THE JOY IS IN THE DOING: WHY ALL THIS MATTERS/WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU: Stuff every Advertising Copywriter, Art Director, Designer, Student and thinking-they-might-wanna-be needs to know about this “technical” stuff I’ve been telling you.

After I posted that last piece, it occurred to me that something I found tricky to write must be tricky to learn.  I sometimes share easier stuff, but mostly I’ve tried to give hard how-tos instead of easy anecdotes.  I must admit, however, some of my posts leave one big something woefully missing.  How much fun this is.

If it’s not fun, why would anyone want to learn it?  A job is nice.  Even better, being paid for a talent you’ve always enjoyed.  People perceive those who write advertising as infinitely more entertaining than those who underwrite insurance.  Good reasons, they don’t hit the heart of why knowing how to think, as difficult as it may seem, will get you more mitzvahs (look it up or ask a Rabbi), in more award books and potentially enjoying the best sex substitute you can have in a crowded office.

I got into ad copy because I was funny, a genetic writer, a fearlessly out of the box thinker, “creative” dresser and disastrous in any practical field whatsoever.  Fun, but until Y&R sent me to Strategy School, I had no understanding of what I was supposed to be doing. 

Make it fun, get it noticed.  Who cared how – or even if – it solved client problems, spoke to the Prospect, could backup the work with smart thinking.  Subjectivity determined value.  That, and how good you were at selling ice to Eskimos.

It was hard being so meaningless.  While I’d always managed glib, I was clever – not smart – for a living.  Then came Y&R Strategy School - all of a sudden it made sense.  The process worked.  My stuff was still creative, but it was also smart.  Got the Prospect involved, did what it was supposed to do.  When I ran lines, I knew what I wanted them to say.  Best of all, if it was On Strategy, it took quite a bit of subjective clout to kill my best work.

Practical, but far from a great sex substitute.  Or was it?

Any creative act releases the same endorphins that make us crave chocolate, death defying thrills and (more) sex.  I might not be able to get laid in my office during normal business hours, parachute off the top of an office tower or eat a total chocolate diet, but I sure can feel like I did.  And get paid to boot.

Money and massive endorphin release.  Not bad.  But that’s all under the radar stuff.  Perks. 

What Creative Strategy really gave me was the ability to let my mind – my creativity and rational+irrational brainpowers – run naked down Mad Ave.  I knew where I was going, had the tools to get there.  Instead of listing puns, playing with meaning and defining clever, I was solving problems, taking products/clients from status quo to something no one had seen before.  I had a verifiable blueprint for success.

(One of) the most general definitions of Zen’s Satori is “the state of sudden, indescribable intuitive enlightenment.”  The big Ah/O moment.  Because we’re talking endorphins fed by catharsis in the course of 9-5/M-F j-o-b, there’s also a huge element of “the joy is in the doing” to it. 

Doing ad creative – strategy, concept, copy, producing broadcast, wading in electronica, yadda yadda – puts me closer to Satori than most people ever get in life.  Let alone at work.  And that’s the best reason I can give to learn how.

Where I work people don’t just tolerate – they value and enjoy the quirks of the Creative Personality* other fields might consider firing offenses (although you can still get fired, and probably will*).  I work with people who understand the brilliant organization of an impossibly messy desk.  Who look and act more like me than the banker across the conference table.  My creative partners and I can pump endorphins all afternoon and never get called for cheating.  I can tack things on my wall, take field trips, tell people I’m reading Skateboard magazine (MAD, comic books, Rolling Stone, Car and Driver, kiddie books, Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, whatever) for my job – and mean it. 

Doing great work feels great.  Collaborating with other creatives – writers, art directors, photographers, directors, studio engineers, the occasional AE, clients, whoever – only ups the endorphin count.  While all that’s making me happy, I’m pushing, stretching, reinventing myself, my world and all that gray matter so I can go farther creatively, personally and professionally.

I’d like to say that’s why I do it.  Why you need to learn it.  Why I want to help.  But ultimately, there’s still one final, selfish reason to take these lessons to heart – and the bank.  As strange as my Love/Hate relationship with Advertising is, it’s also the easiest thing I can do.  Not that the work is easy.  It’s that the work – and the industry – understands Doreen as Doreen. I can get high on just being me. 

As an engineer I know would say, “It’s the tits.” 

*Want more info on The Creative Process, Creative Personality, Kamikaze Creative Occupational Safety, etc., email me @kamikazecreative@gmail.com.  I’ll send you handouts.

