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THE BRAND LEADER
How to judge Creative Advertising
Great execution must balance the creative and strategy, finding ways to be both different and smart.
You need to find that space where you are different enough to help to break through the clutter in the
market. And you need to be smart with your advertising strategy to ensure that your message will
motive consumers to see, think, feel or act in the way you need for your brand to succeed. With
Creative Advertising, many Brand Leaders tense up when the creative gets “too different” yet they
should be scared when it seems “too familiar”. You have to fight that and take a chance.
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Find the magic in the execution of a brand
All of our work is done through other people. Our greatness as a Brand Leader has to come from the
experts we engage, so they will be inspired to reach for their own greatness and apply it on our
brand. Brand Management has been built on a hub-and-spoke system, with a team of experts
surrounding the generalist Brand Leader. When I see Brand Managers of today doing stuff, I feel
sorry for them. They are lost. Brand Leaders are not designed to be experts in marketing
communications, experts in product innovation and experts in selling the product. You are trained to
be a generalist, knowing enough to make decisions, but not enough to actually do the work. Find
strength being the least knowledgeable person in every room you enter.
Time to step back and let the creativity unfold
It is okay to know exactly what you want, but you should never know until the moment you see it. As
the client, I like to think of marketing execution like the perfect gift that you never thought to buy
yourself. How we engage our experts can either inspire greatness or crush the spirit of creativity.
Experts would prefer to be pushed than held back. The last thing experts want is to be asked for their
expertise and then told exactly what to do. There is a fine line between rolling up the sleeves to work
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Smart but
not different
Solid strategy, but no creativity
Will do OK, but won’t break through
clutter to make a difference.
Smart and
different
Sweet spot, unique helps break
through and solid strategy motivates
consumers to take action
Not smart and
not different
Brand is lost and floundering.
Conservative creative against
a weak strategy.
Different but
not smart
While creative, it misses the
strategy, wrong target, message,
desired response or activities.
Smart
Not Smart
The same Different
Strategic
Creativity
Brand Leaders tense up when the creative gets “too different”
yet they should be scared when it seems “too familiar”

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alongside the experts and pushing the experts out of the way. It is time to step back and assume
your true role as the Brand Leader. It is a unique skill to be able to inspire, challenge, question, direct
and decide, without any expertise at all. Brand Leaders need to rediscover the lost art of doing
nothing.
How to judge Creative Advertising
As we match up the role of advertising to the brand funnel, we see that there are two main
objectives: we want to gain awareness and consideration of our brand, and then we want to move
and motivate consumers along the funnel towards purchase. Great advertising is a combination of
what you say (Main Message) and how you say it (Creativity). What you say as your main message
connects has to motivate consumers to think, feel or act differently about the brand. Your execution
has to Communicate your main message in ways that ensure it Sticks in the consumers. How you
say it, is the branded breakthrough that helps to connect with consumers, while linking brand closely
to the story. This is all about driving Attention and ensures your Branding is part of that
breakthrough.
Said another way, we believe that the best ads start with a Creative Idea that helps to:
• Gains the consumers’ Attention to break through (A)
• Puts spotlight on Brand so it is remembered (B)
• Communicates brand’s benefits through story (C)
• Sticks in the consumer’s mind and makes the brand seem different (S)
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Main Message connects with
consumers and motivates
them to think, feel or act
differently about the brand.
Breaks through to connect with
consumers, while linking brand
closely to the story.
“Motivating Messaging”
(WHAT you say)
“Branded Breakthrough”
(HOW you say it)
Attention and Branding
Communication and
Stickiness
Great Marketing Execution breaks through and motivates
consumers to think, feel or act differently
MotivationtoBuytheBrand
Consideration of the Brand

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Attention, Branding, Communication and Stickiness forms our ABC’S tool that can to help Brand
Leaders to judge the potential impact the ads will have on consumers and your brand.
The ABC’S Decision Tool
• Attention: The best advertising stands out and gets noticed in the crowded modern media world
where consumers see 7000 ads per day. If your brand doesn’t draw attention naturally, whether it
is low on importance or involvement, then you will need even more creativity to force the brand
into the limelight.
• Branding: the best advertising tells the story of the relationship between the consumer and the
brand will link best. Even more powerful are the ads that are from the consumers view of the
brand. It’s not how much branding there is, but how close the brand fits to the climax of the ad.
• Communication: Tap into the insights of the consumer helps tell the brand’s life story. Keep your
story easy to understand, not just about what you say, but how you say it.
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It garners
breakthrough
ATTENTION
COMMUNICATES
consumer benefits
through the story
It puts the
spotlight on
BRAND
It is memorable
and STICKS
over time
Big
IdeaA
B
C
S
The Creative Idea has to
express the Big Idea
through the ABC’S
Creative
Idea
How the Creative Idea draws the attention, tells
brand story, communicates benefit and sticks.

