What do you want?

"...the purpose of this document is to specify the marketing requirements for our new campaign..."

That's what the brief on my desk says.  It's pretty typical of most of the briefs on most agency desks in the UK, I guess.  It's what clients do.  They ring us or e-mail and ask for a website, a brochure, a PR piece.  But it's going too far.  Clients should be lazier when they brief.

What do I mean?

Those clients don't really want a brochure.  They want their sales figures to go up.  They don't really want a website, they want people to find them on the web and order things.  They don't really want a press release, they want to change someone's mind somewhere.  So what if a brochure won't do the job and a press release is a better idea?  It takes a brave agency to say "NO - no brochure for you Mr Client, here's a brand extension instead."  And it takes a very flexible client to listen.

Perhaps it's because the creative 'industry' (that term always makes me snigger) carves itself up into camps.  There are 'design agencies', and 'PR agencies' and 'advertising agencies'.  That makes clients think about outcomes, not objectives - makes them fix on the brochure rather than what the brochure should achieve.

But what if clients did what one of our hospitality clients has done this morning?  What if they came to us and just dumped a big, steaming problem on our desks?  This morning, our client said 'we want more people to visit our pubs on a certain night in the week - how could we get them to do it?'

No-one started talking about brochures or postcards or any other sort of outcome.  We all started talking about the problem, why it was, what caused it, what influenced it and how we could solve it.  Then, once we understood the problem, we started talking about the messages we'd need to use to solve it.  And it was only then that we began thinking about the outcomes. 

They got a solution that mixed PR, sales promotion and a bit of advertising.  They wouldn't have got that mix if they'd specified the outcome rather than telling us their objective.

Try it next time you brief your agency.

Search engine obfuscation

Maybe it's some of the people who 'write' for the web.  Maybe it's short deadlines or bad briefs.  Maybe it's just plain old lack of thinking (the bane of 'creatives' everywhere).  Whatever it is, I'm starting to hate - with a vengeance - writing that's been search engine 'optimised'.  You'd like an example?  Here you go...

Affordable Web Site Design for Anytown Businesses
If you're based in Anytown (or any of the towns and villages surrounding Anytown) and looking for help with your web site design, then We Can't Write for Toffee  Studios can help - we're ideally located to provide Web Site Design in Anytown. Additionally, as a small web design agency, we're not only able to deliver high-quality web site design solutions, but affordable ones too. We aim to make all of our web site designs high quality but low cost. We truly believe you won't find better value for money from any other web site design agency offering Web Site Design in Anytown.

I really wish I'd made that up to make a point.  But it is real - I copied it three minutes ago from a live webpage for a design agency.

Now, is it just me or is that a little clunky?  Or clunky is it?  A little?  For people who like clunky, those clunky people?  Clunky people (underlined - issalink!!) like this sort of thing, especially if they enjoy a little bit of clunkiness.

Even forgiving the cliches packed like First Great Western commuters, that's appalling writing BEFORE it was 'optimised'.  Now it's been optimised it's a mess of repetition, garbage and drool.

Write like this in print and - if you're lucky - your Creative Director will sack you.  You really deserve to be eviscerated with a spoon, but sadly, namby-pamby employement law forbids it. So why write like it on the web?  More repetition than a Janet and John book but rather less likely to sell.

It's perfectly feasible to write copy for the web that's as compelling as good print copy.  It's just bloody rare at the moment.  At the moment it's not very common.  Rare in fact, as a somewhat undercooked rare thing with a rare helping of rarebit - or something like rarebit in a village called Rare-on-Sea...

[the author is spending some time with a bottle of something French and red to recover] 

How do you do it?

Agency new business is an odd thing.  The best new business simply seems to come from chatting to existing clients and people in your black book.  

"Oh yeah - Steve over at Lehmann Brothers was looking for an agency - give him a call.  Another glass of Sangiovese?  Don't mind if I do."

But how about the clients you'd kill to work with but don't know?  What do you do?

Should you call them?

I used to be a client, back in the miserable days before I ran my own agency.  I worked for a City investment and pensions company.  We got a LOT of calls from agencies.  An average day would see the phone ring at least four times.