MORE REASONS I LOVE WHAT I DO/FUN THINGS THAT KEEP ME WRITING COPY:

Hot roughnecks.  Early morning outdoor photo shoots.  Watching the Exxon tiger almost get somebody.  One agency’s house chef.  Helping Ed McMahon cinch his girdle.  Rock Concert Radio.  Watching the other World Trade Center tower sway in the breeze while presenting to fifty Japanese guys.  Stretch limos.  Flying First Class.  Hanging in gyms with female professional boxers.  Disneyland.  Free media dept. tickets to baseball games (field level, front and center).  Taking the executive helicopter from downtown to the airport.  Concepting at the zoo.  Making twenty suits stomp their feet and scream at the top of their lungs.  Being the expert because I’m the only one standing up.  Company jets.  Watching Jesse Caesar present.  New Business.  The Drake.  Life size rodeo beer babe cutouts.  My own hard hat.  Kraft Services.  Late night music production. No one noticing how late I come in.  Sunsets from the Chicago Merchandise Mart.  George, Raymond, Naomi, Robert, Bob, Jannie, Carol, Betty, Julie, Andy, Mitch, Scotts I, II, III, Allen, Gerry, Jerry, Jim, MC, Mary, Kim, Alison, Dave, Greg, Tom, Tony, Janet, Heddy, Ryan, Joyce, Dan, Lucy, Bob, Carmille, Minsoo, Keith, Beth, Andrew, John, Michael, Michael, Tondra, Cam, Larry, Jesse, Amerphil, Berkley, Stan, Lee, LaDonna/Madonna, Kinney, Ron…the list just keeps going and going.

INTEGRATED OBJECTIVE BASED KAMIKAZE CREATIVE STRATEGY: Beyond the Creative How, What every Advertising Copywriter, Art Director, Ad Designer, Creative Director and Account Executive needs to know about using Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies to concept Integrated Kamikaze Creative Campaigns.

I’ve mentioned Mad Man Bill Small a few times.  Much of this is an updating/expansion of basics he taught me. 

I’m always amazed when an old advertising idea recycles as something “New and Improved!”  Ad agencies are supposed to be originators, early adopters, the last commercial creative frontier.  But every time I hear Integrated Campaigns and their basic components talked about like it’s some new discovery that’s going to cure Cancer, make Congress useful and blow the doors off the competition, I want to scream.

True, Creative Integration is what most of the job listings I see now want.  What they’re really talking about is mainly experience in Traditional + New Media.  What scares me is how too many agencies talk about it as if were some Advanced – vs. Basic – Skill.  Too many creatives don’t know what it is beyond that New/Old Media divide.  Let alone how it’s supposed to be done conceptually and how much stronger it is when done right.

Bill Small and the Mad Men of his generation had their Integrated Campaign down pat.  No big deal, just how you bought media.  It was pretty much Traditional (Print + Broadcast) + Direct + Promotions + Outdoor + PR + possible Co-op.  Today, it usually refers to campaigns run across all the above + “New” (Web, Interactive, Ambient, Guerilla, Apps, etc.)  Media.  With or without corresponding Direct, Promotions and somewhat related PR. 

ICs (*a list of Kamikaze Creative acronyms follows this post) then/now might also include Internal Client/Employee/Shareholder Communications, Product Placement, Sports and Philanthropic Sponsorships, Training materials yadda yadda yadda.  The available media has expanded, but the basic strategy behind the Fully Integrated Campaign hasn’t changed since Bill was plying clients with three martini lunches. 

On the surface, an Integrated Campaign’s about the messengers (media).  If you’re playing with Integrated Campaigns from Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies, it’s less about the messengers than the message.

You decide – based upon deep Prospect knowledge and everything else that goes into the OBKCWP – how to best reach your Prospect.  Then carry your campaign through every medium that’s conceptually related to product and Campaign Concept (that the client can afford).  Integrated campaigns give you more media options.  But if that’s all it is, it would – still – be just a media buy. 

The Truth is in the Concept.

The big difference between too many Integrated Campaigns and Integrated Kamikaze Campaigns is what it is you’re integrating.  In Bill Small’s day, an IC might be a spread ad reduced to a single page ad (same headline) reduced to small space (where have I seen that headline before?).  Plus a :60 and :30 for both Radio and TV that pretty much parrot the print.  Plus some reference in the PR.  Maybe matching Outdoor.  Plus coordinated and creatively matching Direct, Promotions, Point of Sale.  Plus a mention in clients' internal/shareholder newsletters, etc.

As much of the campaign as possible fed off the initial ad.  Maybe you repeat the visual + headline in all the print (including any Collateral, Direct, POS, etc.).  The radio and TV might not relate to the print at all (how often do you still see that), or it could just repeat/expand/make it “visual” (Radio should be an extremely visual medium).  Other than graphic elements and a few purloined lines, what made the campaign Integrated was the same creative ran everywhere at the same time. 

What’s a Campaign Concept?  Thought you’d never ask.

This is where today’s Integrated Campaign should claim new territory outside New Media.  One of the trickiest parts of IOBKCS is that the media should be a Conceptual Partner to the Creative Concept.  Not a venue for an individual ad, repeated.  A Campaign Concept (hit that Prospect + Key Fact) hangs together no matter how many different mediums you use.   

A friend and Atlanta CD once gave me the best explanation of a Campaign Concept I ever borrowed, here with some Doreen mixed in.  “Think of it as a coat rack,” he told me.  “The rack itself – the Campaign Concept – is a Big Idea strong enough, big enough to hang dozens of coats – conceptually related creative pieces running in various, media - off it.”

