воскресенье, 25 июля 2010 г.
воскресенье, 18 июля 2010 г.
Gift Vouchers
Vouchers are pieces of paper that entitle the bearer to a certain amount of credit at a particular shop or chain of stores1; occasionally vouchers can be exchanged for services rather than goods. Unlike cash, which is issued by the government and so is guaranteed by the Bank of England, vouchers are issued by the relevant company.
Some stores now dispense plastic gift cards instead of paper vouchers2. While previously only found at the lower end of the retail market, they can now be found in all sectors, including, stores such as Harrods. They are similar to the more traditional vouchers with the exception that many of them can be 'topped up' with additional credit.
Obtaining a Voucher
A voucher can be bought from a shop that will then accept its own vouchers, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in buyng the vouchers in the first place. Sometimes several different stores from different chains will agree to recognise each others' vouchers. There are also specific multi-chain vouchers, such as a High Street Voucher, which can be used at nearly 20,000 stores from dozens of different chains. Vouchers are bought using money, e.g. a person will give the store Ј5 in cash and will receive a Ј5 voucher in return. Vouchers are normally bought in cash, but for larger denominations there is no intrinsic reason not to use a credit or debit card. Buying vouchers normally therefore causes no loss or gain of value.
Often vouchers are completely free. Many newspapers or magazines contain coupons that can be cut out and used, making the cost of the coupons equal to whatever you paid for the newspaper or magazine3. Alternatively, you can get these coupons on the back of many products, giving discounts to any future purchases that you may make of that particular product.
Sometimes vouchers come in the form of a reward system. Companies give a certain amount of money to you in voucher for each year or quarter. This is based on how much you have spent within that shop each year; for example, you may receive one pound for every hundred pounds that you spent, making it well worth your while to spend more at these stores. You gain these vouchers simply by asking about your 'points' status or you will be sent vouchers in the post.
One way of gaining a stream of vouchers is to take part in long term consumer research. Questionnaires will be sent to you on a fairly regular basis. If you answer them you can be sent vouchers on all manner of household items. These questionnaires can be sent year on year, garnering the willing volunteer a constant stream of vouchers.
Using a Voucher
Firstly, travel to the store that your voucher is designed to be used in4. Sometimes vouchers can be used in other places than in the specific shop suggested. These are normally other stores that are owned by the same parent company, who obviously benefits wherever your cash is spent.
When paying for items bought in the store, simply give the voucher as payment or part-payment for the goods or services rather than paying with cash. The person at the till will probably sigh, take the voucher and deduct the value from what needs paying and give you your goods. As such the effort involved from the person using the voucher is little more than using cash and actually less than using a credit card, although as explained below the opposite is true for the poor till operator.
Benefits of Buying Vouchers
Vouchers have benefits to both the shops selling them and the people buying them. Here are some of the advantages:
Benefits for Buyers and Users
They can make excellent presents as they allow buyers to avoid the problem of giving cash - that or a lack of imagination.
Vouchers can be used to force people to buy in an area they wouldn't ordinarily do so. One example could be men being forced to shop in health care shops.
Some shops will give extra benefits to those who buy vouchers; these benefits can include loyalty points for those who have the relevant cards.
Very occasionally some companies will sell vouchers for less than their face value, usually on very large denominations such as HMV's corporate vouchers where for sales over Ј50,000 discounts of up to 10%5 are possible.
Benefits to Stores
Vouchers are often bought along with other products as buyers 'impulse buy' after entering a store. These vouchers will either then be used with other purchases or, in some cases with more obscure shops, never be used, making a clean profit for the company.
Unlike cash presents, vouchers require a return to the relevant store. Those customers using vouchers often buy goods with a greater value than that of the voucher. This increases profits of the stores selling vouchers.
Vouchers are often used as advertising, mainly by encouraging people to invite others in return for a certain value of vouchers that will eventually be recouped by the increase in revenue from additional customers. One example of this is Sky's invite-a-friend policy. After the person receives their first reward for encouraging others to join they are likely to invite more and more people to maximise their own, and the company's, profits.
We can see that vouchers do provide a noticeable benefit to the economy and fulfil a niche that plain cash cannot, but at the same time they can bring some formidable problems as the next section will explain.
Disadvantages of Vouchers
Vouchers, however, have some serious disadvantages compared to cash or credit cards. Here are a few problems that are caused by vouchers.
Disadvantages for Buyers or Users
Those using the vouchers have the problem of them having to be used in certain stores; this can cause problems if the vouchers are linked to an unwanted store.
Vouchers sometimes fail to give change which can lead to wastage. However, most companies now give change in the form of lower denomination vouchers with cash given for change under one pound.
