Take A Peck

I just finished reading Truth, Lies & Advertising, by John Steel. It’s widely regarded as the best book ever written about Account Planning. The main goal of account planners, as I’m sure a lot of you know, is to ensure that the advertising connects with consumers. This book has definitely taught me a lot about account planning, so I’ll attempt to share some interesting things I learned about two topics: research and the creative brief.

Research

I’ve always enjoyed the process of researching and picking out insights that can be used to understand the consumer better. However, research is a lot more than just analyzing numbers and trends. Inspiring visions rarely include numbers. Steel says that research should be geared towards creating relationships with people outside traditional facilities(aka focus groups in natural settings-if possible), so they will be more likely to tell the truth. Research should embrace unpredictability. Because even if you get a lot of consumer opinions, you have to realize that people don’t always say what they feel or can’t express it, so opinions can be misleading. Lastly, it’s important to realize that people often don’t know what they want.

The Creative Brief

I’ve always explained a creative brief as the strategy that inspires and guides creatives to create actual ads, promotions, etc. Steel says the creative brief “is the bridge between smart strategic thinking and great advertising.” Advertising which involves the consumer on an emotional and rational level. I know every agency does it’s creative briefs differently, but here are the key questions Steel believes every brief should answer: Why are we advertising at all?; What is the advertising trying to achieve?; Who are we talking to?; What do we know about them?; What’s the main idea we need to communicate?; What is the best way of planting that idea?; and How do we know we’re right?

An important thing to remember is that ultimately a brief is only as good as the resulting advertising. “You don’t have a good brief until you have a good ad,” Steel says.

Next on my books to conquer list: Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and my old school representative, The Diary of an Ad Man, by James Webb Young

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As anyone who is interested in account planning knows, Russell Davies is the man. With his brilliant planning knowledge and British accent he’s basically a household name among planners. I try to read his blog every day and I’ve seen most of the stuff he has on his Account Planning School Of The Web. Yesterday I spent five minutes watching a video of him explaining how drawing a triangle is the best way to jump into a problem (and also look like you know what you’re doing even if you don’t).

In this video, he gives three examples of different triangles that can be used in thinking about a difficult problem. People think in 3s, he says, and triangles are a great way to visually show relationships between people, brands, products, etc.

Since I was inspired by the video, I came up with my own triangle, which can be used in discussing people’s reactions to a specific ad or campaign.

This triangle is useful (at least to me) in examining the relationships between how the advertising message makes people feel, what it makes them think, and how it makes them behave. For example, when I see CPB’s Burger King ad where the dude randomly squeaks, “I’m SPICY!!” I feel happy and I feel like doing something really random, too. I think it’s a cool ad, because it’s so unique. And my behavior is connected to my thoughts and feelings. At first I laughed but lately I’ve been imitating the guy. I’m SPICY! Yeah, I’m cool.

If the advertising message ilicits the intended thoughts, feelings and actions, then the advertising is doing it’s job. If not, well, it might be time for another triangle…

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