Cut your marketing budget

In December 2008 Jane Evans, along with Virgil reality and Sammantha Tannous from Relativity Communications gave a seminar, here’s a transcript of Jane’s speech.

Jane Evans – Creative person. Firstly, I am not an account service person, planner or media person, I am a creative, so please don’t expect any graphs or charts or justification for what I am about to present. All I offer is 25 years experience in both large and small agencies around the world and some ideas on how we can all do things more efficiently.

I also want to point out that I do not believe we are on the verge of global financial Armageddon. This is just change and it’s a change we’ve needed to have.

Change is good

Personally I think this current climate is an opportunity for all of us to build a better world and to unite. I also think that we have been given the opportunity on a global scale to spread the wealth further and for all of us to add value, whether it be in our advertising or our tithing.

We saw this on the worlds biggest stage, Obama created the biggest upset in American political history by people standing together for a common cause, donating a dollar here and a dollar there defeated the giants who had previously donated a million here and a billion there.

This is a time for accountability. The big wigs of the American car industry went to Washington a few weeks ago to lobby for a bailout of their failing industries.

They flew there in private jets.

Do you think they got the sympathy of the American people?

One “What the hell?” from Whoopie Goldberg on the View and their bailouts, expense accounts and motives were laid out for all to see.

I believe we are coming into a time of honesty.

And it can save you a fortune!

It doesn’t matter whether you work with a large agency a small boutique, an in-house department or with freelancers, or have none of these – there are a number of ways to create or retain the quality of your work and the power of your message even in hard times.

But you are going to have to forgo your private jets. You are going to have to roll up your sleeves and you are going to have to work. HARD!

And first of all you are going to have to ask yourself a tough question.

What do you want?

But more importantly “What am I willing to do to get it?”

Because the best way of handling a tight budget is to take control of it.

Before you even look at what you can cut, look at what you have.

Any of you who have been marketing for years will have stacks and stacks of research, I have sat in enough meetings over the years to know how hard most of you have worked to have brand plans and brand personalities and brand blue prints in place.

Now’s the time to use them.

Give it everything you’ve got

I know it’s very unusual for a creative to say this, but I love research.

When it’s used properly.

I once heard a wonderful thing it said “Research is like a lamp post, you can either use it to illuminate – or you can use it to lean against”.

If your company has spent hundreds of thousands or even just thousands doing research, then get all those documents, cancel all your meetings, get a nice cup of coffee, put your feet up on the desk and read them. If at the end of all that you still have questions, then spend money on targeted research, it’s much easier and cheaper to get the answer.

What if everything you find is out of date? Or what if you don’t have any of this?

Do you have any idea how many people research the same topics and discover the same answers?

Forget bespoke buy ready to wear

Here’s a great tip, for $250 you can have access to some of the most brilliant research on what the global market is right now and what the top 10 trends are for 2009, all thanks to the brilliant people at JWT who have spent a tremendous amount of time, talent and experience for their large multi-national clients, that you can share for a fraction of the cost. Or you can subscribe to ibis.com.au they’ve researched thousands of market sectors and different businesses, so you know where your business stands in its unique marketplace.

So after you’ve done your own research and taken stock of what you have and know what you want – you have to find the way to get it.

Many of you will be stuck with agency contracts, some of you will be trying to do this by yourself, either way the same principals apply.

You need to find the people who can make it happen.

And if you truly want to spend your money wisely, you’ll need to cut out anything that doesn’t add value, which means once again – you’ll have to do your homework to find the people who will truly add to the process.

You need to ask yourself, “What do I really need?”

Do I need account service? If so, how much account service do I need?

Do I need strategic planning? Maybe, but if you’ve read every piece of insight you’ve ever had on your product and you know the coming trends, then why do you need them? To write the brief?

DO IT YOURSELF!

I personally have always been bemused by the whole briefing process. Generally it starts with something the size of a phone book from the client, pages and pages of reports and information on the product. It then takes three weeks and a couple of meetings (minimum) for it to be turned into an A4 page neatly packaged up into different sections like Target audience, brand objectives etc…

This is then handed to the creatives that say “Give it to me in one line”

The single minded proposition.

Imagine how much money you could save if you provided the neat one pager and the even neater one liner?

And what if you gave that directly to a creative that was eager to hear it, and free to act upon it immediately? No one has yet to describe the creative experience and it is different for every creative on the planet, however in my experience the answer to a brief either comes ten minutes after the brief or ten minutes before the presentation. Why not give your creative team your one pager and your one liner in person and leave them for three weeks to come up with a solution.