"Hello, my name's Martha Moggins from Blue Dingo's Arse.  We're an agency that produces really great work for our clients and blah, blah blah blah..."

I never met one of them.  We had an agency - and a very good one too thanks to Kirsti and Peter who looked after us.  We weren't going to change agencies.  But the quality of calls wasn't great - lots of telling me stuff and not asking questions.  

So now the receiver is on the other ear, and I'm in charge of new biz for Freeman Christie, should I be calling you?

What do you think?  Useful to know what's out there in Agencyland or a pain in the bum?

"I don't like it."

Imagine the scene...

Opens on a smart, glass-walled City lawyer's office.  Two people sit facing each other over a meeting table.  They are lawyer and client.

Lawyer: "Now, Mr Client.  Here's the contract for the transaction.  We've spent the last week working on it and it's pretty much perfect.  You'll get the company, the buildings and the staff. They get £3.5m over five years, that's what we agreed."

Client: "Thanks - that's great Mr Lawyer.  Where do I sign?"

Now.  Imagine another scene...

Opens on a smart, glass-walled design agency's office.  Two people sit facing each other over a meeting table.  They are designer and client.

Designer: "Now, Mr Client.  Here are the designs and copy for this year's annual report.  We've spent the last week on it and it's pretty much perfect. You'll get..."

Client (interrupting): "I don't like green."

Designer: "Sorry?"

Client:  "I don't like green.  And we need a bigger picture of the product.  And the copy isn't 'salesy' enough. And... AAARRGGHHH!!!"

SFX: Agency bludgeoning client to death with a cafetiere.

I have seriously though about introducing a £50 fine for each time a client says "I don't like it."  I don't actually CARE whether clients like or dislike the work we do (although it's personally flattering when they do - which is very dangerous indeed).  

What I care about is whether or not our work sells for our clients.  I care whether or not it's appropriate to the target market.  I care whether or not it gets their message over clearly, simply and effectively.  But I don't give a stuff whether they like it or not. 

Why?  

Not because I'm an arrogant, stroppy 'creative', (not always, anyway) but because I give a damn about my clients' work and its effectiveness.  We spend all our time thinking about our clients' markets, reading what they read, understanding how they think and interact with websites, printed material and visual media.  I'd like to think that, after (blimey!) nearly twenty years doing it we're quite good at it.  

We don't have a codified set of principles to fall back on in the same way lawyers can.  I can't tell my mythical client that green is perfectly appropriate for thirty-three year old Lexus buyers in Penge.  Perhaps that's a mistake - but I think not.  After all, human nature and communication is too complex to codify.  But people who write copy and design for a living should be able to cast a net around this complexity and understand how to communicate it clearly, powerfully and effectively.

And clients should be happy to let them - whether they like it or not.

"Deliver/Designer" - brand new service from Freeman Christie

Ahhh, the things we do for clients. George was posted on Friday, we're expecting her to arrive in Yemen some time in mid-April. Good luck George, we'll miss you.

Decent marketing - still out there

With the Pareto Principle applying to the Freeman Christie postbox (80% trash), it's a delight to get a piece of DM like this from Yellow Pages.

From a design point of view there are better looking DM packs, but this one's functional and sound.  It's the copy that's the best bit...

The writer sounds as though he's read his Claude Hopkins, Drayton Bird (lunch be upon him) and David Ogilvy.  It's an absolute bloody joy.

There's a key, single, simple proposition.  "Get a Yellow Pages entry and we'll bring business to your door."

The proposition is quantified. "We'll get you five new leads a week." and it's backed up with data.

The opening acknowledges that small business owners are strapped for time, and it recognises that sales are the key worry area for all of them.

It's clear what I'm supposed to do - it would be hard to miss that massive yellow response device.  And they've even completed it for you.  

Gorgeous.

It's unusual to see a DM piece this good nowadays. Most agencies have forgotten the function of direct mail is to SELL.  Yes, done well, it enhances the brand too, but the primary function of DM is to sell something.  That means anyone writing DM needs to have read the masters (Drayton, Claude and David) and be able to think their way into the mind of the prospect.

