Thomas Lamprecht

on April 1, 2009

category: creative

Vice President/Executive Creative Director

If you want creatives to do great work, do you let them play?

In a recent wave of concept generation for several of our clients some interesting patterns occurred. One large, important client required a range of many concepts and the work was given a reasonable but not excessive timeline and resources. Another client, of lesser size, required similar scope of effort but the schedule was impossible and work was rushed through with all-nighters, weekends and down to the wire, almost missed the FedEx, anxieties. Yet another ideation run, for a third client, was allotted quite generous schedule allowing for play, slow-cooking and several rounds of refinement.

How much time do creatives really need to come up with the best work? Is it the more blue-sky time the better? Is it a strictly defined optimal number of hours, perfectly planned and distributed over realistically scheduled days? Or is it small time window, crazy insane, due yesterday pressure? In cases above, the results were mixed and not necessarily intuitive. The first effort went terribly at the beginning and as time shortened and pressure mounted, the quality increased. The second, surprisingly, produced more work but at the end of the day the quality seemed to have drowned in volume. The work didn’t seem focussed enough and although the work was recognised as solid it did not bowl anyone over. The third effort produced great quality and range of ideas that blew our client away.

Do pressure and tension add to the quality of creative? Does having all the blue-skying time you need inspire the best creative ideas? Do realistic but tight schedules? Is there a method to this?

What do you think?
 

Comments:

5/1/2009 at 6:25 p.m.
hmmmmmm.
What is great quality creative? There really should be only ONE answer. Good creative is innovative, always changing, always evolving. But at the same time still be timeless. Good quality creative is creative that makes the agency and the client proud. Proud to have put their blood, sweat and tears into. It breaks through the advertising clutter and gets noticed. That's good creative. A month, a week, a day, an hour it doesn’t always matter, it's not how you get to the good creative, it the end result of the journey.
>>N. Fidel, San Francisco CA4/25/2009 at 2:25 p.m.
Answering your question with a question
What is great, quality creative? Ahhhh. We have as many answers for this as we have clients. As for my own creativity, both tension and pressure always help to drive a bolt of lightening. For better or for worse!
>>Jill Kaufman, Seattle  WA

Thomas Lamprecht

on October 6, 2008

category: creative

Vice President/Executive Creative Director

Love is not enough.

Brand advertisers often find themselves in a complicated relationship with their customers and prospective customers. They are in hot pursuit of customers’ affections. They believe, "If only the world loved my brand as much as they love their iPhone, their Moleskine notebook, their Prius and shopping at Whole Foods, I could live happily ever after."

Too often, a marketer’s love is unrequited or the customer gets involved with a competitive brand and complications ensue.

As with any relationship, attraction is just the beginning. For love to develop, you need something deeper. You need to engage in give and take.

There’s nothing wrong with romancing your customers -- but romance is only a starting point. When you are dating, you don’t propose marriage without having some conversations first. When a love interest tells you what they like, you don’t put it in a database and then forget about it.

The key is to get deeply involved. That’s what separates a temporary crush from a meaningful relationship.

People long to believe that the products they love are made just for them.  They modify their Mini Cooper to suit their style.  The iPod has not just a few, but ALL of their favorites tunes -- and their favorite movies and videos, as well.  The beverage they get at their local café is hand-made to order.

This engagement with the brand, with the molding done by the consumer, is the true goal. Love is just the beginning.

 

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Thomas Lamprecht

on October 18, 2007

category: creative

Vice President/Executive Creative Director

Smart Creative

It takes a village to tango. Or perhaps pogo would seem more appropriate here. Certainly, when it comes to development of great marketing work it takes all the participants to engage in a coordinated dance. At the end, there is always one entity that must assimilate all the parts, deconstruct and synthesize them and find a way to articulate originally, informatively, persuasively. That end is the creative. Smart creative. The smarter, the greater the sum of its parts.

And in today’s world smart the creative must be. It functions like a tip of an iceberg, a beacon, visible above the surface to all, with a supporting, hidden mass of target and industry research, strategies, guidelines, data, clients’ idiosyncrasies, latest visual, copy and design trends, business, art, media, informed vernacular and the very edges of relevant limits to name but a few (phew...). No other area of marketing discipline involves the necessity of rigging as many disparate parts together and coming up with communication that not only works but is innovative, original, compelling, informed and, at the same time, pulls like a freight train.

To get there and for the pogo to culminate in a graceful and forceful marketing bang some essential parts of the organization need to effect mutually supportive working relationships. Both account and creative staff have to be more invested in the development of creative approaches. Media, sales and accounts have to be encouraged and guided to seek out new appropriate opportunities and openings. Accounts need to look for ways to steer existing clients towards more innovative creative solutions, whenever possible. Creatives need to feel empowered to challenge the usual assumptions and put forward innovative thinking rather than feel locked into churning out predictable—however reliable—volumes of offer-driven, or generic direct marketing. The teams need to feel that they have an equal stake and partnership in fulfilling that objective. They need to feel mutually supportive of, and supported in, reaching it. Let’s dance.
 

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Thomas Lamprecht

on October 3, 2007

category: creative

Vice President/Executive Creative Director

Brand sucking air

Development and promotions of brand lay traditionally within a domain of branding and general advertising agencies. The brand of a company or product was developed to embody and project the essence of such entities and its function was to communicate inspirational uniqueness. A brand’s priorities were to be; instantly recognizable, highly compelling, desirable and of perceived prime value. (Not to mention; lethal to the competition.)

So, if the brand is company’s ‘face to the world’ core difference and promise, and thus its articulation of reason d’etre, why is it being developed outside of what it supposed to accomplish in the end—a sale. And, furthermore, why is it not developed from the point of that persuasive one-to-one conversation with specific audience that culminates in their ultimate expression of preference—a purchase.

The reasons seem obvious enough. Branding and general agencies are not driven by concern about how to engage in that vital conversation and they don’t know much about how to engage in it. Nor do most of them care as traditionally that activity resided with direct marketing discipline. Brand was to be created in a brand silo and only after its birth it was forwarded to be used in marketing. It was almost an afterthought. Sometimes a brand worked well in marketing. Sometimes, not surprisingly, it seemed jerry-rigged.

In the current, internet conditioned landscape of audiences’ shortened attention span, increasing impatience for irrelevance and overwhelming preference for user controlled content, brands have to be more than just seductive or inspirational poetry. They have to work hard. Overtime!
 

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