There you’ve saved three weeks and at least two meetings.

But how do you brief a creative team?

You don’t - you inspire them

Ogilvy and Mather is known as the University of advertising, I was fortunate enough to spend a few years there and there was a presentation that was given that blew me away, I’m going to para phrase  it here but it went something like..

Imagine Pope Julius II briefing Michelangelo on an important new project.

He could have said, “Please paint the ceiling…”

He could have said, “We’ve got terrible problems with dampness and cracks in the ceiling. Could you cover them up for us?

He might have even tried to be a bit helpful “Could you cover up the cracks on the ceiling using red and yellow paint?”

He could even have said, “Could you paint a few biblical scenes — and throw in some angels, cupids, devils and saints?”

But what he probably said was, “Please paint the ceiling of our Holy Church, for the greater glory of God, and as an inspiration to His people forever more.”

The result, of course, was the Sistine Chapel.

The Pope knew what he wanted and why. He knew his audience. He gave clear guidelines, but allowed room for creative interpretation.

More importantly, he inspired Michelangelo.

But what if you’ve never met your creative team – or don’t have one.

Find them.

Some of you will need a wild, young creative team, they generally can only be found in agencies, they can be very valuable and provide fresh and savvy ideas, but please make sure they have a wise experienced creative director and you give them a lot more than three weeks.

I ran award school for a couple of years, it is the way kids get into creative departments, and it is tough, if your budget can spare it send a youngster from your department to try it out – they will soon get a respect for the effort required to create selling messages.

In the course they are taught to draw hundreds of boxes on a white piece of paper and then fill them with ideas.

A creative director in London once told me “You know when you’ve got a good idea – you get a tingle in your balls, well, I don’t have equipment, but I know what he meant. As a junior I had to fill up at least three hundred boxes till I even got close to a tingle.

Experience saves

If you don’t have to have a young, hip on the edge creative, or if you don’t have the budget for the extra time and supervision, then why not opt for a more experienced creative team. You will find them in agencies, they are usually called the fire men, they are called in to fix things or make an unhappy client happy again and they usually have to do it quickly.

Or you can find them sitting in a boat shed, picking their kids up from school or writing their novel.

The advantage of these freelance creative people is they are getting their inspiration in the supermarket, at the school gates, in the beauty of nature. They are living the lives you are selling your products in, not sitting in ivory towers filling in white boxes.

And they only have a few clients, so you know you have their full attention.

There is a lot to be said for hand picking your creative team, but be aware, don’t always go for the obvious.

When I started my agency I thought my clients would be all tights and tampons. So you can imagine I was delighted when my first two clients were a brewery and a sports car. When Chuck Hahn gave me the Malt Shovel brewery account he said “Why should I give my account to an agency run by a woman?” I told him men had been advertising tampons for years and he shrugged his shoulders and gave it a go. What he didn’t know was I don’t drink beer, I was pregnant when I won the business and it wasn’t till 18 months later and I’d stopped breastfeeding that he discovered I didn’t touch the stuff, he said he definitely wouldn’t have given me the account if he’d known that.

But what he got was passion and he knew it, I would have given anything to make James Squire beer a success and I became not only the creative director of my agency, but a valuable member of the brewing team but most importantly I became  the Brand Guardian and I added creativity to every area of their business – not just the ads.

Imagine what you could do with that level of enthusiasm and involvement from your creative people?

Now before any of you faint at the thought of putting your own team together – or god forbid using freelancers, be aware that agencies have already increased their use of freelancers by 40% last year – you’ve probably got them anyway. And if you’re wise enough to employ a good media agency they will have a few good creative leads for you.

And for the totally fearless or those with a non-existent budget there are a number of freelance sites where you can get your creative work done for a fraction of the cost, but there isn’t enough time to explain all the work you’ll have to do to get quality brand presence for that one!

Pay peanuts….

OK, so you’ve got your team, you’ve given them the three weeks and they’ve come back with some ideas.

If you get all tingly about the ideas you know that all your hard work researching and briefing was worth it.

Or…

No more Mr./Ms. Nice Guy.

If you have a team that you genuinely like as people, then this is easy.

It’s called front stabbing.

You all recognize your skills, your place in the team and that business is business. Then you get on with it.

