Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

by Douglas Davis

  A CASE STUDY: DOMINO’S

  Recently I have been working in the fast food category and have learned a great deal about QSRs (quick service restaurants). For example, Domino’s, a company that has seen tremendous growth over the last few years, has transformed their brand. A creative team needed to work on the transformation of this brand and understand very clearly the consumer’s relationship with the brand and what the “enemy” was to effectively lead the brand through successful changes. Ironically, in this case, the enemy was the brand itself. Domino’s promise for years focused on delivery; however, consumers began to notice flaws in the product. Basically, the pizza just didn’t taste good, and a savvier and more skeptical consumer took notice in a big way. The enemy was the waste of money on a poor product. Domino’s successfully converted its brand from enemy to hero by improving the product and being very transparent about it with consumers. They admitted to their mistakes and vowed to deliver a better pizza. This strategy has paid off handsomely, as they have seen their stock price increase by over 100 percent in the last five years. They are a darling of Wall Street and sales have seen tremendous upticks as a result of this new strategy.

  FOUR KEY POINTS

  The key to aligning strategy and creative teams is recognizing a few fundamental things the groups must do:

  Know the brand

  Know the consumer

  Understand the relationship between the two

  Help the creative team develop empathy for the consumer

  Once everyone has absorbed these rules, two things will happen:

  First, the roles of the strategy team and creative team will be clearly defined.

  Second, a synergy will begin to develop between the two teams as they work toward a common goal to meet the communications objectives. If this happens, people like Max will be telling different stories at their Thursday night meetups. The conversations will turn to how proud they are of their creative work. And they will preach the mantra that behind every great piece of creative work is a great strategy.

  The bridge between the two teams is the creative brief and the planner’s ability to tell a story. The brief may have any number of elements, but as long as the previous four things are covered, the brief becomes a vessel for the sharing of great ideas, which leads to great creative solutions.

  Avoid “Us versus Them” with Strategy

  As Barry illustrates, creatives feel boxed in when being told what to do versus being inspired toward creative business solutions. In this scenario, everyone wants everyone else to stay in their own lane. This is the definition of “barrier” when the way we work becomes the problem, distracting us from finding the solutions the client came to us for in the first place. There is no alignment between the strategy and creative teams. At this point, there is no chance of the team addressing the four foundational elements that help teams align because it’s “us against them” in a Game of Thrones–style internal battle. This is the beginning of the end of the account and everyone’s job if someone doesn’t refocus the team on slaying the dragon and not each other.

  Which brings me to Andrea Waite Spurlock, SVP, Group Client Director at MediaVest. Andrea and I met as graduate students, worked together on a charter school project as professionals, and continued our collaboration as faculty members in the Integrated Marketing program at NYU. Andrea’s experience with connecting brands and targets through media will continue where Barry leaves off.

  Aligning the Media and Creative Message

  by Andrea Waite Spurlock

  Aside from the brand/product itself, the target audience is by far one of the most critical pieces of intelligence to the marketing mix, yet it is often the most ambiguous one. Within a day’s time you can hear multiple variations, all of which mean target audience: target market, campaign target, strategic target, product target, buying target, design target, behavioral target, media target.

  WHO IS YOUR ENTIRE AUDIENCE?

  We like to think the target is identified during the product development, recognizing and delivering against an unmet need for a specific set of individuals who will deliver the most value. But that is far from reality—that is just product/benefit target. It tends to be uninspiring and doesn’t allow us to drive differentiation. For instance: whitening toothpaste—people who want whiter teeth; anti-aging eye cream—women who want to combat, protect, or correct fine lines and wrinkles. These are the end users. A dandruff shampoo brand can easily say their target is everyone with dandruff, but when you see the advertisements it is quite clear that is not the case. You can tell by the talent, the tone, the look, and the feel that they had a particular person in mind when they developed the creative work.

  The first thing any creative should do is question the target audience on any brief.

  Has the client aligned to this target audience? More often than not the answer will be a shocking no.

  Are there any other important iterations of this target I should know of? Lots of times the target audience is a segment of another, broader audience. That context, the story of how they’ve landed on this particular person can be very insightful.

  Who is the media target? Yes, they are often different!

  Can you share more information on who this person is?

  A brief may have a one-line definition of your target, and that is fine. There are plenty of arguments that support the need and productivity from smart and concise briefs. That said, it is important for the creative team to truly internalize who they are designing for and how he/she fits in the larger picture of the marketing mix.

  DELVING DEEPER

  Now, what do you want to know about your target? A lot! The more you can identify with them as a person, the better you can develop creative that speaks to them, and motivates them to action. You want them to have an identity. Who they are, what they do, their passions and motivations. This information can be sourced from a number of places. Some clients have internal resources dedicated to consumer insights who deploy quantitative and qualitative research to identify the most appropriate target. Other clients just provide the product target and rely on agencies for the deep-dive. This means over time, our target audiences will become more sophisticated and reliable.