I still love writing DM.  It was my first job in advertising and it's informed everything I've done since.  It's a bit like learning Latin - not glamorous, hard work and slog but excellent discipline and a good foundation.  If you're used to people having 12 seconds to evaluate your mailpack (8 are spent opening the envelope and unfolding the contents), you start cutting all the puff from your writing.  You need to get to the benefits quickly, and sell them in a way that shows you understand the prospect and what makes him buy - thoroughly.

Years ago, I worked in direct mail for Nationwide Building Society.  The week before I started, I spent Saturday morning sitting on the wall outside my local branch, watching people go in and come out.  I saw the shopping bags they carried, the clothes they wore, the other shops they visited.  And I learned more in that morning about my customers than I learned in pages of research and focus groups.  It's only by meeting and talking to your clients and customers that you can understand what drives them.  And that's the only way you can communicate with them.

Try it - go and meet some of your customers and find out what really makes them buy.

Why giving an agency a budget could save your marketing

It’s an age old problem, and one that’s encountered all too frequently. An agency battles through the credentials and creative pitch, finally wins it and asks the simplest of questions. “What’s the budget?”.
It should be a simple question, but so often is answered with a “we don’t know” or a “what do you think it will cost”.

There are usually two reasons for this. The first is that the client doesn’t actually have any idea what the job SHOULD cost. This is worrying because it's always useful if a client has been able to do some research.  It makes a lot of sense to get some foundation and understanding of what a job will end up costing.  It tends to prevent heated debates along the lines of “we never knew it would cost so much!” Not a great start to a potentially long relationship…

The second reason boils down to a question of trust. The client feels that if they let on how much they have to spend the agency will always match it or try for something a bit bigger. Why tell them how much you have to spend if they can do it for cheaper. This sort of “drive them down” mentality has several flaws, and is often the reason for projects going sideways. For a start, any decent agency will always work to the client’s budget, whatever it is. That’s the point of a budget. The problem, especially with larger, more complex projects, is that the variables are so considerable that without a clear idea of the clients monetary restraints the agency can rarely produce a good solution. We’ve had projects that could have cost the client thousands and managed to come up with an equally effective solution for a few hundred pounds – the important thing was the client told us what the problem was, and how much they had to throw at it. It’s the agencies job to take these variables and come up with a solution that works.

If you imagine going shopping for someone else, with a “very tight budget” but now idea how much that actually was. What items would you buy? What if you buy something you think will be cheap, only to find out it’s several times what you thought it would be. Wouldn’t you just buy everything on the cheap as the expense of quality? A good creative agency takes your shopping list and goes out to find the best combination of items to fit your budget – a difficult task if it has no idea what you want to spend.

It’s hard for the client too – too many times they get bitten on cost by a less than reputable agency, or an agency tries their luck depending on what they feel the client has to spend. But that problem’s easily fixed by choosing the right one. There are equally plenty of agencies out there who work their socks off just to make sure the client gets what they want, and are happy to lose a bit along the way to make sure they get it right. The best way of establishing this is to chat with the agencies current clients. Ignore the testimonials on the site – they’re not going to put anything bad on their, instead ask for a few contacts who would be happy to be called/emailed. Most good agencies will have close enough relationships with their clients that this wont be a problem.

Why is a good idea of budget so important? Well, it has a massive impact on how effective your agency can be for you. Whether a new online strategy, marketing collateral or a comprehensive brand exercise, the tools and methods your agency use will all be dictated by budget. As someone infinitely wiser than me once said, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. It’s the same for problem solving – multiple channels can be used, each judged on it’s own merits, and each one suitable under different budgetary constraints.

An extreme example would be TV advertising – it’s a great awareness and brand enhancing tool, but obviously requires considerable funds in the kitty. How is an agency ever going to make the right choices for you if you don’t give them the foundations to do it?

Giving an agency clear guidance on how much money you actually have to spend isn’t just important, it’s absolutely vital for your marketing and communications to be a success. It’s as important as getting the brief right – without it, you’re never going to get maximum ROI. Bizarre really, that so many companies think they can save money by misleading their agency, and even more bizarre is when the same companies wonder why they didn’t quite get what they were hoping for at the end of the project.