We’ve already played with Concept vs. Ad/Idea vs. Illustration (it’s worth going back and reading those posts), so you should have an idea how that works.  Use your Kamikaze Key Fact to insinuate the client/product into the Prospects’ lives.  Keep pushing.  What do you have.  Ad? Concept?  Push that Key Fact some more.

The only way to hang Ambient, e-, Outdoor and Traditional media off a single headline/Illustration or a three ad series is repetition.  If not exactly word-for-word/image-for-image, close enough to bring the original placement to mind, building that connection.  If your Campaign Concept isn’t Big Idea enough to play the same KKF off varied expressions and media, the only thing integrated is still the media buy.

Start with a strong, scalable Campaign Concept/Idea big enough to put its different  - but conceptually, stylistically, strategically related – creative expressions in conceptually related mediums.  Everything you have will fall from that single (Campaign) Idea/Concept.  Not by using the same exact headlines, not by using the same headline paraphrased and/or otherwise disguised.  With a real Concept that all the creative in the campaign harks back to, no matter what the headline. 

You’re now working a Kamikaze Integrated Campaign.  Integrating the Big Idea with conceptually related media. 

There are tricks, hedges, Integrated Campaigns where the first headline (example: Get All You Have Coming) becomes the tag line to the rest of the pieces.  That’s Integration by Tag.  On the other hand, if Get All You Have Coming is really your campaign concept risen from Prospect Definition and Key Fact, none of the pieces has to actually use that line.  They just have to share the Big Idea.  Individual headlines, body copy, direct, POS, etc. will all be different expressions of the same (people want as much as they can get).  The Idea stays constant across all supporting mediums, no matter how it’s expressed. 

Each piece will need the same conceptual tone, graphic style, language of concept, etc.  If your Campaign Concept – your coat rack - is big enough to integrate, you’ll never have to repeat a headline to make it so.

What you’re really Integrating, then, is the Idea.  No matter how many different mediums you use, the Idea (Campaign Concept) comes through to push the Prospect (and the media) to the Objective.

Integrated Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies in twenty-five words or less:  A single Campaign Concept carried across conceptually related Objective Based mediums makes an integrated Campaign.  Not product, creative repetition, media buy or Graphics.

Everything old is newer again.  What makes Integrated Campaign Strategies so today is starting with an OBKCWP and making the media part of your Creative Campaign Concept.  Not the other way around (starting with the media buy as per Mad Man Bill Small and adding creative repetition of the original print across it).

Brush Up on Kamikaze Acronyms:

IC – integrated Campaign/Creative

IKC – Integrated Kamikaze Campaign/Creative

FIC – Fully Integrated Campaign

KCWP – Kamikaze Creative Work Plan

OBKCWP – Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Work Plan

KC – Kamikaze Creative

KCC – Kamikaze Creative Campaign/Concept

IOBKCWP – Integrated Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Work Plan

KCS – Kamikaze Creative Strategy

OBKCS – Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategy

IOBKCS – Integrated Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategy

POS/POP – Point of Sale/Point of Purchase

TMBMBWTM – There May Be More But Why Torture Myself

Promises, Promises: Does your Creative Strategy's Promise give creativity room to run wild? Pushing the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan for Copywriters, Art Directors, Graphic Designers, AEs, Planners - even Clients.

Contrary to rumors, I did not break my back experimenting with human flight.  I merely fractured both shoulders and tore some muscles.  So much for Icarus come to Advertising.

This one's from the email bag.  

Question:

Should a strategy and its promise be general/plainly-stated enough as to not “lock” creatives into specific executions? Or should that promise be worded in a way that is flavorful, dimensional and emotional where it serves as a springboard for unexpected executions immediately? 

Example:

Energizer Batteries. What might that promise have sounded like on the document? Energizer batteries are built to last longer…The …creative team then had to spend a lot of brain power and time to make the leap to …“It keeps going and going and going” and all it’s different executions. Whereas if the promise had started out as “Energizer batteries keep going and going and going,” it might lead me to thoughts on how to execute against that specific line.

I know, on the one hand, there is more latitude in approach number one to come up with more ways to spin longer lasting than just “going and going and going.” But approach number two doesn’t necessarily limit us or prevent us from doing so either. It just ensures that we have a more savory promise to start executing against right out of the gates.

Should that responsibility fall on client service or the planning department? Can they be relied upon to come up that perfect promise that takes the burden of finding a nugget away from creatives? As you can tell, something that used to seem so simple is now complicated beyond belief in my own mind.........help!!!

Ok - Creative Promise, writing creative strategies.  Your planners/AEs can write Advertising and Marketing Strategies, but not Creative Strategies.  That's our job.  Even if we get a "creative strategy" from another dept., even if it was done by an AE trained in KCWP, they can't always think/feel/respond/interpret things the way we do.  