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• Stickiness: Build a consistent experience over time to drive a consistent reputation in the minds
and hearts of the consumer.
Just like the strategic Big Idea should drive all parts of your brand, the Creative Big Idea should drive
all parts of your brand communications. The creative idea has to be what earns the consumers’
attention, the creative idea has to be what draws attention to the brand, the creative idea has to be
what builds benefit into story and the creative idea has to be what consistently sticks with consumers
to help build a reputation.
Gaining Attention
The best way to grab attention is to take a risk and do something creatively different. Here are 7
ways to gain more attention:
1. Be incongruent: This style of Creative Advertising makes the ad so different that it just jumps
out from the clutter. Using a different type of creative can help drive a high score on “made the
brand seem different”. A lot of brand leaders are afraid of this option, because they feel these are
crazy ads and it risks exposing them
with too much risk. However, this
technique is ideal for a low
involvement brand where you need to
really capture the attention of
consumers who might not be
naturally looking at the brand.
2. Resonate: Leverage consumer
insights to connect with the
consumer, in the true way they see
themselves and how they interact
with the brand.
3. Entertain them: Make them laugh,
make them cry, or make them tingle. Consumers interact with media to be entertained.
4. The evolution of the art of being different: As much as movies, TV, music continue evolve, so
can ads. In a cluttered media world, you can use humor and drama to capture the consumer’s
attention.
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5. Location based: Be where your consumers are most open and willing to listen. Make sure your
creative makes the most of that media choice.
6. Be part of the content: As much as consumers are engaged in content on line, you can embed
your brand right into the story of the content. This is not the “sponsored by” technique.
7. Be Sharable: Amazing story-telling ads are getting passed around on social media vehicles.
These long videos are great for engaging the consumer emotionally. Be careful as there are new
rules for viral advertising. Too much branding in the advertising can drive down the sharing.
Branding
The best branding comes when you connect the Brand to the Climax of the ad. There is an old
Advertising saying: “Half of all advertising is wasted, but we aren’t sure which half.” Coincidently, the
average brand link is usually around 50%. Your goal should be to get past that mark. Here are 6
ways to increase the branding in advertising:
1. Make your brand is a central part of the story: Throw out those old rules that you need to
show the brand within the first 7 seconds and show it three times. It is not how much branding
you use, but rather how closely connected the brand to the climax of your ad.
2. Is it the Truth: It sounds funny, but if there is a
disconnect between what you say, and what
you really are, then the brand link won’t be
there. When people say, “Be authentic” it’s
more than just a tone. You have to use real
insights, not fake ones that set up your brand.
You have to understand what consumers think
of your brand and deliver that message back to
them.
3. Own the Idea: Find your brand’s uniqueness
and bring your point of difference to life in the
advertising. Make sure that what you do sets
your brand apart from everyone else.
4. Repeat: The simplest way to get stronger
branding is to repeat and repeat and repeat.
When you are working on a new campaign,
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you should be looking at campaign-ability. Is the Creative Idea big enough that it can work over
the next 3-5 years and whether it will work across many types of media, including digital, social or
in-store?
5. Avoid cutting away to a white screen: My pet peeve in advertising is when I hear creatives say,
“And then we cut to the pack shot”. When I hear that, I wonder why the Creative Team is afraid or
ashamed of the brand? That’s the classic “gag and tag” approach where we make a joke up front
that has nothing to do with the brand and then show the brand. Ta-da. Then we find out that
consumers like the ad, but then “can’t remember what brand its for”. The way to get maximum
involvement is to ensure the brand is part of the story.
6. People remember stories: If the story involves the brand naturally, there is a higher chance that
consumers will remember the brand. If the brand has a real benefit, the ad bring that benefit to
life through a story. A powerful story can capture the consumer, and hold them. It is the brand’s
life story, the purpose or the reason for being that will make the brand much more memorable.
Communications
In our Creative Brief, we encourage you to start with what you want the consumer to do, and then
figure out what you will say to accomplish that. The best way to communicate is to understand how
the consumer and the main benefit match up. Keep in mind, communication is not what is said, but
what is heard.
1. Start a dialogue: If you can do a
good job in connecting with the
consumer through a consumer
insight, you gain permission to bring
in the Big Idea as part of the
conversation with your consumer.
2. What are you selling? Keep it
simple and remember that you only
have 29 seconds to sell the truth.
Focus on one message…keep
asking yourself “what are we selling”.
3. Powerful expression: Find one key
visual or key phrase that can express
what you are selling and stand
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behind it over time.
4. Find your “More Cheese”: This is where the benefit is so obvious as to what people want, that
you need to scream it or find ways to demonstrate it.
