The agency, the client and the big idea

"Ideas are disruptive: great ideas can make you rich - they can also make you feel uncomfortable. To build a great communications campaign, you can't just do ads anymore and expect the same result - you need a disruptive strategy.

"We still do great ads in SA, but it's not enough. It's ideas that win, it's ideas first, and ideas around that, a connective strategy to connect with the consumer. The amount of clutter around is unbelievable; one has to earn the consumers' attention, you have to be relevant and very relevant at that."

This, the second Brainstorm conference, focused on addressing the crucial question of effectiveness in advertising, drawing on agency and client experience.

Lascaris drew on ideas from TBWA around the world to illustrate his point: the Sony Playstation Internet hoax that used blogs, vlogs, radio, email and podcasts to spread a rumour about the remains of 'giants' being found to promote a new game..."for the first time, consumers were guiding the conversation." The game outsold a previous launch by 50%.

Connecting ideas

"The net is getting huge, it's growing and growing - one can connect an idea in so many ways," said Lascaris.

Then there was a tiny direct insurance company in Israel that used its competitors to sell its products, phoning up competitor call centres and getting the operators to admit that their own insurance quote was inferior to the one the "caller" had obtained from the other insurer, taping the calls and using them as advertising, in which their competitor had no choice but to recommend the "caller" go for the rival quote - and this campaign went on for a year and the competitors fell for it every time.

And, of course, who can forget the memorable Sex in the City episodes featuring Samantha's toy boy in the Absolute Vodka 'Absolute Hunk' ads which spawned real talk show chatter and even "Absolute Hunk' drinks in real New York bars? One can't buy publicity like that...

"Disruption can make the unimaginable real. It's not the headline, it's not the ad, it's the idea," Lascaris emphasised.

From the marketing side, Derek Carstens, FirstRand band director went one further, challenging the concept of the word "brand".

"Don't pretend a good ad is a big brand. We need to challenge ourselves on the concept of 'brand' - have we got the right to use this word?"

So when does a brand earn the right to be called a brand?

Carstens explained: "The great brands really have relationships of consequence with their consumers - they matter to you. Let's not confuse necessity with usage! Am I building a consequential relationship or are you a functional necessity?" Here he referred to the fact that he's used the same deodorant for 20 years and says he does not have a relationship with it as it's functional. ("Yes but, he's used it for 20 years," said Brenda Koornneef, Tiger marketing director, disagreeing with him from the audience. "Don't worry, I'll get him," quipped Matthew Bull, who thought the statement was, well, 'bull'.)

Creativity cannot be ignored

In his presentation, Bull, chief creative officer, Lowe & Partners Worldwide, said creativity could not be ignored in the bottom line, referring to the age-old tussle between agencies and marketers over creativity versus profit.

"Creativity is giving people things they can't do without that they didn't know they'd need. Creativity provides the energy to make things happen. If it wasn't for creativity, we would have died out with the dinosaurs." He referred to the discovery of fire in a rather philosophical presentation. "Creativity is progress."

Carstens pointed out that a basic, but tried and tested brand measure was emotional salience: "Would you recommend the brands you use to others? We think this is a powerful proxy for brand measurement."

Brands that fall into the "Zone of Delight" have usually got it right, he said. These are brands that focus on the strength of the relationship between customer, service and product rather than the functional aspects of client service.

"The great brands really have relationships of consequence with their consumers."

How do they achieve this? "Not through advertising, not through planned investment in upgrading various services - it's the strength of the relationship with your customers and this is usually driven by the staff on an ad hoc, often unplanned manner, going the extra mile, giving great customer service." This is when brands operate in the "Zone of Delight", he says, and become great brands.

And this is when you get brand igniters - passionate people who talk about your brand unsolicited. Good products make a difference in a customer's life from a functionality point of view, but great brands make a difference in your life as a person, from an inspirational and pride point of view, Carstens believes. Great brands also break from the pack and are highly innovative.

'Relevance is key'

Bull believes it goes much further than that.

"The debate about whether creativity is effective or not is truly irrelevant. The question isn't whether or not creativity is relevant; it is the relevance of the creativity. Of course creativity sells, relevance is the key."

Echoing Lascaris's emphasis on ideas, Bull says without fail, the world's most admired companies who have done exceptionally well over the past few years, understood that if they didn't adapt and think of new ideas, they would die. He mentioned Microsoft, P&G, Apple, Dell, Starbucks, BMW, Coca-Cola, Tesco, eBay, Google and Disney, to name a few great brands.

So when do advertising agencies get it right? Bull explains:

• We get it right when we understand what we're saying, how we're going to say it, and who we're going to say it to.
  
• Clients understand their market in terms of selling their product to it. We, as an ad agency, have to understand the market in relating to communicating with that market.
  
• It's in the head and heart we get to people. I don't think we do enough work in that field.
  
• When we remember our duty to entertain and inform. We are interrupters with better entertainment than what the consumers are seeing.
  
• Very important: building trust with consumers - we must be consistent.

Agencies get it wrong, says Bull, when they:

• Choose form over substance. Lack of substance with ideas can't be hidden in great production.
  
• Getting the balance wrong between heart and head - and visa versa.
  
• When the idea is more relevant to us than the consumer (putting the ad agency's interests ahead of clients). It happens all too often in our business, says Bull. We run around thinking what geniuses we are, and maybe we are, but it's completely the wrong idea for our client.
  
• Integrity should never be compromised for ingenuity.

The final bottom line, Bull quipped, was this: "Whatever business you are in, no creativity equals no growth, that's it."

He rounded off his presentation with an impressive quote from Albert Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the service and has forgotten the gift..."

The perennial debate over good clients and bad clients and good agencies versus bad agencies was taken further by Mohale Ralebitso, deputy chairman, The Jupiter Drawing Room, who said clients get the agencies they deserve. Tiger Brand's Brenda Koornneef, addressed this point in her hard-hitting presentation on whether ad agencies have a future!

"Clients believe that ad agencies will not survive in their current format," she said baldly. Trying to deflect any agency criticism, she also quoted from various other top marketing colleagues of hers in the industry who regularly threaten to take their advertising in-house or believe that ad agencies are currently resembling 'dead ducks' rather than creative shops and need to return to being ideas shops.

There was that word again: IDEAS!

"Clients are calling for specialist quality, more flexible options and more ideas," Koornneef emphasised. One of the reasons for this was the more recent phenomenon of consumers defining brands.

Engaging with consumers

"Now we need to talk about the concept of engagement with consumers. Technology has a lot to do with that," Koornneef reiterated.

She quoted from Jim Stengel (P&G): "I believe that today's marketing model is broken, brands that rely to heavily on mainstream media will loose touch."

"In this connected age, the small Internet website is as powerful as the large company... and word of mouth is more credible than your most sincere salesperson and able to reach more people... consumers have more power than ever before."

So where does that leave the ad agency?

She acknowledged that clients must work in partnership with their ad agencies to create great relationships to foster great work. "Ad agencies can still create really great ads, but we want to give our agencies the freedom to create those media opportunities for the brands."

New principles of remuneration - matching resources to remuneration and managing cost for the client - also had to be found. Agencies should be brought back into participating in the development of brand strategy; creating the campaign concept; making sure we deliver that through the line; and they need to use new media.

"The magic is the idea," she concluded.