Creatives should do our own KCWP and work from that.  In my experience, it's usually easier and more productive to write the KCWP myself, use it to discuss things with the AEs/Planners/Clients.   Just make sure they all understand how each relates.

It's not just that our definition/use of the Key Fact is different (and that's huge) - it's not the most important thing to communicate about client/product/service - that's acceptable only in Advertising and/or Marketing Strategy.  Creatives define the "Kamikaze Creative Key Fact" as something that's happening out there, in the prospects' world, we can use as a conceptual vehicle to "carry"/communicate the rest of the KCWP.  (Example:  Energizer Batteries are long lasting (possible Adv/Mktg Key Fact), vs. "Congress is really making a mess of the economy (all the more reason to use long lasting batteries) - a possible Creative Key Fact."  

As to how to word your promise, you talked yourself out of the right answer.  Keep it simple.  Yes, that would require the creatives to come up with "keeps going and going and going..." but that's our job.  Really, it's just a translation of the Promise's thought - Energizer Batteries last a long time. It's not even a competitive thought - just a nice, safe, perhaps even parity thought.  (Think back to our discussions on Perceived vs. Real differences – the Energizer Bunny campaign never claims superiority over other brands – just says it’s long lasting.  The perception they create, however, is so strong, the net gain is longest lasting.)

Say what you want to say.  Creative Strategy should be internal, so you have a bit more freedom.  If you do use it with w/clients (and I do), you need them to understand all that and how the KCWP works.  What everyone's roles are.  So you write down "long lasting."  Then you and your partner come up w/going and going and going...***

As to spending more time concepting the creative strategiy than concepting the work itself, there’s nothing wrong with that.  The best way to really push creative out there in a meaningful way, is by pushing the strategy out there. Not by just getting kinky with what you know about the product.  I'm talking substance.  Push that "long lasting " promise further, it could  become "no matter what you pay for them, Energizer batteries cost less(because you replace them less often)."  Is that the right Promise?  You need to study it in context with your Prospect, Competition, Objective, etc.

Pushed again, with a different Creative Key Fact, the same thought (long lasting) can turn into "it's the Greenest alkaline battery you can use."  Why?  If they’re long lasting, you use fewer, there's less of their ecologically damaging chemicals going into the town dump/city water table/air quality, yadda yadda.  

Again, you need to look at this within the context of the rest of your KCWP.  There are market segments this wouldn't matter to (believe it or not), or would matter a lot less to - if you're trying to motivate one of them, this wouldn't be a great Promise.  It sounds different, but really what it is, is the same Lasts Longer promise just skewed a bit and pushed further.

To get back to your basic question, is the Creative Promise something you should get from AEs, clients, planners, etc? They should have already contributed to the advertising/marketing strategy/ies.  That's one of the places you find the original thought, "long lasting," although it may not be in the form of a promise.  Could be buried in the Reasons Why or Competition. 

Advertising and Marketing Strategies are your INPUT.  The better the input, the better the creative.  (You should print that up on big signs and post them everywhere, even where clients can see them, just so people don't forget that PRODUCT INPUT and INSIGHT is their job - interpreting that, putting that into a KCWP/Creative Strategy and spinning it conceptually into whatever medium you're dealing with - is ours.

As to your “Should a strategy and its promise be general/plainly-stated enough as to not “lock” creatives into specific executions?” puzzlement.  Think back to the discussion your class had on the Creative Process.  (If you want my handout on this, email me at kamikazecreative@gmail.com)  The first step is to “Define the problem – as broadly as possible.”  The last thing you want any strategy to do is dictate information so narrowly, your creative solution options are greatly diminished.  The more simply you write your KCWP,  the broader your creative options.

An anecdote on that Energizer Bunny campaign:  several former students worked for the guy who came up with it.  He was such a miserable person to work for, one of them wrote a story about the Hamburger Helper Helping Hand plotting to jump out of the TV and kill the creative who came up with it.  Next time you want to present an animated “embodiment” of the product/product benefit, be careful.  While the EB (Energizer Bunny) bounced off the TV into mainstream American cultural literacy with a mind-numbing array of variations, rip-offs and embellishments, poor old HH (Helping Hand), much more specific in nature/content, never quite caught on (except with the client, I’d venture).

Kamikaze Creative Design Strategy – Graphic Considerations no Designer/Art Director can afford to ignore. How a former student reminded me Kamikaze Copywriters and Art Directors aren’t the only Creatives who need Creative Strategy.

I was wondering where I should take this Creative Strategy discussion next when a former student called. 

Because he doesn’t live in any of the advertising hot spots, he was having trouble recruiting ADs.  He now finds himself trying to turn young Graphic Designers into on-the-job trained Designer/Art Directors.  He’s a smart guy, knows Kamikaze Creative Strategy; encourages the rest of the agency to use it, as well.

 __(insert name here)__ in __(city of his choice)__, this post is for you.  I know you’re doing a great job, but since you asked, let me help.

