One of the most tricky challenge that an agency perpetually faces is getting creative approvals from the client. While a lot has been said and commented about how an agency should go about doing this, not many care to think or comment about the client's role in this process.
I would like to give two examples about two diametrically opposite clients and their approach to creative approvals.
The first client was Kitply. And I am talking about more than 25 years ago, This was a client who had taken a bold and innovative step in the field of plywood marketing. Till Kitply came on to the scene, plywood was a generic commodity. Even though households were the consumers the king in this industry were the carpenters and contractors who as customers were the decision makers on behalf of the consumers. It was a push industry where the consumer would depend solely on the carpenter/contractor to decide which plywood to buy. This meant that whichever company gave the carpenter or the contractor a good deal, more margin,s that company would get the nod. Thus it was a low margin, undercutting industry.
Kitply decided to take a risk and try consumer pull. So they not only branded the plywood but also decided to advertise to the consumer. The client was Kolkata based, totally unknown and totally clueless about advertising. It did not have a marketing department or expert and the Chairman of the company was the key person. The gentleman was in his late sixties and had no concept about the advertising process. His brief was very simple, I have a brand which has two benefits which were not unique. Now give me an advertising which will get the consumers to know my brand whose pull would get the carpenter/contractor to buy the same. And the brand was at a 30% premium.
The chairman also had a simple philosophy. He told us in no uncertain terms that he had hired us because we were the experts in advertising. So he would accept whatever we recommended. No arguments. But if we fail with our recommendation we would be sacked.
With that one statement he changed the game. Suddenly as an agency we became much more aware and responsible about our role. We would go with a recommendation after discussing and thinking it through properly. And he stuck to his word. He would comment on our ideas and accept them if we insisted. No reworking or second rounds.
Actually this was a win win situation for all. The client gave freedom to the agency and the agency knew that the freedom had come with a responsibility. So we got the license to be creative, had minimal interference and were always alert to the results. The creative were delighted with the client and got much more involved with the him.
After the initial success of the brand and over a period of time the trust between the agency and client grew manifolds. The client did not allow any reservations from his people or family (yes, they would also get involved) to change or alter or to reject if he saw that we were confident in our recommendation.
In hindsight the client did a very clever thing. He gave us a nice incentive by not interfering with creative but he also made us share his risks. We would have been losers too if our work would have bombed in the market place. And not losing some revenue but losing a client because our work did not work.
I know there will be lots of question in your mind. Was a measurement of success pre defined? Were the goals clear? Were they quantifiable? The answer is yes and no. Mind you, I am talking about more than 25 years ago in the pre computers age. So there were not many ways of measuring success, specially not for a new to marketing client, who had a commodity which he was trying to convert into a brand. Being a margin driven industry he did not have big budgets to do any research and his only measurement of result was if sales were increasing and consumers were visiting the dealers along with carpenters.
From Kitply to Unilever. A very structured, systematic and marketing driven client. Creative approvals would be a long drawn out process. Typically the brand manager would brief, approve creative and it would then be shown up the chain. Many a times after suggestions at each level were incorporated the final piece of creative would be a hotch potch of the original idea. And then there was research to follow. Unilever was at that time a creative person's nightmare.
But Unilever has been consistently successful over a long period of time because they have the capacity to self introspect, point out their own faults and course correct. And this is what happened in the late nineties. Unilever came up with a new global approach to marketing and communication. And besides many other good things about it, it made a change in the creative approval process.
The new mandate was "One who briefs, approves." So if a brand manager had signed off on a brief and the marketing manager or director or even the CEO had not seen the brief, they had every right to comment on the creative output but their changes and suggestions could be overruled by the brand manager. And because it was Unilever it would be implemented.
Frankly I do not remember facing any such situation. But this rule ensured that the brand manager got everyone to sign off on the brief. Once everyone was ok with the brief, creative solution was not difficult to judge and approve.
Obviously, creative can never be fully quantified and judged. But what this process did was to eliminate certain possible issues and bottleneck which can affect the creative process and output. As a result there was a marked improvement in the creative output of Unilever brands.