  Whether the target persona is defined by the client or the agency, ultimately it must inspire both creative and media choices. If you don’t have this, ask for it!

  While I was working on a large B2B technology company we collectively—client and agency partners—questioned the brand’s target market. Like most B2Bs, they were simply defined as business decision-makers, i.e., CEO, CFO, and technology decisions makers, CTO. As you may suspect, these didn’t inspire creatives or media. Our teams decided to reexamine our audience and, using the principles outlined in Geoffrey A. Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, shifted to a segmentation based on the spectrum of technology adoption. From there, we built out humanized profiles (personas). They provided a texture we all craved. This led to stellar, differentiating creative and a media plan unlike any other year. This level of collaboration also resulted in better aligning the media with the message . . . where the magic happens. For example, the brand had a bold print ad featuring a woman on a runway that we ran in print titles and websites that had never made it onto the plan, such as Esquire and The New Yorker.

  The newly defined, inspiring targets gave license to the creative team to be bold and the media team gave the creatives the confidence that we would meet their match, placing the ads in new and more contextually relevant and targeted places.

  Truth is, we should think about the target through the line, down to when we go to market. Certain nuances can make a difference. It requires us to be less rigid and more flexible and also use some good-old common sense and gut.

  When I was working on a consumer packaged-good brand (CPG), I had an interesting debate with the creatives about something as simple as a logo. We were working on a household name CPG
brand with 95 percent awareness. Some consider it a cult brand, given its history and the affection people have for it. The collective team—media and agency—were working hard on launching the brand’s social media page. (Seems like business as usual now, but at the time it was something we were all spending a ton of time on!) The creative team was working on the page itself, but also some paid ads that would run on Facebook to drive followers.

  When they shared the creative banners, I was surprised to see that they used images of a viral video we had recently launched. They thought that the lighthearted feel of the video fit the environment, and also thought we could maybe simultaneously drive views. First, we can’t do both if we want to do either well. We had to agree that the core objective was driving followers, not video views. Next, the banners had a small brand logo. I reminded everyone that we will organically gain a slew of followers just because people like the brand. We don’t have to work hard for that first batch. For these initial ads, think of our target as brand loyals. They will see the logo and see we have a page and like it. Done and done. Because of this, I asked that they just create a simple ad that had the logo and a call to action to friend/follow us. The good thing with digital is that you can run a number of ads and let the results decide. Lo and behold, the “logo” ad significantly outperformed all the other ads. For our second wave, we agreed we would have to try harder. We skimmed the top already, now we had to convince people that they should follow a household brand.

  LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

  Target audiences are becoming more dynamic every day as we move away from the “one and done” era, where marketers developed a segmentation analysis and refreshed it, without necessarily challenging the segments themselves, every few years. What is driving this, like most of the change in our industry, is technology. We are shifting from “claimed” data sources to “actual.” Simply put, claimed is what a person says they do. Think of a person filling out a survey or sitting in a group answering questions. Actual is what we find out about people via technology, via cookies and individual IDs. The result is more accurate, behavioral-based data. For creatives, this will require creative ideas and executions that are more flexible, as media buys are more granular, quickly moving to being able to identify people at an individual level and understand where they are in the journey. Right now, we can serve creative solutions dynamically, based on a number of factors/rules. Honestly, the industry has not moved as quickly as it could because creative assets are not available.

  OVERCOMING BRAND BARRIERS

  Whether addressed as part of the target or in the objectives or business situation, one of the simplest yet impactful business inputs a creative should have is the brand barriers. What are a target group’s host of answers to the question “Why are you NOT buying this product?” These are your brand barriers. One step further, once you have that list—and for some brands it can be long—the next thing to do is prioritize. Unless you have a massive budget, you typically can’t solve more than two or three barriers.

  A brief may not list barriers. They can be hidden within the objective, listed as the “challenge,” or even found under an “insight” section. The best thing to do is pluck them all out and simply ask yourself: are these your barriers?

  Some examples of barriers are:

  Aren’t aware—not purchasing the product because they are not aware of it.

  Don’t understand (education)—not purchasing the product because they are not clear on the benefits/don’t understand usage/never heard of what the product is meant to deliver. You find this often with pharmaceuticals.

  Don’t believe the benefit/brand (believability)—not purchasing the product because they don’t believe the claim.

  Don’t think the brand is for them (relevance).

