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?