A truly abominable practice with questionable morality is that of vouchers having an expiry date. If the voucher is not used before this date then the voucher cannot be used and any value is wasted. This method allows the stores to generate pure profit from the selling of vouchers.
As mentioned at the beginning, vouchers are not 'safe money' like a UK bank note. If the company that supports them goes bankrupt before the voucher is used then they instantly become worthless. While you could try to recover your money against the company's assets, the likelihood of any money making its way back to you is slim to say the least.
Disadvantages to Stores
While overall there is no loss of money, apparent fluctuations of cash flow can be caused by the usage of vouchers if a large number are used in quick succession.
Vouchers can create large amounts of paperwork for their sales and use. Tills will normally need to be reprogrammed to 'understand' vouchers and so also require at least a basic retraining of those using them.
Vouchers must be produced or bought by the company itself and so an outlay of capital is required, which reduces potential income.
The primary disadvantages for vouchers are therefore shown to be one of complexity for both users and stores. Critics of vouchers claim - perhaps justifiably - that why bother using vouchers when cash can fulfil every shopping need that a voucher could and indeed many more.
Gift Cards
As mentioned above gift cards are very similar to vouchers apart from a couple of differences:
Gift cards can be topped-up with extra credit after being used; this allows cards to be 'refilled' as presents and prevents a number of cards accumulating in the shopper's wallet.
Design: while a relatively minor point, gift cards are stronger than vouchers which means they are harder to break; however paper vouchers can be repaired with sellotape and reused unlike gift cards which break permanently.
Book Tokens
As the most notable example of a voucher the humble book token deserves a special mention. While bearing many similarities to a normal voucher, it has a couple of differences. For a start it can be redeemed at any bookshop, making it far easier to use than any normal voucher. During World Book Day, book tokens are given out for free - normally in the form of one pound chits but occasionally in larger values. School children, in particular, receive book tokens in order to encourage reading at a younger age.
The book token is one of the longest running vouchers, being introduced in Britain during 1932; as such book tokens are very well known and can often be found being given as prizes by schools and scout organisations.
Online Vouchers
As well as being used in the high street, vouchers can also be used for Internet shopping. They can be bought online, at which point they will normally be posted to the buyer. They can also be used online, where they act as a form of store credit. A specific code will be printed on each card and the correct entry of the code deposits the appropriate sum into the buyer's account. The majority of these vouchers are dispensed by companies that have no high street presence of their own.
Miscellaneous Vouchers
There are many other forms of vouchers that are used for services around the country in lieu of cash payment. Here are a couple of the more commonly seen ones.
Luncheon: these vouchers can be used by employees who don't wish to eat inside their work cafeterias. Created in 1950, many stores allowed them to be used as part-payment for food. These vouchers provided a tax-free benefit and so were widely used across the country. They are, however, quite rarely seen inside the UK in the 21st century.
Travel: some package holiday companies provide these to tourists. They can be used for specific things, such as food or accommodation. They form part of the price of buying the package and must be used in the way required; these may be unpopular among certain tourists who wish to pick and choose in their holiday.
Should Vouchers be Used Then?
To decide whether vouchers should be used rather than the closest other payment method - cash - the benefits must outweigh the disadvantages, both for the customer and the store.
Just a brief glance of the points shown above normally separates people into voucher-users and voucher-haters in a remarkably Marmite-esque fashion. Consumers who use them add a significant amount to the economy and to each other's happiness each year. Those that don't should mutter, use a crisp Ј50 note and smile smugly at those using tattered M&S vouchers.
Currently there are millions of pounds in uncashed vouchers just in the UK alone, and a company offers a great deal of money in voucher form every time they run a promotion campaign6. With the amount of money that vouchers provide to the economy each year, it looks likely that this payment medium will be here to stay with us for a while yet.
Some stores now dispense plastic gift cards instead of paper vouchers2. While previously only found at the lower end of the retail market, they can now be found in all sectors, including, stores such as Harrods. They are similar to the more traditional vouchers with the exception that many of them can be 'topped up' with additional credit.
Obtaining a Voucher
A voucher can be bought from a shop that will then accept its own vouchers, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in buyng the vouchers in the first place. Sometimes several different stores from different chains will agree to recognise each others' vouchers. There are also specific multi-chain vouchers, such as a High Street Voucher, which can be used at nearly 20,000 stores from dozens of different chains. Vouchers are bought using money, e.g. a person will give the store Ј5 in cash and will receive a Ј5 voucher in return. Vouchers are normally bought in cash, but for larger denominations there is no intrinsic reason not to use a credit or debit card. Buying vouchers normally therefore causes no loss or gain of value.