5. Sell the solution—not the problem: Brands get so wrapped up in demonstrating the problem,
that they do not leave enough room to demonstrate the solution that consumers want to buy.
6. Diminishing returns of messages: Tracking studies show that the more messages you put in
an ad, the less the consumer can retain. Too many Brand Leaders think of Advertising like a
bulletin board where they can just pin up one or two more messages, instead of thinking of
Advertising like a billboard where you can only have one brand message.
Stickiness
The best way to stick is to have a Creative Idea that is big enough. Here are 4 ways for you to build
stickiness with advertising.
1. How big Is the Creative Idea? It is proven that a gold fish will get bigger with a bigger bowl. It is
the same for ideas. Make sure that the creative idea can serve to drive awareness, branding and
communication as well as stick over time.
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2. Know your assets: Build creative and brand assets into your ad so that it sticks. Keep using in
new executions or in other parts of the marketing mix. There are two types of assets to build
behind:
a) Brand assets: Look at the image scores or main messaging scores in your brand
tracking and then continue to build through the campaign over time. These become the
heart of the brand’s truth.
b) Creative assets: Those images, icons or parts of the ads that are remembered and
internalized. You want to understand what’s breaking through and continue to use those
creative assets in future executions. This starts to give your brand a sense of consistency
in execution. These dominant characteristics are memorable to the senses (visual,
sounds, smells, etc) and have something that dominates your mind. This sets up the
chance for campaign-ability.
3. Tell Stories: While visuals are key to communicating, people remember stories—that’s how we
are brought up—with ideas and morals designed to stick.
4. Always add a penny: Just like those little jars beside the cash register at a convenience store,
your ad should ad something to the health of the brand that can be used at a later date. With
each execution, you have a chance to add something to the branding idea.
What great advertising must do
1. The ad must set your brand apart from the competition. The more different the execution,
the more different it will make the brand seem.
2. Keep the idea and communication focused and very simple. Focused target, focused
message, focused strategy and a focused media. If you try to shout too many messages,
consumer just ends up hearing a confusing mess
3. Need a good Big Idea. Big Ideas drive consistency aligning your thinking over time, across
mediums (paid, earned, social, store) and across the entire brand line up.
4. Drive engagement. To gain attention among the 7,000 ads consumers see each day, you have
to make what you do interesting enough to get noticed.
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5. Let the visuals do the talking. Need a visual to capture attention, link to your brand and
communicate your message. 'See-say' advertising helps the consumers brain to engage, follow
along and remember.
6. Sell the benefit, not the problem or your product. Focus more on the solution than the
problem, what consumers get, and how it makes them feel.
7. Connect using consumer Insights. Insights enable consumers to see themselves in the
situation and once you do that, the consumers will see that the brand must be for them. Focus on
mattering the most to those consumers who care the most.
8. Tell the story behind the brand. Talk about your brand's purpose and your story about why you
started this brand, what do you hope the brand really does to help people.
Passion matters in Brand Management. If you don’t love the work, how do you ever expect your
consumer to love the brand?
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Beloved Brands: Who are we?
At Beloved Brands, we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We lead
workshops to define your brand, helping you uncover a unique, own-able Brand Positioning
Statement and an organizing Big Idea that transforms your brand’s DNA into a consumer-centric
and winning brand reputation. We lead workshops to build a strategic Brand Plan that will optimize
your resources and motivates everyone that touches the brand to follow the plan. We coach on
Marketing execution, helping build programs that create a bond with your consumers, to ensure
your investment drives growth on your brand. We will build a Brand Management Training Program,
so you can unleash the full potential of your Marketing team, enabling them to contribute smart and
exceptional Marketing work that drives brand growth. We cover strategic thinking, analytics, brand
planning, brand positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.
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Beloved Brands Training program
At Beloved Brands, we can build a Brand Management Training Program, to unleash the full
potential of your Marketing team
1. How to think strategically: We believe that Strategic Thinking is an essential foundation, to help
Marketers ask big questions that challenge and focus brand decisions. We teach brand leaders
to think strategically. We show them how to ask the right questions before seeing solutions, how
to map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play
out. We take them through the 7 elements of good strategy: vision, opportunity, focus, speed,
early win, leverage and gateway. We use forced choice in each model to help the Marketers
make focused decisions. We teach the value of asking good questions, using four interruptive
questions to help frame your brand’s strategy, looking at your competitive position, your brand’s
core strength, the connectivity with your consumer and the internal situation your brand faces.