I became interested in Design Strategy long before I started teaching.  Because I was a proponent of integrated campaigns, I often worked with Graphic Designers on collateral, direct, promotions, annual reports, packaging, etc.  Because they were young and I didn’t know better, we concepted together.  Because I am such a big believer, I taught them how to use the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, how design and copy are two parts of the same whole, won a bunch of awards and learned about great design from some very smart, talented designers in the process. 

KAMIKAZE DESIGN STRATEGY

BEYOND THE CONCEPTUAL CREATIVE STRATEGY CONSIDERATIONS of the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, Kamikaze Design Strategy applies to every aspect of Commercial Design.  Packaging, Collateral (brochures, posters, point of sale, annual reports, etc.), Web, Corporate ID (logo, letterhead, business cards, corporate graphic standards, etc.), Direct Mail, Promotions, Signage – the list is as endless as the types of jobs traditionally – and non-traditionally – falling to Designers Graphic, Web or otherwise.  Goes without saying it applies to ADs, too.

That’s not to say Kamikaze Design Strategy (KDS) supersedes and/or replaces ad-style Kamikaze Creative Strategy.  The demand for Marketing Design over Design for Design’s Sake reflects the market’s need for strategic work and relationships beyond ad agencies or strictly visual design. 

Importantly, it also reflects designers’ needs to expand their creative challenges and income producing opportunities.  While clients often ask design shops to do ads and other jobs more commonly assigned to Adlandia over Designianna, most design training does not include advertising type Creative Strategy.  Knowing it is the difference between a GD’s being asked to do an ad – and the same GD being asked to do another ad.

As in Kamikaze Creative Advertising Strategy, Kamikaze Creative Design Strategy must be considered in all conceptual thinking.  It is no longer enough graphics merely “look good.”  The mass competition of the global market places great weight on a client’s marketing considerations:  response, sales, awareness, brand identity, positioning, international communications, web presence, social networking, etc. etc.

Kamikaze Design Strategy doesn’t replace ad-style Kamikaze Creative Strategy.  It’s the clarification and expansion of the Kamikaze Creative Strategy components which most concern Design. 

SEVEN-STEP KAMIKAZE DESIGN STRATEGY

Step #1:  WHO IS IT FOR?  Design Strategy is most importantly Market Driven.  Don’t allow clients to fool themselves.  Great, effective Graphic Design is done for The Prospect – the people your client wants to reach.  Unless it’s personal stationery, it’s never for the clients themselves.  Be sure to consider The Prospect as individuals – not merely as part of a group.  Think Prospect Definition from the Kamikaze Advertising Creative Work Plan.

                  A word of caution here about the client and the client’s industry (whether consumer or b2b, the client will have an industry).  Just because bankers have always been marketed to/for with conservative, “money” context design does not mean that’s what will move today's  banker/banking prospect.  Such a conservative graphic approach might not work within the context of newer retail banking and financial investment offerings.  Nor will it necessarily resonate with 18-24 year olds.

Changing a traditional approach to motivate current prospects – no matter how targeted and smart - is a creative “risk” you may have to ask your client to trust you in taking.  How big a risk is it?  Depends upon how good you are at integrating branded graphic standards with a new look and feel.

Tread lightly.  For the client, a creative “risk” may be merely doing something no one in the industry has done before.  He or she may be putting their job on the line.  (Remember my definition of “Kamikaze” Creative – if the idea isn’t worth risking your professional career for, it’s not a good enough idea.) 

If you’re proposing something the client’s industry hasn’t seen, that flies in face of the client’s previous work, ask clients to do so with logic, knowledge, street savvy and a dead-on understanding of the prospect, the product’s context, branding and the client’s personal point(s) of view.  The client’s job, business, reputation, promotion, kiester may be on the line.  No matter how appropriate to your client’s prospect, you won’t get them to take what they perceive to be a risk unless you understand and are sensitive to that.

Step #2:  WHAT IS IT FOR?  What is the subject of the piece?  If it’s the product/service being offered or the client corporation, it’s informational  – content.  Whatever you’re selling (introducing, branding, positioning, etc. etc.), what’s the story behind it?  Is it a technical product/service that may require a technically minded prospect and piece?  Is it something warm and fuzzy, that helps prospects somehow feel better about themselves and their world? 

            It’s not enough to know what the product does.  You must also determine what the prospect wants to know, needs to know and how educated they are on the subject.  This will help you design around content – long copy or short, photographic or illustration, stock or shoot, color palettes, paper and production costs/techniques, etc.  If it’s for an established brand, corporate graphic standards will in many ways set the look, feel and tone of a piece.  If it isn’t an established brand, it could be your chance to do it right. 

Step #3:  WHAT DOES IT NEED TO DO?  Will the client use the piece to respond to an inquiry?  Inspire inquiry or other response?  Must it be appealing enough for the prospect to pick it from a table loaded with competitive offerings?  Or will it go directly to individual recipients?  Must it force its own identity in an over-cluttered market?  Or will it introduce a totally new product/market segment?  Obviously not only the prospect and product – but the context of the prospect, product and marketplace – must be considered.