Often vouchers are completely free. Many newspapers or magazines contain coupons that can be cut out and used, making the cost of the coupons equal to whatever you paid for the newspaper or magazine3. Alternatively, you can get these coupons on the back of many products, giving discounts to any future purchases that you may make of that particular product.
Sometimes vouchers come in the form of a reward system. Companies give a certain amount of money to you in voucher for each year or quarter. This is based on how much you have spent within that shop each year; for example, you may receive one pound for every hundred pounds that you spent, making it well worth your while to spend more at these stores. You gain these vouchers simply by asking about your 'points' status or you will be sent vouchers in the post.
One way of gaining a stream of vouchers is to take part in long term consumer research. Questionnaires will be sent to you on a fairly regular basis. If you answer them you can be sent vouchers on all manner of household items. These questionnaires can be sent year on year, garnering the willing volunteer a constant stream of vouchers.
Using a Voucher
Firstly, travel to the store that your voucher is designed to be used in4. Sometimes vouchers can be used in other places than in the specific shop suggested. These are normally other stores that are owned by the same parent company, who obviously benefits wherever your cash is spent.
When paying for items bought in the store, simply give the voucher as payment or part-payment for the goods or services rather than paying with cash. The person at the till will probably sigh, take the voucher and deduct the value from what needs paying and give you your goods. As such the effort involved from the person using the voucher is little more than using cash and actually less than using a credit card, although as explained below the opposite is true for the poor till operator.
Benefits of Buying Vouchers
Vouchers have benefits to both the shops selling them and the people buying them. Here are some of the advantages:
Benefits for Buyers and Users
They can make excellent presents as they allow buyers to avoid the problem of giving cash - that or a lack of imagination.
Vouchers can be used to force people to buy in an area they wouldn't ordinarily do so. One example could be men being forced to shop in health care shops.
Some shops will give extra benefits to those who buy vouchers; these benefits can include loyalty points for those who have the relevant cards.
Very occasionally some companies will sell vouchers for less than their face value, usually on very large denominations such as HMV's corporate vouchers where for sales over Ј50,000 discounts of up to 10%5 are possible.
Benefits to Stores
Vouchers are often bought along with other products as buyers 'impulse buy' after entering a store. These vouchers will either then be used with other purchases or, in some cases with more obscure shops, never be used, making a clean profit for the company.
Unlike cash presents, vouchers require a return to the relevant store. Those customers using vouchers often buy goods with a greater value than that of the voucher. This increases profits of the stores selling vouchers.
Vouchers are often used as advertising, mainly by encouraging people to invite others in return for a certain value of vouchers that will eventually be recouped by the increase in revenue from additional customers. One example of this is Sky's invite-a-friend policy. After the person receives their first reward for encouraging others to join they are likely to invite more and more people to maximise their own, and the company's, profits.
We can see that vouchers do provide a noticeable benefit to the economy and fulfil a niche that plain cash cannot, but at the same time they can bring some formidable problems as the next section will explain.
Disadvantages of Vouchers
Vouchers, however, have some serious disadvantages compared to cash or credit cards. Here are a few problems that are caused by vouchers.
Disadvantages for Buyers or Users
Those using the vouchers have the problem of them having to be used in certain stores; this can cause problems if the vouchers are linked to an unwanted store.
Vouchers sometimes fail to give change which can lead to wastage. However, most companies now give change in the form of lower denomination vouchers with cash given for change under one pound.
A truly abominable practice with questionable morality is that of vouchers having an expiry date. If the voucher is not used before this date then the voucher cannot be used and any value is wasted. This method allows the stores to generate pure profit from the selling of vouchers.
As mentioned at the beginning, vouchers are not 'safe money' like a UK bank note. If the company that supports them goes bankrupt before the voucher is used then they instantly become worthless. While you could try to recover your money against the company's assets, the likelihood of any money making its way back to you is slim to say the least.
Disadvantages to Stores
While overall there is no loss of money, apparent fluctuations of cash flow can be caused by the usage of vouchers if a large number are used in quick succession.
Vouchers can create large amounts of paperwork for their sales and use. Tills will normally need to be reprogrammed to 'understand' vouchers and so also require at least a basic retraining of those using them.
Vouchers must be produced or bought by the company itself and so an outlay of capital is required, which reduces potential income.
The primary disadvantages for vouchers are therefore shown to be one of complexity for both users and stores. Critics of vouchers claim - perhaps justifiably - that why bother using vouchers when cash can fulfil every shopping need that a voucher could and indeed many more.
Gift Cards
As mentioned above gift cards are very similar to vouchers apart from a couple of differences:
Gift cards can be topped-up with extra credit after being used; this allows cards to be 'refilled' as presents and prevents a number of cards accumulating in the shopper's wallet.