How many of you have seen a concept that you think is off brief, but you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. So you ask them to make the branding stronger, or the headline catchier or a bigger picture of the product? But in your heart you know it’s just not saying what you think it should.

And the creative will go off and tinker with it, change things, move things, but if you haven’t got a tingle I can assure you they won’t either.

Here’s a hint, say;

“That’s a load of crap.”

There will be two reactions to this statement:

The first will be the thing you haven’t seen, not understood or hasn’t been presented properly,

listen.

The second response is “Why is it crap?”

Either way a good creative will go away and come back with something that works for both of you.

Being polite will give you compromise and that’s when nobody gets what they want. And tinkering wastes time and costs you money.

But I’m scared

But what if your creative gives you something so scary, so far away from what you were expecting?

I once had a client sit in the presentation of his final commercial, we had spent 9 months trying to assure him that he didn’t need animations of enzymes for his washing powder commercial.

We showed him the final commercial without telling everyone how the washing powder worked.

He said “My heart says it is right, my head says it’s not.”

My copywriter and I responded in unison “Listen to your heart!”

Drive lipstick commercial

He listened. We ran the commercial without animations, it was re made around the world and won gazillions of awards both creative and effectiveness and he got promoted.

Your head only can’t get those results.

Your head will only give you what’s been before. Your heart feels what is right.

And you’re going to need a strong heart in this world.

It’s a whole new world out there

Clients and businesses and financial controllers dominated the information age. Now we are in the creative age and fortunately for you, all of us who stared blankly at excel spreadsheets actually excel in this age.

The creative universe moves quickly, it is much easier to make your way through it with a team whose always skipped through this place and recognises that like everything , it has a pattern.

Numa Numa

Can you believe this man has created a top ten hit with a flash film clip sponsored by Campari starring two of the hottest stars on the planet?

Rihannah clip

It’s amazing what 23 million hits on you tube can do.

And a group of creatives found the pattern to bring an obscure Bulgarian pop song into the mass consciousness.

Become an internet phenomena

Now most of you will not have the budget of Campari who can wait for the internet phenomena – you have to become the internet phenomena

But it’s not easy.

You can always do a campari in reverse.

Now, the average cost of a video clip for an emerging Australian Band is $25,000 and that’s a good budget. If your product is relevant it can be weaved in to the message of any song. It may not get to the audience that Rihanna attracts, but it will get played on tv and myspace and youtube and get to that particularly elusive target market.

And yes it’s risky, but think of the money you’ve saved on research and account service , listen to your heart and take a few risks. In these times fortune favours the brave.

But be aware.

You have no idea how many times I have been asked by a client to create a viral clip, I always respond “Maybe”.

Forcing a viral communication, or trying to spread a message that is just not welcome will do you more harm that good, no body wants to be seen as a try hard or you will score a total of twenty hits, and usually they are you!

Again, the mystery of the creative process, if there’s a natural fit, or something funny, educational or just thought provoking, your creative will find it, write it in a way that gets your message across and find the way to make it.

42 Below commercial.

How scary would that presentation be? “We’re going to fill a beach with blow up dolls”

How risky was it?

How many things could have gone wrong?

But how many hits has it had?

Actually, it’s only had a few thousand on youtube – but it has been passed on from creative to creative around the world and hit the 18-35 A’s. The niche that 42 below wanted!

And how much do you think it cost to do?

Throw caution to the wind

Or blow up dolls.

We are in an age where a fat man can sing in front of a web cam and create a number one hit. We are living in a world where risks are rewarded and originality is the new accountability.

Yet we still run our marketing as if our commercials are seen by everyone and that a mistakes cost a fortune.

Since the dawn of television product messages have been targeted at the lowest common denominator. Now we all have our own screens, whether that be the old tv in the lounge or the screen of an ipod. We can talk to the highest common denominator of people actually with a common denominator.

Some of these groups can have as few as 10 members, others can be the whole world.

And there really is little to risk.

Production is cheaper and more accessible than ever before, a large portion of the media is practically free and the worst that can happen is nobody sees what you have spent time and effort creating.

This new world of communication is not coming – it is here we are smack bang in the middle is unexplored territory, there are no maps, no guides and certainly no research to let us know what lies ahead.

Stake your claim

This is the greatest opportunity there has ever been for a marketer, if you are prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before, take responsibility for things you’ve previously passed on to others, are prepared to take risks, and use your imagination.

Then go ahead, cut your marketing budget, but when you do – cut the head out of it – not the heart.