Bonfire copywriter Lee Richardson considers the age-old conumdrum
Should the design of advertising campaigns be led by media or creative strategies? It is a question which has dogged adland for many years. There are good reasons to choose both. Why go with a media-led strategy? By giving media the lead role, the client stays within budget, even before an idea is aired; the media space has been purchased and that is that.
The creative agency works around it. A media-led campaign goes directly to the consumer. Media space is bought in line with the target market: where they spend their time and when they are there. It makes sense. A campaign is devised with a destination in mind. However, it can be a little prescriptive and restrictive when it comes to the creative side of things.
One extreme media-led strategy which ensures marketers stay within budget and get in front of the target market is inbound marketing. But the argument put forward by today’s inbound evangelists against traditional advertising is questionable: that it is disruptive and annoys consumers which, in turn, can be bad for your brand image.
It is a good argument against bad advertising. However, if you create interesting advertising content, the argument is futile. Advertisers who disrupt people’s routine with something of interest is welcomed. The basic premise of inbound marketing is that we should create interesting content for people, allowing them to form a relationship with brands.
Purple reign: Cadbury’s Gorilla caught consumer imaginations with its drum-playing gorilla giving his all to the sound of Phil Collins’s ‘In the Air Tonight’. Fallon art director Juan Cabral said a brand needs to go to the heart and not to the brain. Released as a viral first, it debuted during the finale of Big Brother in 2007. The ad saw a ten per cent jump in Dairy Milk sales.
Why can’t the content be a TV ad? Would you say a gorilla playing the drums was an unwelcome disruption to your routine that might put you off eating Cadbury’s Dairy Milk? Hardly. This is where AIDA comes in. Sometimes you need to shout your message. Make people your target audience by being interesting to them; don’t just aim for sure things. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action. It has been doing the rounds in adland since the 1950s. Sadly, it is largely overlooked in today’s world, but it is still highly relevant and deserves a comeback. If we stop trying to be up to speed with the latest trends and media – if even for just a short time – we will come to the realisation that simplicity can be key.
If you grab someone’s attention, make them interested in what you are selling and make them desire it, there is a good chance they will do as you intended they do and answer your brand’s call to action. Advertisers who create attention-grabbing and interesting ads inevitably have more success in forming meaningful brand connections with consumers.
That being said, the strategy is dictated by initial campaign goals. If these goals are to stay within budget at all costs and to ensure your target market sees your message, however uninteresting to them, then a media-led strategy ticks the boxes. Even a media strategy as limiting as one based on inbound marketing ticks these boxes – but there are other ways.
So what is the case for a creative-led strategy? The most prominent argument for shaping an ad campaign around the creative content is that there are no constraints; the best idea wins. With this strategy, an engaging idea is presented along with suggestions about the media with which it works alongside to carry it. It is generally the case in pitch-type scenarios.
However good the pitch-winning idea is though, there is always a chance that the first request of the newly-acquired client is to produce the concept for a certain medium. If it is the right medium to communicate it to the target market, the idea will have been created with it in mind. Ideas are not created in isolation from, or in ignorance of, potential broadcast media.
As well as this, knowing the creative concept allows the media agency to add an extra layer to the targeting strategy, thereby enhancing the campaign’s strategic possibilities and effectiveness. Implemented by marketers from the onset, this strategy means the best ideas can shine and do not have to be warped and adapted to fit certain criteria.
So, is it chicken or egg? Like many similar marketing topics, it is subjective. Creativity can be much more effective than some of the sure-to-get-in-front-of-your-audience alternatives, but is the client willing to take the risk on a concept that could potentially transform the brand? So the question really is, do you buy the egg that you know will feed you, or do you buy the chicken that might not produce eggs, or that could potentially feed you for years?
Lee Richardson is a copywriter at Bonfire
