Showing ad agencies and clients how to bring their brands alive

The short workshops, which typically comprise four evening classes and a Saturday morning session, are designed to provide skills that participants can immediately apply in the workplace and will noticeably improve their job proficiency.

John Cooney, the advertising school's managing director, said that while the second workshop will follow the same format that proved to work so well last time, this month's topic is likely to generate more widespread general interest than the earlier one of crisis management, which appealed to a more targeted audience.

The Bringing Brands Alive workshop, the first of its kind, will be presented in conjunction with an industry partner, research organisation CIA, which focuses on the type of research that enables advertising agencies to see brands through their consumers' eyes, and marketers and advertisers to properly understand their brands and each other.

Cooney says a major problem in the industry seems to be a lack of understanding between clients and agencies: clients complain that agencies don't listen to them and are stuck in a mass media mindset, while agencies complain that clients undervalue their service and don't give them proper briefs. Given the pressures of today's marketplace, they no longer have enough time to spend in getting to know each other better.

But it's a much more fundamental lack of understanding that leads to a breakdown in brand communication, he says. "Before client and agency can understand one another well enough to combine their talents to sell and communicate a brand to their target market, they first need to thoroughly understand their consumer. Too often today, they don't."

New market influences, mostly led by technology, have changed the way consumers buy brands and use the media, he explains. "To understand today's consumers requires new research methodologies. The old ones, which are still prevalent, have to be supplemented with techniques more relevant to the new consumer and the new marketplace - hence the evolution of CIA-type research."

The workshop presenter Wendy Cochrane of CIA says advertisers and agencies need to connect with the real people that live their brands, rather than make decisions from behind the confines of their desks. "A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world," she says.

"Clients and agencies have to learn how to cut through the marketplace clutter to get down to the human truths, and how to listen to really understand the consumer's point of view. Then they have to translate those insights into a simple written brief that will excite a creative team into producing outstanding work that is rooted in reality and set to succeed." These are just some of the skills that participants will learn in the workshop.

Others include how to dig down deeper to get real answers from consumers in one-to-one interviews, how to work quickly and efficiently in team situations, how to present recommendations, and how those recommendations are evaluated. Bringing Brands Alive will be run after business hours from Tuesday 12 October to Monday 18 October. The workshop will be team-based and interactive, with delegates given practical assignments and presentations to do to reinforce what they have learnt.

For more information, contact Nicolé Jones at The Red & Yellow School on 021 462 1946/8.