Design: while a relatively minor point, gift cards are stronger than vouchers which means they are harder to break; however paper vouchers can be repaired with sellotape and reused unlike gift cards which break permanently.
Book Tokens
As the most notable example of a voucher the humble book token deserves a special mention. While bearing many similarities to a normal voucher, it has a couple of differences. For a start it can be redeemed at any bookshop, making it far easier to use than any normal voucher. During World Book Day, book tokens are given out for free - normally in the form of one pound chits but occasionally in larger values. School children, in particular, receive book tokens in order to encourage reading at a younger age.
The book token is one of the longest running vouchers, being introduced in Britain during 1932; as such book tokens are very well known and can often be found being given as prizes by schools and scout organisations.
Online Vouchers
As well as being used in the high street, vouchers can also be used for Internet shopping. They can be bought online, at which point they will normally be posted to the buyer. They can also be used online, where they act as a form of store credit. A specific code will be printed on each card and the correct entry of the code deposits the appropriate sum into the buyer's account. The majority of these vouchers are dispensed by companies that have no high street presence of their own.
Miscellaneous Vouchers
There are many other forms of vouchers that are used for services around the country in lieu of cash payment. Here are a couple of the more commonly seen ones.
Luncheon: these vouchers can be used by employees who don't wish to eat inside their work cafeterias. Created in 1950, many stores allowed them to be used as part-payment for food. These vouchers provided a tax-free benefit and so were widely used across the country. They are, however, quite rarely seen inside the UK in the 21st century.
Travel: some package holiday companies provide these to tourists. They can be used for specific things, such as food or accommodation. They form part of the price of buying the package and must be used in the way required; these may be unpopular among certain tourists who wish to pick and choose in their holiday.
Should Vouchers be Used Then?
To decide whether vouchers should be used rather than the closest other payment method - cash - the benefits must outweigh the disadvantages, both for the customer and the store.
Just a brief glance of the points shown above normally separates people into voucher-users and voucher-haters in a remarkably Marmite-esque fashion. Consumers who use them add a significant amount to the economy and to each other's happiness each year. Those that don't should mutter, use a crisp Ј50 note and smile smugly at those using tattered M&S vouchers.
Currently there are millions of pounds in uncashed vouchers just in the UK alone, and a company offers a great deal of money in voucher form every time they run a promotion campaign6. With the amount of money that vouchers provide to the economy each year, it looks likely that this payment medium will be here to stay with us for a while yet.
1 That is, the same shop in different locations.
2 For the purposes of this entry gift cards and vouchers will be considered to be the same unless otherwise mentioned.
3 Although, if you go to the effort of cutting them out and sending them off, the value will often be more.
4 The name of this store should be reasonably obvious on the voucher itself.
5 It's the 'up to' that's dangerous: always check exactly how much of a discount you're getting.
6 When companies run discounts in national newspapers the combined value is staggering, possibly enough to bankrupt a company if they were all cashed together.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A63381828
Advertising - the Creative Process
Despite the disastrous state of the marketing services industry (which comprises, for example, PR, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, customer relationship marketing and numerous other disciplines) at the moment, there still remains something of an aura of mystery around advertising agencies. Doubtless a hangover from the hedonistic 1980s, in which advertising was king and Maurice and Charles Saatchi were justifiably famous (as opposed to the here and now, where one of them is primarily known to the general public for his social activities). And yet these days, ad agencies are in something of a pickle, with clients demanding more and more clarity and tangible return on investment: something it's very difficult to do with traditional mass marketing. After all, how many of your sales can you confidently say are due to your latest ad campaign?
This entry is designed to give some transparency to how an advertisement is made - a process that manages to be, at one and the same time, remarkably simple and yet incredibly complex. While an attempt has been made to explain the various roles within the agency that make it all possible. Although different agencies may vary their approach to certain elements of the process, this is the accepted and acknowledged way of doing things.
The Client's Brief
It all begins with an 'Advertising Brief', given to the agency by the client. This consists of a few standard parameters: what we're going to talk about (ie, the launch of our new four-door saloon), what there is to say about it (ie, it removes stains twice as fast as... etc, etc), and other key bits of info, or 'selling points'. Think of it as giving the agency ammunition with which to work. The client will also have some input into which medium is used (TV, press, radio, direct marketing) but, in theory at least, the agency should look at the client's budget and advise on which media are most suitable. This isn't always as simple as you'd think. TV is, of course, an incredibly expensive medium with which to broadcast your message, and may well not be suitable for your target market or the product/service you're selling. And with 'new' ways of getting your message across appearing all the time (ambient marketing, 'viral' marketing, so-called 'guerrilla marketing', the ubiquity of the Internet) there's a hell of a lot of choices to be made. In practice, ad agencies are good at making advertising: ask them how to sell your product, and they're going to suggest what they do best. Besides, why would they send you somewhere else? God knows, they need the business.
