then he sends this back to you which you hold in your hands as your read...
Yes, this could have been an email or a blog post--but not really. It wouldn't have had nearly the impact.
I've flown Southwest most of my life. The other day I received this small box in the mail that opened by pulling it apart..
No sales pitch. Just a thank you: a beautifully produced metal luggage tag with my name and Rapid Rewards number on the back. I attached it to my luggage the next morning.
Here's the good news... The challenges of the postal service actually presents two key opportunities.
#MailDay
The postal service will be reducing their delivery schedule, ending Saturdays with the possibility of other days in the future. One of the things this decrease does is that it makes the arrival of mail more special. And specialness increases our attention. It's highly likely that once the mail delivery is further limited our attention to the mail will increase. We're currently examining two thirds of the pieces mailed to us... could this increase to three quarters?
#ThePowerofLists
The cost of postage is going up between 3 - 4%. Marketers are considering what to do. But while postage is going up, list prices have fallen a sizable 49% since 2006. This is key. Forty percent of the success of any direct mail effort can be directly tied to the quality of the list. (The remaining parts are 40% offer and 20% creative messaging.) Better list prices help offset some of the costs of rising postage.
Let's not let our mail become only "junk." People shift through it to find the good stuff. Marketers who send more of the good stuff are going to benefit. People who send letters are going to benefit. Let's take a fresh look at the mail system. Let's pretend it was just invented and tear into it with all the vigor and creativity that we do with the latest online social thing that probably isn't nearly as cool, pervasive or as personally welcomed as the US mail system.
Funny. Starring Will Ferrell. And apparently it only aired in Davenport, Iowa, Terre Haute, Indiana and Milwaukee in what was one of the most local of local media buys.
