4 Guidelines to Achieving Great Advertising Creative

The importance of starting with brand strategy

The conversation with clients about how to get great creative often starts with the client asking something along the lines of “I want a brand and a great video that will be a social media viral success”. The conversation then quickly gets bogged down with executional details. The point that we make with this article is that the key to results-driven advertising creative is about starting on the right path with consumer insight and a relevant and motivating brand strategy.

1. Identify the ‘ambition’ for the brand.

What do we want the meaning of our brand to be in people’s minds?

• A recent creative example is the brand Always. The brand management team wanted to “change the world one girl at a time” which drove the #LikeAGirl campaign. In order to develop great creative from a strong ambition, we need to evaluate creative differently. It is important for the client and agency to push each other in their thinking about the brand and the creative as it develops based on a consumer validated brand strategy with a clearly articulated brand ambition.

2. Brand purpose and strategy are at the core.

Why does our brand exists – what is the purpose of the brand – this is the pre-campaign market research with your target audiences.

• Brand purpose and brand strategy drive efficiency in mar-com spending and ensure the marriage of art and copy.
• Brand Matters has perfected the development of a winning brand strategy based on a best-of-class consumer packaged goods formula.

3. Build a strategic road map.

Strategy is the road map to better, faster, inexpensive creative to drive brand growth.

• Tighter briefs mercilessly hammer the brand purpose and brand strategy. What is the big juicy consumer problem that we are trying to solve? It is not the business challenge but the consumer insight.
• Do not use an “open creative brief” to let the creative team explore. The overall brief test: if we can’t explain it simply we don’t understand it well enough.

4. Good is easy. Great is hard work.

Sixty percent of brand content is considered poor or irrelevant. Creativity cannot solve this – only strategy can solve for relevancy.

• A well thought-out brand strategy can articulate an understanding of consumer needs and desires.
• The trick is to develop branded creative that achieves the following:
  • Make things sticky – media people can then place in a meaningful way.
  • Make people care/share – you have to be careful about where people tread. Sharing is not necessarily caring.
  • Make things people want – identify the need up front in the creative brief.

Creative conclusions

• Dare to think big.
• Brands can go wrong if too internally focused and if they miss the emotional relationship with the consumer.
• Don’t get caught in the cycle of reaffirmation.