More than a third of global marketing budgets are wasted due to poor briefs."
79% of marketers think they write good briefs. 88% of agencies disagree."
Creative quality is the biggest driver of profit after brand size. Yet it continues to decline."
Change
The Record
There’s a lot of talk about it.
Even more frustration about it.
But not a lot being done about it.
It’s why we’ve launched Change.the.Record.
The biggest problem is the traditional client-agency briefing process.
It doesn't
Work for 99%
Of companies.
Only the biggest,
richest 1%.
Why is this?
And what do we do That’s different?
“Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created.”
The traditional
briefing process:
Logical
Reduction
Clients start on their own. They define their objectives and after analysing a complex array of market information and analytics, try to reduce this down into one key insight or message to brief their agency.
The logical ‘main road’
The problem is, 9 out of 10 companies have had the same ‘thought’, because they are working with the same market information and have reached the same ‘rational’ conclusion. The sensible way to go.
But not for 99% of companies.
Because it ends up being the ‘road most travelled’.
Which only works for the biggest brands.
Whose bigger budgets mean they can just roll over the top of everyone else.
But it gets worse.
77% of Marketing Directors say that they don’t have enough time to properly monitor competitors and market trends.
And the frightening truth is: they really don’t.
But how can you tell if 9 out of 10 of your competitors are already doing the same thing, if you don‘t follow what they’re doing?
Fortunately, knowing what the competition is doing is so critical to us working out how to beat them, that we always do it ourselves.
You might not be checking
out your competitors.
But your customers almost certainly are.
Our process:
Creative
Propagation
Creative collaboration with the client, ideally before a brief has even been written. Creativity thrives on more information - not less. And the more connections we can make, the more creative we can be.
‘Overtaking lanes’ we call
In collaboration with our clients, first we identify all the ‘Main Roads’ that their competitors are going down.
Then we look for alternative routes, by uncovering as much as we can about customers opinions and feelings about the client’s product.
In other words, their existing points of view.
Because these influence consumers purchasing decisions more than any other factor. Usually completely overshadowing any beneficial features that a particular product may have.
Which is why understanding people's views, and working with them creatively, can be so powerfully effective.
So we like to involve creatives in the search for USPOV®s right from the start.
Because it takes exactly their kinds of skills to recognise when even the tiniest titbit of information about the target audience could be the catalyst to producing work that’s unique and impactful.
6 out of 10 marketers admit to using the creative process to clarify their strategy.
So, they might like to know that’s exactly how our USPOV®s work. Evaluating the creative potential of various routes - before choosing which way to go.
Why USPOV®s
beat USPs.
And the secret to finding them.
