To resume photography I bought a nice simple, quality camera I could point and click. After a long spell of terrible results I decided to bite the bullet. I read the manual. And there I discovered what an incredibly clever and complex miniature machine I held in my hands. It can interpret the most varied lighting situations, change its lens width and length, overlay multiple images, smooth camera shake, scan panoramas, shoot films.
It must have taken hundreds of engineers, designers, programmers and optical scientists to create this device the size of a cigarette pack. It's a huge job of teamwork.
But can a team create the ads that eventually sell the product? Or is it a different process?
Every ad agency swears its briefing process is the most thorough or effective or stimulating. But too many agencies get sloppy about insisting on the client brief and the information it carries. It should display the client's marketing thoughts, knowledge of the target customer, thorough research, history and competition, and a sensible marketing budget.
Too often inadequate briefs leave the agency team guessing. And of course many times they guess wrong. A few misses and before long the client starts to wonder if another agency could do a better job, without wondering whether the fault could be in the brief. In fact I have a 40-question briefing form with which I would question new clients, because sometimes the only way to get properly briefed is to insist on it.
There is a move in the US to what they call visual creative briefs. In these, rather than the client sending out their document and waiting for the submission, the client and agency sit together in a room, for a day or more if necessary, and swap visual thoughts and ideas, building the brief and the solution together.
The method is certainly attractive, developing the rapport with the client, letting them see the thinking that went behind the development. But how does it deliver great advertising? Yes you want the client to understand what you are doing; to feel part of the creative process. But hopefully they understand that they are not the creative advertising people - otherwise why would they need the expense of an agency anyway?
Through this system I see lots of valuable information and insight, lots of pretty pictures, white boards and butcher's paper. People will start to talk each other into what they see as great ideas and they will emerge convinced they have solved the problem.
Looking into the room I don't see a great campaign. How can a committee create a space for the development of a Big Idea, for the Creative Spark, the flash of midnight genius? Look at the history of advertising (or any other creative endeavour for that matter) and you will see how many of the earth-moving thoughts have emerged from a single mind, sitting silently and juggling the widely differing ideas flitting through.
"Visual creative briefs" sounds to me too much like advertising by committee. Which is exactly what's wrong with current advertising and why so few great ads have been created in the past 20 years. Show me some earth-shaking campaigns that were created by committees. I remain very sceptical, the creative mind needs its solitude.