The Client/Agency Relationship
So we have our ad brief. After this, it becomes fun. The client's point of contact within the agency is the Account Handler, and it's their job to turn an ad brief into a creative brief. These poor souls represent the agency to the advertiser and vice versa, and as a result are professionally disliked by both sides. The client will always assume that the account handler is trying to edge him/her off the carefully-discussed marketing strategy and onto some hare-brained idea that will win the agency a Cannes Lion or D&D award1. The agency creatives and production people will, naturally, conclude that the account handler is being overly protective in his/her presentation of the client's needs, and therefore cramping their creative style. At this stage, egos are heating up nicely and hackles are rising.
The Advertising Brief
The account handler, then, has the job of turning the ad brief into something the creatives can get their heads round. The final brief, when it goes off to the creative team (or teams, depending on how big the piece of work is, or how desperately the agency needs to pull a decent piece of work out of the bag) will consist of answers to a series of questions along these lines:
Who are we talking to? (what's our target market)
What are we saying? (what's the single-minded proposition we need to communicate)
How are we saying it? (what tone of voice should we use)
What is required? (ie, 3 x press executions, 1 x 30' TV ad)
And so on...
The creatives take it from here. What they have to do is come up with an idea and turn it into a useable piece of creative: as already mentioned, this could be a TV or radio script or scripts, press or poster ads, or whatever. A creative team consists of an art director and a copywriter (pictures and words... obvious when you think about it) and, in reality, what they'll do is lounge around the agency for a month playing table football, knocking off early to go to the pub, and reading Creative Review, Dazed & Confused and Sleazenation. Then they'll bash out any old nonsense the day before their mock-ups and draft scripts are due and hope for the best.
No, not really. There are plenty of professional creative teams out there that give a brief the attention it deserves and over-deliver when it comes to first drafts. Plenty, without a doubt. No, really!
Passing the Buck
So the drafts are done, the Creative Director has gone for a slash-and-burn and removed all the good bits, and the account handler is left with something which must be printed up on nice headed paper and taken to the client to sell. After a couple of weeks of toing and froing, the result will be something which bears precious little resemblance to the original draft and will inevitably give a lot more space to discussing product features, available colours and range of sizes than the agency is happy with. But that's life. It will be around this time that rumblings will be heard within the agency that have nothing to do with Pret a Manger crayfish and roquette sandwiches, but rather along the lines of 'Why hire us to make advertising if they're going to dictate the creative? Let them do our jobs, for Christ's sake'. This is the part of the creative process known as 'The Great Whine'.
Costing and Scheduling
Now the proposed ad has to be costed. This is where Production (also known as Traffic) come into it. It's their job to take into consideration the multitudinous factors and elements that go into physically producing the damn thing. If it's a TV or radio ad, a producer will also be needed. They will usually have to hire an independent production company to make the ad. Sounds like a lot of chefs? Well, it is. Production companies love making commercials because it gives them a chance to offset their losses from making one too many home furnishing clones for the BBC. Production will present the account handler with their estimate, as well as a timing plan detailing the various stages of development. Again, the account handler has to take this lot and sell it to the client. It will be here that the agency's decision to shoot the ad in Hawaii will be questioned? Can it be done in Bournemouth instead? Could we, in fact, do it in a studio? Hold on a sec, we have plenty of room here at the client's offices, why don't we do it there, think of all the money we'll save? Hair will be torn out. Voices will be raised. In extreme cases, excrement may be thrown.
Production
Having agreed all this, the work goes into production, and as might be expected there's huge variation between the requirements for different formats. A photographer will be needed for press or poster ads. Obviously the production company will provide a film crew for a TV ad but again... where is it to be shot? Would it be cheaper to hire a crew on location if we're shooting in Brazil? Dare we trust a local crew from Brazil? What if it rains? Do we need weather insurance? (Yes, always). Is the client going to be on the shoot? If so, how do we keep them occupied? What if the client spends a week on location getting drunk and trying to grope the female actors? A curtain will be drawn over the rest of this chapter: suffice is to say that it's every bit as frustrating as it sounds. And then some.