This includes the context of the work’s distribution.  Not just is it a brochure, but is it a brochure-to-be-mailed, a brochure-to-be-distributed-at-trade-shows, a brochure-to-be-translated-into-(which/how many)-languages, etc.  Beyond who they are, you must consider how the prospect will get the piece and what you want them to do with it.  Will they use it to order products?  Tape it on the fridge?  Use it to convince higher-ups to do business with your client?  Can you see how knowing these – and other details – will color your design?

Step #4:  WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO SAY?  This deals with message/content.  Charts?  Graphs?  Photographs?  Lots of information (and copy)?  Columns of numbers?  Fixed and/or changeable pricing, products, services?  Long copy, short, medium?  (*Who decides how long the copy will be?  AD?  CW?  Client?  CD?  ACD?  AE?  Wrong.  The correct decision lies somewhere between the make-up of your Prospect and the information to be disseminated.  Basically, the Prospect decides.

There are almost as many components to this question as there are types of jobs.  The task of smart Design Strategy is to determine which apply to which job.  The Prospect drives this section as well.  How will they best assimilate this information?  What is the information about?  How many pages/frames/minutes/ads do you and your writer think you’ll need to say it?

Step #5:  HOW SHOULD IT SAY IT?  This deals with look, feel, attitude, tone, etc.  If colors, which colors?  Will black and white do/be best?  Illustrations, photos, all type?  Matte or glossy?  Textured? Standard size or wildly shaped?  Organic?  Hi Tech?  User Friendly? Streaming video? The parameters go here.  Market (Prospect) driven, within context of product, job delivery/distribution/media

Be sure you and your writer are in sync.  Nothing’s sadder than disagreement between copy and design.  Not only does it ruin your book piece, it cuts down readership.

Step #6:  WHAT CAN I SPEND?  Contrary to what too many think, good design does not start with cost.  The budget is where design and concept end, never where they start.   

There are those – usually very experienced – GDs, ADs and CWs who can concept within budget.  With too few exceptions, this limits design and other creative possibilities.  The best designers start with Design Considerations #1-#5, then adapt their designs to fit budget requirements (#6).  Never the other way around. 

If you start the design process with budget, you think Well, can’t afford animation, can’t afford new photography/illustration, can’t do X because there’s not enough Y.  You’re limiting how you solve the problem, the Big idea, by telling yourself how you can’t do it.

Instead, use your strategic conceptualization to come up with a great idea, sell the idea and them figure out how to produce the idea within the budget. Then it isn’t the IDEA that’s limited, it’s the production.  As any good AD or GD or CW can tell you, there’s always a way to do good work with smaller budgets.  It’s a matter of how you look at it, and how you sell it.

There are times when an idea’s so big, it can’t be executed within the budget.  If that happens, if you put everything you have into the idea, but it’s over budget, don’t dismiss it.  Play with the idea until it is as affordable as possible.

Then do another idea that will meet all requirements, budget included.  Work from your KCWP and Design Strategy #1-#7, in order. Do several. Present the best.  Don’t stop until you have something better that works within budget, or you prove it can’t be done and discuss how much the budget must increase. 

No matter what your goal (selling the original idea, producing something, anything, yadda yadda), only good ideas count.  Present them along with your original.  You’d be surprised how many clients will “find” the extra money needed to do what’s best.  But only when it’s properly conceived and presented.

The key here is not to go pie-in-the-sky.  If the budget is $10k and you need to increase it, try to bring it in around $12-13k, not $20k.  Knowing how to do that’s one more reason we’re called Professionals.

Ideally, we make a conceptual presentation and tell the client what it will take to do the job, then they approve our budget.  This requires respect and trust between client and designer, as well as open mindedness in the corporate budgeting process.  It’s also unusual.  Too often, the client tells us what they want, then asks “how much” before anything’s been designed/concepted.  Come in too high. Someone else gets the job.

Most clients have already budgeted funds per year/project.  They still might not say “we have $____ to do a brochure…” preferring, instead, to get you to estimate the job although you have no idea, realistically, what they need and what they can spend.  Changing this process takes time, trust and another five pages to discuss.

Step #7:  MANDATES & LIMITATIONS.  Applicable corporate graphic standards, legal content, disclaimers, languages to be translated, graphics standards, etc.  Must it be compatible with existing pieces, establish format for all new work, be applied across the board?  Anything you must consider/include in both the design process and the finished piece.

Kamikaze Design Strategy isn’t just for graphic design jobs.  It’s for everything you must concept and “design” before you produce.  Print.  Web.  Broadcast.  Ads.  Posters.  Streaming Video.  Ambient.  Retail.  Promotional.  Anything that involves the way it looks, what it says/how, how it does its job and ultimately, how much it costs.  It’ll keep you out of trouble,  focused where you should be both conceptually and in your estimate.  It saves a lot of heartache, resentment and revisions.

            You might consider the entire Kamikaze Design Strategy formula the Mandates & Limitations of your original Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (Traditional or Objective based).  Whatever you do, don’t think of Kamikaze Design Strategy as a big NO!  Do not think it’s restrictive.