So, two clients and two solutions to make life easy for creative. Now if every client fell into one of these two categories, creative would be much better off. What say?
I would like to give two examples about two diametrically opposite clients and their approach to creative approvals.
The first client was Kitply. And I am talking about more than 25 years ago, This was a client who had taken a bold and innovative step in the field of plywood marketing. Till Kitply came on to the scene, plywood was a generic commodity. Even though households were the consumers the king in this industry were the carpenters and contractors who as customers were the decision makers on behalf of the consumers. It was a push industry where the consumer would depend solely on the carpenter/contractor to decide which plywood to buy. This meant that whichever company gave the carpenter or the contractor a good deal, more margin,s that company would get the nod. Thus it was a low margin, undercutting industry.
Kitply decided to take a risk and try consumer pull. So they not only branded the plywood but also decided to advertise to the consumer. The client was Kolkata based, totally unknown and totally clueless about advertising. It did not have a marketing department or expert and the Chairman of the company was the key person. The gentleman was in his late sixties and had no concept about the advertising process. His brief was very simple, I have a brand which has two benefits which were not unique. Now give me an advertising which will get the consumers to know my brand whose pull would get the carpenter/contractor to buy the same. And the brand was at a 30% premium.
The chairman also had a simple philosophy. He told us in no uncertain terms that he had hired us because we were the experts in advertising. So he would accept whatever we recommended. No arguments. But if we fail with our recommendation we would be sacked.
With that one statement he changed the game. Suddenly as an agency we became much more aware and responsible about our role. We would go with a recommendation after discussing and thinking it through properly. And he stuck to his word. He would comment on our ideas and accept them if we insisted. No reworking or second rounds.
Actually this was a win win situation for all. The client gave freedom to the agency and the agency knew that the freedom had come with a responsibility. So we got the license to be creative, had minimal interference and were always alert to the results. The creative were delighted with the client and got much more involved with the him.
After the initial success of the brand and over a period of time the trust between the agency and client grew manifolds. The client did not allow any reservations from his people or family (yes, they would also get involved) to change or alter or to reject if he saw that we were confident in our recommendation.
In hindsight the client did a very clever thing. He gave us a nice incentive by not interfering with creative but he also made us share his risks. We would have been losers too if our work would have bombed in the market place. And not losing some revenue but losing a client because our work did not work.
I know there will be lots of question in your mind. Was a measurement of success pre defined? Were the goals clear? Were they quantifiable? The answer is yes and no. Mind you, I am talking about more than 25 years ago in the pre computers age. So there were not many ways of measuring success, specially not for a new to marketing client, who had a commodity which he was trying to convert into a brand. Being a margin driven industry he did not have big budgets to do any research and his only measurement of result was if sales were increasing and consumers were visiting the dealers along with carpenters.
From Kitply to Unilever. A very structured, systematic and marketing driven client. Creative approvals would be a long drawn out process. Typically the brand manager would brief, approve creative and it would then be shown up the chain. Many a times after suggestions at each level were incorporated the final piece of creative would be a hotch potch of the original idea. And then there was research to follow. Unilever was at that time a creative person's nightmare.
But Unilever has been consistently successful over a long period of time because they have the capacity to self introspect, point out their own faults and course correct. And this is what happened in the late nineties. Unilever came up with a new global approach to marketing and communication. And besides many other good things about it, it made a change in the creative approval process.
The new mandate was "One who briefs, approves." So if a brand manager had signed off on a brief and the marketing manager or director or even the CEO had not seen the brief, they had every right to comment on the creative output but their changes and suggestions could be overruled by the brand manager. And because it was Unilever it would be implemented.
Frankly I do not remember facing any such situation. But this rule ensured that the brand manager got everyone to sign off on the brief. Once everyone was ok with the brief, creative solution was not difficult to judge and approve.
Obviously, creative can never be fully quantified and judged. But what this process did was to eliminate certain possible issues and bottleneck which can affect the creative process and output. As a result there was a marked improvement in the creative output of Unilever brands.
So, two clients and two solutions to make life easy for creative. Now if every client fell into one of these two categories, creative would be much better off. What say?