Chest-beating and More Egos
It's in the can. Raw photographic stills, film footage, radio reel, whatever. The client may or may not be shown some early rushes (unedited footage): on the whole, this is not deemed a good idea as it can lead to 'This is nothing like what I thought! Bin it now and let's go with my original suggestion!' diatribes. Post-production will take place. Post-prod houses are usually to be found on nasty sidestreets in London's Soho district; heave a brick on Wardour Street and you'll probably hit one. They're grim, dingy places where creatives and producers sit for hours on end, swallowing budget with the wild abandon of Americans at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Versions will be shown, reviled, tweaked, shown again, changed completely, argued over, and finally presented to an increasingly-wrathful client. He or she will hate the first version and demand, at the minimum, 15 fundamental changes. Most of these will be made. The Creative Director will stick his oar in and demand that 10 of them are left as is. And so on. After several dozen iterations, what's left will be the version that almost (but doesn't quite) make the agency people retch violently on the spot, and which the client is rueing spending half a million pounds on, but is quite unable to back out of now, TV deadlines being what they are. The final version is presented to the rest of the client's and agency's companies. They all secretly hate it. It goes live. The End.
The Aftermath
On the first weekday after the first weekend insertion of a new press campaign, the account executive (the lowest form of life on the account handling ladder) will come into work at 7am, sweating and terrified after discovering that the version that ran in the Sunday Times had the wrong copy and an old version of the image they're using. When his manager comes in an hour later, the old maxim 'a problem shared is a problem doubled' is proven. This is particularly the case when it's discovered that the fine print in a car ad is offering finance on a Ј30,000 model for Ј4 a month.
Hopefully this has offered some insight into the workings of a modern advertising agency. Please note that this is intended to be a humorous and exaggerated representation of these workings, and is not in any way drawn from personal experience. By the same token, any description of tantrums, ego-trips, diva-ism and general childish behaviour is purely fictional and bears no direct reference to any person, alive, dead, or currently working in the industry. Honest!
As a final note, a mantra for any who brave the choppy waters of marketing services. At times of stress, close your eyes, breath slowly and deeply, and tell yourself: 'It's only a job.'
1 The holy grail of the UK ad industry - the Design and Art Direction awards.
This entry is designed to give some transparency to how an advertisement is made - a process that manages to be, at one and the same time, remarkably simple and yet incredibly complex. While an attempt has been made to explain the various roles within the agency that make it all possible. Although different agencies may vary their approach to certain elements of the process, this is the accepted and acknowledged way of doing things.
The Client's Brief
It all begins with an 'Advertising Brief', given to the agency by the client. This consists of a few standard parameters: what we're going to talk about (ie, the launch of our new four-door saloon), what there is to say about it (ie, it removes stains twice as fast as... etc, etc), and other key bits of info, or 'selling points'. Think of it as giving the agency ammunition with which to work. The client will also have some input into which medium is used (TV, press, radio, direct marketing) but, in theory at least, the agency should look at the client's budget and advise on which media are most suitable. This isn't always as simple as you'd think. TV is, of course, an incredibly expensive medium with which to broadcast your message, and may well not be suitable for your target market or the product/service you're selling. And with 'new' ways of getting your message across appearing all the time (ambient marketing, 'viral' marketing, so-called 'guerrilla marketing', the ubiquity of the Internet) there's a hell of a lot of choices to be made. In practice, ad agencies are good at making advertising: ask them how to sell your product, and they're going to suggest what they do best. Besides, why would they send you somewhere else? God knows, they need the business.
The Client/Agency Relationship
So we have our ad brief. After this, it becomes fun. The client's point of contact within the agency is the Account Handler, and it's their job to turn an ad brief into a creative brief. These poor souls represent the agency to the advertiser and vice versa, and as a result are professionally disliked by both sides. The client will always assume that the account handler is trying to edge him/her off the carefully-discussed marketing strategy and onto some hare-brained idea that will win the agency a Cannes Lion or D&D award1. The agency creatives and production people will, naturally, conclude that the account handler is being overly protective in his/her presentation of the client's needs, and therefore cramping their creative style. At this stage, egos are heating up nicely and hackles are rising.
The Advertising Brief
The account handler, then, has the job of turning the ad brief into something the creatives can get their heads round. The final brief, when it goes off to the creative team (or teams, depending on how big the piece of work is, or how desperately the agency needs to pull a decent piece of work out of the bag) will consist of answers to a series of questions along these lines:
Who are we talking to? (what's our target market)
What are we saying? (what's the single-minded proposition we need to communicate)
How are we saying it? (what tone of voice should we use)
What is required? (ie, 3 x press executions, 1 x 30' TV ad)
And so on...
