Understanding the fundamentals….is the idea understood, engaging, relevant, and the brand has a role on bringing these things to consumers. Also, what we are calling social value and that people want to get involved in it and share it. Our process and tools focus on the outcomes but understand the fundamentals.
Across our process: monitoring and maximizing. Inspiring closeness and understanding ROI.
It is a continuous and linked process through consistent measurement and carried learnings from step to step. At the early stage, understanding the fundamentals is most important. As we get to the end, we are focusing more on the outcomes. But all of these things are present throughout so we can deliver on continuous and integrated measurement from beginning to end.
Clients start to understand the need for a clearer, more focused creative brief prior to development
More inclusive, social, consumer-centric methods
Media agnostic, foundational work
What to do with this consumer empowerment? Well, if we want consumers to love our brands, to desire us, to accept us into their circle, we must love them back – to understand them - it is clear for marketers the relationship between brands and consumers is a 2-way relationship that must be cultivated and respected. So, we need to discover our consumer and a REAL insight on what is meaningful to them, what do they dream about or long for, what do they need?
Brands TODAY really have to work....to truly understand their consumers (their desires, dilemmas, their aspirations) to unearth these human insights. We call them piercing insights and we define it as the identification and revelation of a real tension that inspires a brand opportunity.
Once we’ve gathered the insights we believe are the most universal and compelling. We need to understand how many people care about the dilemma, dissatisfaction or desire we’ve identified so how broadly does this idea appeal? We call this SCOPE. And then how strongly do they feel about it? How big will the sign of relief be? We call this the TENSION – how taut is the rubberband.
This is the BIG IDEA – the second building block of great communications. This is where we really explore and determine the legitimacy of the brand’s role in consumer’s minds connected to the piercing insight. Big ideas are the backbone of all communication for a brand – across all media which serves to bridge the insight with the brand’s offer to relieve the tension we’ve identified consumers are carrying. These are the enduring ideas that can support a brand over time, over geographies, over media, over campaigns.
As I mentioned earlier, the development of tools to research and explore insights and ideas began as a way to better inform the agency with a focused and clear brief in order to raise the chances of successful creative development and reduce wasted costs on unproductive ideas and routes. And that is the role of creative – to tell the big idea story in a way that elevates it, boosts it and brings it to life for consumers in a unique way. We know what we have to say is strong and compelling, the creative team takes over to tell the story in the best way possible.
These are the main ingredients to the early, foundational stages of Nurturing Great Creative – INSIGHTS, IDEAS, EARLY STAGE CREATIVE CONCEPTS. And it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone to reveal that any creative endeavor and anything that is in its stages of infancy is fragile and needs to be cared for and supported. With this in mind, our approach to researching these stages has been developed, refined and adapted to protect and encourage growth with special care NOT to tear down or destroy. This is the NGC process. So, how do we adapt research for these fragile stages?
Well, that’s simple....we build a hothouse. We create an environment where we can grow insights, ideas and creative quickly in:
A dynamic live event that brings together all of the key stakeholders to participate in an engaging environment of exploration, learning, diving deeper and resolving and answering questions on the right path toward successful creative development. The true key is this immersive event where the key stakeholders (the marketing team, consumer insights, the agency and the consumer) come together for quick decision making, informed and supported by consumer input and reactions. The way a real hothouse works is that the elements are contained and the net energy (and temperature) increases - which makes everything go faster. It is the inspiration for what we are trying to accomplish as a team.
To this hothouse, we bring all of our tools and experts! This is not about scores, report cards and norms. This is about building and growing so we combine qualitative and quantitative techniques and each has their role in the process. QUAL for sparking, feeling, growing allowing space, freedom and exploration......with qual tools adapted and applied specifically for our purpose of NGC. And quantitative assessment for comparing and contrasting, to allow some assessment of progress and applying each tool to the best of its ability.
It is not a linear process. You can start at any place (insights, ideas, creative) and with any level of finish or clarity depending on where you are with your brand, your consumers. The tools speak to each other and are grounded in the same philosophy so we are sensitive to capturing learning and holding on to what matters so it is not lost when creating the story but inspires it!
An intentional outcome of our survey design is an improved respondent experience. How we engage with respondents is no small detail if we are representing your brands and we want the best information we can get from them.
We ask consumers to give opinions about products, advertising and entertainment so they are no alerted as to the intentions of the research. Visual and emotional tools add to the interactivity and enjoyment of the survey.
The feedback from respondents on the Next*Connect experience has been phenomenal. We respect their time and respondents feel more in control, not inundated with the same questions rephrased in 5 different ways. Consumers rate Next*Connect 50% more enjoyable than other current online tests; 80% are willing to participate again.
In evaluating and improving upon creative, we are measuring and looking for the concrete impact on your business so we measure the ad’s absility to drives sales (this is the sales power)
YET we know that the ad has also to build on brand Equity & therefore we extend our conception of response to BOTH Sales and Equity power. We now have a one number summary of the power of your ad to drive equity for your brand.
That set the framework for the establishment of a powerful creative device. It used the juxtaposition of an incongruous figure, often in male settings who were embodying hunger traits ...
The first ad with Betty White sums up perfectly the approach .. play ad
Whilst the global TV pool gave the flexibility to target to local markets USING A VARIETY OF LOCALLY RELEVANT CELEBRITIES
lower media and production costs meant that a real local flavour could be further injected through other media..
for example a Mockumentary in the US told the unknown story of how the NFL player Leon Lett made one of the games most famous mistakes because he played hungry
Overall a great example of the benefits that a BIG IDEA can deliver..
They ended up with a campaign running in 58 markets, pulling away from the pack as the world’s biggest bar. The brand had its most successful period of growth ever.
Getting it right is not merely about saving production costs and spending less time on campaign development, it is all about giving the creative teams the freedom to create inspiring work that do prompt discussion, sharing and create a wave of momentum for the brand...
When the markets understood the BIG IDEA and recognised it was about demonstrating recognisable hunger traits in a humorous way, then they were really able to execute it successfully on the ground and reap their rewards.
There are no IPA awards in 2013 – all the more time to get ready for 2014 and maybe we can help you a little along the way
Thankyou!