Like the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, once you get comfortable working with it and use it correctly, Kamikaze Design Strategy will set your concepts free, just free to produce within budget.  Use it wrong, the budget and other perceived restrictions will be all you notice.

©2001, 2011/Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

More Promises Kept: Reflections on Kamikaze Objective Based Creative Strategies Post I: Clarifications, apologies, further enlightenment for Kamikaze Creative Copywriters, Art Directors, AEs, CDs, Students, Clients, Relatives and Friends.

I’ve been thinking about my last post.  Objective Based Creative Strategies – huge.  One post can’t do it well, or even adequately.  To help any confusion I created, with apologies to the CD expecting Kamikaze Creative Design Strategy (check back next week – it’s almost done), before and after rereading it, I had these thoughts on KOBCS (and the post itself).

If anyone missed it, the example I gave was way too easy.  It’s the kind of idea that gets presented a lot because too many creatives, AEs and clients stop there.  Exactly why you shouldn’t. It’s a first idea, not a great one.  Way too obvious – keep pushing.  It may get attention, but is so predictable, it’ll sell category, at best.  It’ll never imprint the brand.

How do you push it?  Like you push any Kamikaze Creative Strategy:  Push the Prospect.  What have you overlooked?  Push the Promise –  does it really matter to the Prospect; is it truly something no one else can say?  Push the Reasons Why – don’t overlook Perceived Benefits.  Push the Competition – what’d you miss and how does that relate to your Prospect?  Always, always - Push the Key Fact.  Especially the Key Fact. 

Here’s a real life crazy example I got from a friend who works high up on a lot of fast food, consumer packaged goods, etc.  Big budget accounts.  Huge.  Not sure how it came up – possibly in a discussion on the ways agencies approach e-media.  A few jobs back, his agency was presenting phone apps.  Not because anyone truly understood them, why they're needed at that particular time or had even a rudimentary knowledge of how to qualify their creation/design/ programming.  Worse, they had no idea what – if any – real, measurable benefit the client would reap.  Let alone if the benefit was worth the cost.

No, he admitted with candor, they were pushing apps because everyone else was doing them.  If competing client corporations and their agencies were doing apps, his agency and client had to be doing them, too.  Can’t be left behind – even if we’re blowing smoke.

This isn’t an example of Kamikaze Objective Based Creative Strategy.  If anything, it’s a media based strategy.  I hesitate to call it that, as no media planner/buyer I know would propose any medium if they didn’t have stats to back it up.  Especially as a good deal of client faith in e-media has to do with click-through and quantifiable ROI.  

If you don’t do apps because everyone else is, how do you get there?  Once there, how do you know if your app (or whatever the vehicle to the Objective is) will at least meet – if not exceed – it’s Objective?  You know this one.  You go back to your Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (Objective Based or not).

Always to the Prospect First.  What’s going on in their world(s)?  How can you make your client integral to something you know the Prospect cares about?  It’ll be right there in your Kamikaze Key Fact. 

Find and play with your Key Fact just as you do in a traditional Kamikaze Creative Work Plan.  You just choose/interpret your Objective Based Kamikaze Key Fact so it leads to an actionable way to deliver the conceptual message to your Prospect. 

Don’t stop at the Concept itself and apply the concept to the medium.  In Kamikaze Objective Based Creative Strategies, your concept is part of the medium.

Back to my friend’s story, what apps do you have that you actually use?  Not which apps did you find amusing enough to play with for bit then forget.  Which do you actually use?

Why?  They relate to your life in a way that is somehow beneficial.  They deliver on their Promise.  You gave them a try because not only are they integral to who you are (Prospect knowledge); they grabbed your attention and imagination for what they are – and for how you learned about them.  

Sounds like a wrap to me.  I hope this helps.  If you have other questions, you know how to find me.  If I awake in the middle of the night with a big OH NO HOW DID I FORGET THAT?  I’ll find you.

Thoughts about the last post itself:  Mea culpa.  Should have given it one more edit (at least). 

Since this is a learning experience:  after a week away from it, I saw another 15-20% I might have been able to cut from the word count without hurting message or style.  I found at least one word that made me cringe (“exploit” – never admit that about the biz unless you’re 100% sure who’s reading).  I also found a few (very few, but there) Copy Sins.  All laugh derisively. 

Something fun to consider:  A former, very smart and talented Circus student of mine asked me about a piece of music I once played in class.  Although I answered her directly, I want to share it with you. 

Ima Sumac.  Selection I played from was on Mambo!  CD, which I highly recommend.  Most of her others can be an acquired taste.  I also played from Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, Herbie Mann’s Push, Push, don’t remember what else.  If I didn’t include Caesar Evore, Charles Aznavour, Desi Arnaz, Edith Piaf and The Red Elvises, I should have.  I believe the discussion was Music as Branding/Concept.  Think great spot brands Infiniti Cool as Dave Brubreck. 

Looking Ahead/More Promises Kept: By request, my next post will be Kamikaze Design Strategy.  