The creatives take it from here. What they have to do is come up with an idea and turn it into a useable piece of creative: as already mentioned, this could be a TV or radio script or scripts, press or poster ads, or whatever. A creative team consists of an art director and a copywriter (pictures and words... obvious when you think about it) and, in reality, what they'll do is lounge around the agency for a month playing table football, knocking off early to go to the pub, and reading Creative Review, Dazed & Confused and Sleazenation. Then they'll bash out any old nonsense the day before their mock-ups and draft scripts are due and hope for the best.
No, not really. There are plenty of professional creative teams out there that give a brief the attention it deserves and over-deliver when it comes to first drafts. Plenty, without a doubt. No, really!
Passing the Buck
So the drafts are done, the Creative Director has gone for a slash-and-burn and removed all the good bits, and the account handler is left with something which must be printed up on nice headed paper and taken to the client to sell. After a couple of weeks of toing and froing, the result will be something which bears precious little resemblance to the original draft and will inevitably give a lot more space to discussing product features, available colours and range of sizes than the agency is happy with. But that's life. It will be around this time that rumblings will be heard within the agency that have nothing to do with Pret a Manger crayfish and roquette sandwiches, but rather along the lines of 'Why hire us to make advertising if they're going to dictate the creative? Let them do our jobs, for Christ's sake'. This is the part of the creative process known as 'The Great Whine'.
Costing and Scheduling
Now the proposed ad has to be costed. This is where Production (also known as Traffic) come into it. It's their job to take into consideration the multitudinous factors and elements that go into physically producing the damn thing. If it's a TV or radio ad, a producer will also be needed. They will usually have to hire an independent production company to make the ad. Sounds like a lot of chefs? Well, it is. Production companies love making commercials because it gives them a chance to offset their losses from making one too many home furnishing clones for the BBC. Production will present the account handler with their estimate, as well as a timing plan detailing the various stages of development. Again, the account handler has to take this lot and sell it to the client. It will be here that the agency's decision to shoot the ad in Hawaii will be questioned? Can it be done in Bournemouth instead? Could we, in fact, do it in a studio? Hold on a sec, we have plenty of room here at the client's offices, why don't we do it there, think of all the money we'll save? Hair will be torn out. Voices will be raised. In extreme cases, excrement may be thrown.
Production
Having agreed all this, the work goes into production, and as might be expected there's huge variation between the requirements for different formats. A photographer will be needed for press or poster ads. Obviously the production company will provide a film crew for a TV ad but again... where is it to be shot? Would it be cheaper to hire a crew on location if we're shooting in Brazil? Dare we trust a local crew from Brazil? What if it rains? Do we need weather insurance? (Yes, always). Is the client going to be on the shoot? If so, how do we keep them occupied? What if the client spends a week on location getting drunk and trying to grope the female actors? A curtain will be drawn over the rest of this chapter: suffice is to say that it's every bit as frustrating as it sounds. And then some.
Chest-beating and More Egos
It's in the can. Raw photographic stills, film footage, radio reel, whatever. The client may or may not be shown some early rushes (unedited footage): on the whole, this is not deemed a good idea as it can lead to 'This is nothing like what I thought! Bin it now and let's go with my original suggestion!' diatribes. Post-production will take place. Post-prod houses are usually to be found on nasty sidestreets in London's Soho district; heave a brick on Wardour Street and you'll probably hit one. They're grim, dingy places where creatives and producers sit for hours on end, swallowing budget with the wild abandon of Americans at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Versions will be shown, reviled, tweaked, shown again, changed completely, argued over, and finally presented to an increasingly-wrathful client. He or she will hate the first version and demand, at the minimum, 15 fundamental changes. Most of these will be made. The Creative Director will stick his oar in and demand that 10 of them are left as is. And so on. After several dozen iterations, what's left will be the version that almost (but doesn't quite) make the agency people retch violently on the spot, and which the client is rueing spending half a million pounds on, but is quite unable to back out of now, TV deadlines being what they are. The final version is presented to the rest of the client's and agency's companies. They all secretly hate it. It goes live. The End.
The Aftermath
On the first weekday after the first weekend insertion of a new press campaign, the account executive (the lowest form of life on the account handling ladder) will come into work at 7am, sweating and terrified after discovering that the version that ran in the Sunday Times had the wrong copy and an old version of the image they're using. When his manager comes in an hour later, the old maxim 'a problem shared is a problem doubled' is proven. This is particularly the case when it's discovered that the fine print in a car ad is offering finance on a Ј30,000 model for Ј4 a month.
Hopefully this has offered some insight into the workings of a modern advertising agency. Please note that this is intended to be a humorous and exaggerated representation of these workings, and is not in any way drawn from personal experience. By the same token, any description of tantrums, ego-trips, diva-ism and general childish behaviour is purely fictional and bears no direct reference to any person, alive, dead, or currently working in the industry. Honest!