2. Write smarter Brand Plans: A good Brand Plan provides a road map for everyone in the
organization to follow: Sales, R&D, Agencies and future Marketers on the brand. We demonstrate
how to write each component of the Brand Plan, looking at brand vision, purpose, values, goals,
key Issues, strategies and tactics. We provide definitions and examples to inspire Marketers on
how to write each component. We provide a full mock brand plan, with a framework for you to
use on your own brand. We offer a workshop that allows Marketers to try out the concept on
their own brand with hands on coaching with feedback to challenge them. At each step, we
provide the ideal format presentation to management. We offer unique formats for a Plan on a
Page and long-range Strategic Road Maps. We show how to build Marketing Execution plans as
part of the overall brand plan, looking at a Brand Communications Plan, Innovation Plan, In-store
plan and Experiential plan. This gives the strategic direction to everyone in the organization.
3. Create winning Brand Positioning Statements: A winning brand positioning statement sets up
the brand’s external communication and internally with employees who deliver that promise. We
show how to write a classic Brand Positioning statement with four key elements: target market,
competitive set, main benefit and reason to believe (RTBs). We introduce the Consumer Benefit
ladder, that starts with the consumer target, with insights and enemies. We layer in the brand
features. Then get in the consumers shoes and ask “what do I get” to find the functional benefits
and ask “how does this make me feel” to find the emotional benefits. We introduce a unique tool
that provide the top 50 potential functional and top 40 emotional benefits to help Marketers stretch
their minds yet narrow in on those that are most motivating and own-able for the brand. We then
show how to build an Organizing Big Idea that leads every aspect of your brand, including
promise, story, innovation, purchase moment and experience.
4. Write smarter Creative Briefs: The Creative Brief frames the strategy and positioning so your
Agency can creatively express the brand promise through communication. Marketing Execution
must impact the brand’s consumers in a way that puts your brand in a stronger business
position. The Creative Brief is the bridge between the brand strategy and the execution. Through
our Brand Positioning workshop, you will have all the homework on the brand needed to set up
the transformation into a succinct 1-page Creative Brief that will focus, inspire and challenge a
creative team to make great work. The hands-on Creative Brief workshop explores best in class
methods for writing the brief’s objective, target market, consumer insights, main message
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stimulus and the desired consumer response. Brand Leaders walk away from the session with a
ready-to-execute Creative Brief.
5. Be smarter at Brand Analytics: We show how to build a deep-dive business review on the
brand, looking at the category, consumers, competitors, channels and brand. We start with the
smart analytical principles that will challenge your thinking and help you gain more support by
telling analytical stories through data. We teach you the steps to complete a deep-dive Business
Review that will help assess the health and wealth of the brand, looking at the category,
consumer, competitors, channels and brand. We show key formulas you need to know for
financial analysis. We teach how to turn your analysis into a presentation for management,
showing the ideal presentation slide format. We provide a full mock business review, with a
framework and examples of every type of analysis, for you to use on your own brand. We show
you how to turn your analytical thinking into making projections by extrapolating data into the
future.
6. Get better Marketing Execution: Brand Leaders to judge and decide on execution options that
break through to consumers and motivates them to take action. We provide Brand Leaders with
tools and techniques for judging communication concepts from your agencies, as well as
processes for making decisions and providing effective feedback. We talk about the crucial role
of the brand leader in getting amazing marketing execution for your brand. We teach how to
make marketing decisions with the ABC’S, so you can choose great ads and reject bad ads
looking at tools such as Attention (A), Branding (B), Communication (C) and Stickiness (S). We
teach how to provide copy direction that inspires and challenges the agency to deliver great
execution. We also talk about how to be a better client to motivate and inspire your agency.
7. How to build Media Plans: We look at media as an investment and as a brand growth strategy,
exploring various media options—both traditional and on-line. We provide Brand Leaders with
new ways to think about media to be able to drive long term growth and profits for your brand.
We bring a more consumer centric approach to media, aligning the media choices to where your
consumer will be most likely to engage with your brand message. Media must change the
consumer’s behavior so they think, feel or act in a way that tightens the brand’s bond with
consumers and gives the brand to have more power and profit. We show where media fits into
creative process. We look at all the types of Media through the lens of the Brand Leader, with
advice on how to use traditional media options, such as TV, radio, newspaper, out-of-home and
Modern media options such as digital, social and search.
8. Winning the Purchase Moment: Brand Leaders need to know how to move consumers on the
path to purchase, helping consumers to test, decide and then experience the brand so that they
try, repeat and become loyal brand fans. We provide brand leaders with analytics, planning and
decision making tools to help their instincts and judgement for moving consumers to purchase.
Complete in-store business review, looking at categories, consumer shopping behavior,
competitors, customers and the overall brand performance. We teach the basics of customer
marketing planning, identifying the target consumer, in-store messages, strategies, tactics and
project management. We look at the available tools for customer marketing including pricing,
promotions, retail shelf management, merchandising and operational execution.
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