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Neil Dawson, Executive
Planning Director, TBWALondon and Michael Ellyatt, Senior Planner, TBWAGGT
Direct
Debates
about media-neutrality and its sibling, integration, have ebbed and flowed
for decades with no clear outcome. Agency business models remain based
on execution while client structures generally reinforce a 'silo' approach
to the communications channels available. It is our thesis that this is
not an issue limited to strategic planning. It raises fundamental questions
about how and where value is created for clients and the future role and
remuneration of agencies.
Clients
want advice, strategies and, above all, ideas that will create value for
their business and build competitive advantage in a world of ever-more
complex brands and consumers.
Increasingly,
they require these ideas to be solution-neutral, not simply media-neutral.
The very term media-neutrality pre-supposes the use of an established
'silo' of media. Yet so many innovative solutions come from breaking with
such conventions and challenging definitions of media.
By building
the famous ice hotel, Absolut brought a new dimension to its marketing.
Fallon's web films for BMW probably conveyed more about brand and car
than any conventional media campaign. For UNICEF in 2001, the impending
plight of children facing an Afghan winter was dramatised by printing
the message on Autumn leaves.
Yet most
agencies are neither structured nor remunerated to be solution-neutral.
Their advice risks being accused of self-interested 'discipline-centricity'.
Additionally, each discipline has itself become increasingly specialised
and complex. This has exacerbated a lack of mutual understanding; from
the separation of creative and media, different disciplines increasingly
inhabit their own ghettoes.
So clients
who want solution-neutral ideas, strategies and advice are serviced by
communications agencies who, for the most part, offer a limited range
of executionally-driven answers. Clearly the so-called 'Holy Grail' of
marketing represents a huge opportunity for anybody bold enough to rise
to the challenge.
In order
to achieve the vision of solution-neutrality, there must be a fundamental
review of the way agencies consider their client's business. Where do
we start?
We begin
with the idea. Not just the creative executional idea but the brand 'idea
behind the idea'. This is the means by which the brand connects with its
audiences in order to achieve its objectives. It accommodates both yet
avoids the often predictable outcomes of consumer led or objective-driven
thinking.
Brand ideas
drive differentiation and margin. They also drive relationships. Together
these drive profit.
Thus for
Apple, 'Tools for Creative Minds' is the springboard and touchstone for
all activities from media relations to locations where customers sample
the products.
Idea-centric
thinking is the foundation for a new TBWAGroup discipline called Connections
Planning.
Connections
are defined as anything and everything that exists between a business
and its target audiences. The foundation of the thinking is the Connections
Wheel, which is used to categorise and analyse Connections and plot how
they might work together (below)
This approach
goes beyond the classic who, when, where, questions of media by opening
up the entire universe of contact points between idea, customers and other
potential audiences. It covers all aspects of brand behaviour at an individual
level and in public - the sum of which essentially is the brand.
It encourages
'solution-neutrality' - something far more powerful than conventional
integration, which often involves little more than taking the look or
message of the TV or print campaign into as many environments as possible.
The Connections
planning process uses a substantial range of quantitative and qualitative
tools:
· Auditing: existing
and past Connections for the brand, overall and alongside the decision
process. It also puts this in a competitive context:
· Strategy Development:
to determine the most relevant, cost-effective points of Connection
between the brand and its audiences.
· Implementation: where it can be used to amplify and leverage the developed
idea
· Effectiveness: a suite of measures including an overall assessment
of the effect on the brand and its value to the business. The contribution
of individual elements is assessed both against immediate objectives
and contribution to the brand idea. For example, Direct Impact is a
bespoke tool that measures brand effects of direct mail alongside response.
By reviewing all measures together, it reinforces joined-up thinking
in future planning.
Included
are some examples of Connections process and outputs (Appendix A).
Connections
represents the TBWAGroup approach. As a discipline it helps us become
more solution-neutral in orientation. Regardless of approach a key issue
is how Agency structures will need to evolve to deliver solution-neutral
input. We believe two different models will emerge:
1) Total communications
organisations which offer both advice and execution (Fig 3). Strategic
advice, Connections type-thinking and idea guardianship are core. Creative
direction resides in the centre and takes responsibility for the generation
and quality of the core idea. Future executions might include anything
from architects, artist management to training organisations.
The critical
issue is that execution cannot be the key driver of remuneration (otherwise
the most lucrative sources of revenue will inevitably be recommended)
a fundamental shift of mindset for most communications groups.
2) Solution-neutral
consultancies (Fig 4). Here specialist communications consultancies
become strategic hubs, which include management, strategic, communications
and media planning. They outsource all aspects of solution execution.
Clients will enjoy the benefit of being able to choose their executional
'best in breed', and 'group' commercial interests would not influence
advice. Creative direction remains within the executional specialists.
Fig 4
The challenges
for this route are as follows:
· A potential loss
of 'controlled friction' between strategist and creative, the lifeblood
of communications agencies.
· Identifying who takes responsibility and credit for the 'idea behind
the idea' and its creative articulation. In the case of Sony Playstation,
the brand idea 'Powerful Experiences' is articulated thru' the 'Third
Place' and this is where value is created for the client.
· Deciding who is responsible for the effectiveness of the activity,
the central hub or the executional 'spokes'. This has further implications
for remuneration.
Ideas are
at the heart of this debate because they create genuine value for businesses.
Agencies must become genuinely idea-centric to deliver what clients want.
Depth of insight and knowledge of any individual agency seem less important
than the orientation, structure and remuneration of the Communications
agency of the future.
(c) Account
Planning Group 1995-2002
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