As a final note, a mantra for any who brave the choppy waters of marketing services. At times of stress, close your eyes, breath slowly and deeply, and tell yourself: 'It's only a job.'
1 The holy grail of the UK ad industry - the Design and Art Direction awards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A939909
'Shoes' - the Royal Bank of Scotland Advert
'A stick figure hits upon the idea of shoes.'
Not perhaps the most awe-inspiring story ever told, but in 1987 it won an award for the BMP advertising agency, thanks in part to the creative talents of the man behind some of British television's best-loved characters.
The Creator
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Gerry Anderson was one of Britain's biggest producers of television drama with shows such as Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Prior to this, Anderson worked in advertising, creating commercials for television. But by the late 1970s, Gerry Anderson was finding it harder and harder to get projects off the ground. So it was that he found himself once more working in the advertising industry, creating innovative concepts to promote everyday products and brands. Though a number of other projects finally saw fruition during the 1980s, Anderson continued to accept advertising commissions too.
In 1987, BMP were commissioned to create a new brand campaign for the Royal Bank of Scotland and Anderson was duly hired. The result was 'Shoes'.
The Concept
The advert, lasting just 40 seconds, illustrated the concept of supply and demand in the form of a scene where, in a crowd of spindly, pin-footed creatures, one such figure realises that what is needed in their world is nice shoes. He goes to a Royal Bank of Scotland financial advisor and soon after we see him selling his shoes to the populace and then sitting back and enjoying the benefits of a good plan well thought out.
The figures were designed to look like the sculptures of the Swiss surrealist artist Alberto Giacometti and animated through the process of stop motion. Having traditionally worked with string-operated puppets, Anderson found using stop-motion methods a challenge. Quoted in a recent biography of his life, Anderson noted that:
It was very difficult getting 20 Giacometti-style figures - with pointed legs - to stand and move about... We had to find a way of making them walk 'naturally'; I didn't want them to look mechanical.
To help Gerry visualise the movement of these figures, he employed the services of performers Andrew Dawson and Gavin Robertson, fans of his work and stars of the mime-based Thunderbirds FAB stage show.
The finished ad featured a segment from Benjamin Britten's distinctive 'Playful Pizzicato' from A Simple Symphony Op 4. The quirky music was the perfect accompaniment to such an unusual way of marketing a bank. This approach, albeit unusual, received universal acclaim and the following year, the campaign was awarded the Silver Arrow by the British Advertising Industry.
Not perhaps the most awe-inspiring story ever told, but in 1987 it won an award for the BMP advertising agency, thanks in part to the creative talents of the man behind some of British television's best-loved characters.
The Creator
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Gerry Anderson was one of Britain's biggest producers of television drama with shows such as Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Prior to this, Anderson worked in advertising, creating commercials for television. But by the late 1970s, Gerry Anderson was finding it harder and harder to get projects off the ground. So it was that he found himself once more working in the advertising industry, creating innovative concepts to promote everyday products and brands. Though a number of other projects finally saw fruition during the 1980s, Anderson continued to accept advertising commissions too.
In 1987, BMP were commissioned to create a new brand campaign for the Royal Bank of Scotland and Anderson was duly hired. The result was 'Shoes'.
The Concept
The advert, lasting just 40 seconds, illustrated the concept of supply and demand in the form of a scene where, in a crowd of spindly, pin-footed creatures, one such figure realises that what is needed in their world is nice shoes. He goes to a Royal Bank of Scotland financial advisor and soon after we see him selling his shoes to the populace and then sitting back and enjoying the benefits of a good plan well thought out.
The figures were designed to look like the sculptures of the Swiss surrealist artist Alberto Giacometti and animated through the process of stop motion. Having traditionally worked with string-operated puppets, Anderson found using stop-motion methods a challenge. Quoted in a recent biography of his life, Anderson noted that:
It was very difficult getting 20 Giacometti-style figures - with pointed legs - to stand and move about... We had to find a way of making them walk 'naturally'; I didn't want them to look mechanical.
To help Gerry visualise the movement of these figures, he employed the services of performers Andrew Dawson and Gavin Robertson, fans of his work and stars of the mime-based Thunderbirds FAB stage show.
The finished ad featured a segment from Benjamin Britten's distinctive 'Playful Pizzicato' from A Simple Symphony Op 4. The quirky music was the perfect accompaniment to such an unusual way of marketing a bank. This approach, albeit unusual, received universal acclaim and the following year, the campaign was awarded the Silver Arrow by the British Advertising Industry.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A823376
среда, 7 июля 2010 г.
пятница, 2 июля 2010 г.
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