It all started innocently enough: I saw a tweet by Small Box’s Jeb Banner that made me think. That tweet:
you can tell a lot about a company’s culture by its commercials a healthy culture won’t permit crappy ads to air twice
This eventually morphed, as lots of great conversations do, into something entirely different: in this case, a discussion about whether Steve Jobs was a good boss or a bad boss. That’s another topic for another day.
But I think the substance of Jeb’s tweet is interesting, especially given the cost of commercial production. The fact is, no one’s going to air a crappy ad just once. If you make crappy ads, they’re going to air over and over and over until your media buy is exhausted–and chances are good that you’re going to air your crappy ads for another cycle or seven, as well.
Perhaps I’m taking Jeb too literally, but the point remains: if you produce crappy work, you’re probably stuck with it for a while. You can’t afford to redo your advertising once it’s on the air. Which makes getting it right the first time really important.
How important? Our average TV spot production budgets, including creative costs, approach $70,000. Do you have $70k to blow on dull or ugly or ineffective work? Our clients don’t.
Two major points here:
1. Getting it right the first time is critical. Clients, please take note: when you’re spending a bunch of money on TV production, you don’t get a second chance. And please take this to heart: fine-tuning the creative work almost never results in a better spot. Chances are excellent that your agency has thought through the production before the spot was presented, and changing the forty-year-old man to a thirty-year-old woman, or cutting two scenes so you can run the logo for nine seconds at the end, or changing the restaurant scene to a toy store scene will fundamentally change the commercial. When you change one thing, it changes everything.
This seems like contradictory advice: make sure everything’s right, but be careful about changing anything. Actually, it mostly requires that you trust your agency. You hired them for their expertise. Don’t handcuff them when they’re doing their job.
Because in most cases, spots get safer and dumber and less attention-getting when clients start messing with them. So, yes, make sure they’re saying exactly what you want to say. But have a little faith in the folks at your agency.
2. Consider cheaper media. Television’s a great medium for lots of messages–maybe yours. We produce lots of TV spots, and we recommend television as a way to reach big audiences cost-effectively.
But for the cost of producing one TV spot, you can produce a year’s worth of web content. You can spend $5,000 (or $2,000, or $1,000) on great web video–and you don’t have to spend anything on the media that bring it to your audience. At those prices, it’s far more feasible to pull your creative and produce something new if you judge the work to be crappy.
Still, you’re better off not producing crappy work in the first place. Which wasn’t exactly Jeb’s point. But it ties into his idea of “a healthy culture.” In a healthy environment, you should be able to challenge the status quo, and compromise, and trust the people you work with. If your culture is healthy and you focus on getting it right the first time, you’ll never have crappy ads to pull.
Hey Ken, glad to see your thoughts in long form.
Beyond organizational health, which is a systemic issue that leads to all kinds of bad outcomes, one of the reasons I think advertising fails is that the agencies do not truly collaborate (co-create) with the organizations that hire them. They (we) go into “black box” mode- take input and then returning with a product that has little buy in from the organization that ordered it.
We’ve been guilty of this many times over the years and have been challenging ourselves to co-create design/content/etc with our clients. If they are part of the creation process we find approvals go very quickly and outcomes are improved.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on co-creating with clients since the problem you are addressing here is often the outcome of a client being disengaged from the creative process.
Hey, Jeb. Thanks for continuing the conversation.
I have mixed feelings about co-creating with clients. For some kinds of efforts, it makes all the sense in the world. Websites, for example, are collaborative affairs. They almost always get better when agencies and clients work together to work on navigation and information design.
But that’s more of a technical thing than a creative thing. I don’t believe the graphic design of the websites we develop would be better if our client looked over our designer’s shoulder, and I don’t believe good copy gets written through collaboration.
And I’m not sure great television concepts are the result of collaboration. I do believe that a great spot requires lots of collaboration–writer, art director, director, actors, editor, client, composer, and an entire crew of people. But, in my experience, the concept and the vision usually come from a single person–or maybe a creative team.
All this said: no one can create in a vacuum; and a disengaged client is bad for everyone. Creative people have to have great information and clear expectations, and those certainly have to involve the client. And there should be lots of back and forth in the development of any advertising. We get clients involved early and keep them apprised of everything we’re doing along the way.
In other words, I would not co-plumb my bathroom or co-perform heart surgery. But I’d sure as hell make sure my plumber and my heart surgeon (there are actually a scary number of parallels there) understood my problems and my expectations, and I’d hold them accountable for their results.
We’ll also never discourage our clients from brainstorming with us or offering their ideas. We have really smart clients, and we’re not too proud to adopt good ideas wherever we find them. Prima donnas are silly, and I’ve never been a fan of “my way or the highway” presentations.
Good conversation. Now…about Jobs…
I can’t help but be reminded of this when I read this conversation about co-creating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wac3aGn5twc
But at what point do you have to consider the long-terms costs that crappy ad has to your firm’s reputation as well as that of the company it was created for
The productions costs of the commercial are spent and gone. You can’t do anything about them.
The potential futures costs to the reputation of both parties can still be reclaimed before being spent.
There is great risk on focusing only on the former.
Jeffrey, I think the long-term costs of crappy advertising are great. I’m not saying that clients shouldn’t pull bad advertising. I’m saying they’re not going to. They have too much invested financially and emotionally to admit their advertising is bad.
And I’m not sure that has a lot to do with corporate culture. If you have a great culture, you’re likely to admit you’ve done something crappy and stop running it. But you’re even more likely to not do crappy ads in the first place.
Ken, I agree that “design by committee” and “over the should designer” is not a good thing. I’m not advocating for that kind of collaboration. This is more about collaborating at a level that the client can understand and give valuable input- building the story, creating the feel, etc. Too often I feel that advertising agencies, including us, too often lock the client out of this creative phase when bringing them in would lead to greater buy in and better outcomes. Maybe we are essentially saying the same thing here.
wow, some bad typos there, sorry!
Totally agree, Jeb. Client involvement is critical. And I think you’re right: too often, agencies work in a vacuum, and it’s bad for everyone.
Sean, that is a hilarious video but it speaks more to a lack of leadership than client collaboration. Clients want to be led and too often agencies fail to lead the client and then the client steps into that void which leads to bad creative like this. I’m sure you agree, I’m just giving you my take on this perennial conundrum.