  This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the point. If the #1 barrier is awareness, then everyone, creative to media, is tasked with developing a campaign that drives awareness. That will influence the channels we prioritize and the creative message. Most people will argue that creative should only tackle one barrier in order to keep the content simple and single-minded.

  If awareness is really more about reminding (recency) consumers to buy your brand versus the other, which is often the case with many low-involvement CPGs, where switching between brands is a major issue, then you can see why the secondary barrier is key. You may be tasked with creating a TV ad to drive awareness but simultaneously tasked to overcome a relevance barrier.

  It is critical to understand the barriers by target audience because they do vary. You may find one segment’s barrier is just awareness, while another’s is more about relevance.

  While I was working in China, a global pharmaceutical brand was faced with a laundry list of challenges as they were a Western medicine in China, and in China, TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) rules. We conducted primary research to better understand what we were faced with. As we suspected, we had barriers across the consumer journey, from awareness all the way to purchase:

  The brand had only been in the China market for a few years and had a limited media budget, so it was no surprise that awareness was low.

  Brand understanding was also low. This was because product format was a gel, which was drastically different from the other products in the market (patches).

  People did not believe the product claims that it truly was better than their TCM regimens.

  The clients agreed our biggest barrier was awareness, which became our primary objective. As a result, our media plan skewed toward awareness-driving vehicles and tactics such as TV, out-of-home (a big medium in China), and online banners. The creative dramatized the usage, showing how to use the gel, and had strong claims on why this brand was better than others. In addition, we, the media team, also encouraged the brand team to activate against a secondary barrier. We believed TV was not enough given the very unique barriers we faced in China. We needed a one-two punch. With that in mind, we developed a plan dedicated to busting the education and believability barriers. It included online advertorials that talked about the product superiority and layered in a robust paid and organic search plan.

  Today, more than ever, we need to constantly think end-to-end. Clients have trouble signing up for any sort of strategy without the tangibility of tactics. And the funny thing is, once we start talking tactics, we can begin to question our strategic inputs.

  Turning Words Into Inspiration

  The underlying message from Barry and Andrea is one of greater collaboration between teams, leading to greater connection between the brand and the target.

  We also learn from both our contributors that as creatives, we may have to go beyond the brief and ask further questions of the strategic teams to truly understand the target.

  Knowing the passions and motivations of the target personas we are designing for is essential to understanding how to connect with them.

  With knowledge of how to best align teams, the creative process can yield effective brand activation concepts that rely on the intersection of media channel, creative idea, and technology. For examples, search Arc Worldwide’s “Beautiful Hair, Whatever the Weather” campaign for Pantene or the Geometry Global “Animal Instincts, Pet Condoms” promotion for the San Francisco SPCA.

  Andrea reminds us to be sure that we are executing on the objective, and at the end of the day we can test various options and let the results determine what ideas live or die.

  Barry and Andrea have described what it looks like to partner with our business and marketing counterparts. To follow through on my opening introductions to this chapter: When Barry and I collaborated to deliver branded collateral work, it resulted in a beautiful final product and ongoing client for me. Andrea and I were able to deliver a website that addressed their registration needs and saved the charter school approximately $100K. When alignment of teams happens, creative business solutions are the result.

  12 Sell Without Selling

  Preparing Yourself to Present<
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  There is an old African proverb that says “Don’t teach a child not to play with fire, let the fire teach him.” Clearly, the wise old person who said this was really giving us a metaphor for pitching creative ideas. As I look back at my career, I can definitively say that the fire has been my best teacher. Some of my earliest memories of being burned were in graduate school at Pratt Institute. Every semester, we were required to present and defend the decisions in our work. The process was called “survey.” Every detail of each project would be scrutinized in a matter of five minutes, from type selection and design choice to craftsmanship and presentation. A panel of world-class design professors would judge each detail in front of the whole student body. It all came down to this pitch, and it had to be perfect.

  Some spilled blood as they sliced through fingers to make comps. Others dripped with sweat while watching their work print in large format. Many shed tears as it became clear that the orange they selected on screen wasn’t the same orange coming out of the printer. And then it was my turn. Survey had gone well for me in previous semesters, and I was confident of the decisions I had made in my work despite some pretty public disagreements about them with my advisor. I had written, designed, and photographed a promotional magazine as my thesis. The masthead design was a custom Spencerian script with guidance from my distinguished typography professor Tony Di Spigna (it took me two months to tighten the four-letter masthead sketch that took him two minutes to rough out). Despite the countless nosebleeds and the time and effort invested in the finished design product, my five-minute presentation couldn’t have been worse. As I looked out into the audience while giving my presentation, this was literally the moment I realized I was giving a sales presentation to a design school audience and they weren’t buying it. If you’ve ever been judged by art school eyes, believe me, a few minutes is more than enough time to spontaneously combust.