As with all Kamikaze Creative Strategy, strategic design starts with the basic Kamikaze Creative Work Plan.  Kamikaze Design Strategy speaks to the way both strategic and production qualities affect graphic and conceptual excellence.  Tell all your AD, GD, WD (web design) friends if they don’t read this blog already.  And don’t skip it yourself (if you’re a CW, AE, yadda yadda).  Knowing it will make your work better by making it more conceptual/integral to the graphics.

Keeping Promises: What’s the object of Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies? How are they different from the Kamikaze Creative Strategies Advertising and Marketing Copywriters, Art Directors, Graphic Designers, etc. usually work from?

There’s this beautiful scene in the old movie Marty* where Marty and his best friend, Augie, are sitting in a diner.

“What do you want to do tonight, Augie?”  Marty asks.

“I dunno, Marty, what do you want to do?”  Augie replies.

“I dunno, Augie, what do you want to do?”  Marty asks.

“I dunno, Marty, what do you want to do?”  Augie replies.

It’s a scene so real to the minutiae of everyday life, it’d be boring if it weren’t so brilliant.  It also captures Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategy in that proverbial, cliched nutshell:  What do you want to do, Advertising Creative?

Kamikaze Creative Strategy’s job is to give you what you need to fashion a message and come up with the Big Idea (concept) for communicating that message.

Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies deal more with how that message is delivered. 

In Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies, the task is devising new, creative and unexpected ways of reaching your Prospect (provided you’re lucky enough to sell what you’re good enough to think).  Because the message itself must help drive your solution to your Prospect, you use all the components of the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan.  But because you job is also to first concept how that message will get to your prospect, you must change the emphasis/order of importance.  (See end of post.)

The Objective Based CS (Creative Strategy) puts the Objective right up front, as the most important part of the strategy.  How are we going to do what we’re  trying to do? 

I know, I know, we want to Create Awareness, Educate, Create Interest, Introduce, Position yadda yadda yadda.  How, exactly, will we do that?  I’m not talking mere media (apologies to all my very important, very smart Media Buying and Selling friends).  Although media selection is part of it, it’s more like Media Invention and Integration as they reflect The Prospect Definition and Promise/Benefit.

In other words, you look at the Objective (introduce, for example) through the lens of the Prospect Definition.  Say you want to Introduce a new product to the Young Urban Working Professional market. 

To fulfill an Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategy, you must first come up with a new, creative way to reach those Young Urban Working Professionals.

In a KCWP (Kamikaze Creative Work Plan), where the Prospect outranks the Objective, it’s all about what you communicate, how.  In the usual KCWP, the how is about message concept, not the vehicle it arrives in.  Ditto the Key Fact.

In an OBKCWP (Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Work Plan), Prospect Definition follows the Objective.  The problem is first, what am I going to do, for whom?  How do I reach into the Prospect’s life to find a way to introduce the product they can’t ignore?  Second, how do I exploit what I know about the Prospect’s life and the Client’s Objective to actually make the media/vehicle part of the message-carrying Creative Concept?  This takes the Objective, Prospect, Problem and Key Fact.

Let’s see if an example will confuse you more.  Say you’re introducing a new product that gets “pet” stains out of anything.  Your prospect is young urban professionals.  Your benefit?  The stuff works.  Really.

How are you going to introduce the new cleaner to young urban professionals?  To keep it simple, I’ll go with the obvious.  Young professionals take commuter transportation to work.  So maybe you meet the objective by putting branded fake vomit with copy underneath it on commuter bus stop seats and sidewalks.  What you have is a bus stop campaign where commuters first think someone got sick on the bench/ground.  When they get closer – surprise!  – short, zingy and hopefully memorable copy explains to clean it up. 

You’ve put your product where your prospect is and inspired prospect involvement.  You’re introducing the new product in a very fun, hard to ignore  product demonstration.  You’ve solved the Objective problem.  Now all that’s left is fleshing out the creative. 

Got it? 

I know this is over-simplification.  All you’re trying to do is meet The Objective for The Prospect.  If Augie and Marty had known what they were trying to do – alleviate boredom, find excitement, get out of the diner, yadda yadda, then looked at themselves – and their lives – they could have spent a lot less time asking each other what they wanted to do and could have actually done something. 

In our world, it’s more about finding unexpected ways, places, vehicles to meet the Objective.  I got into it years ago from my early training in integrated campaigns.  I worked for one of Boston’s original Mad Men, a man named Bill Small.  Bill had had one of the biggest shops in Boston.  At the time, health issues and changing ad fashion were taking a big toll on his business.  Bill never learned to change – he drilled Objective Based (Integrated) Thinking into my head with every assignment.  He didn’t call it that, of course.  To Bill, it was just adding “Where/How” to the Creative Process of “What/How” and using it to build a traditionally  integrated campaign.

There was no media innovation/invention, just the basic tenants of an “Old Fashioned” Integrated Campaign.  It took the Internet and the advent of all the web’s peripheral possibilities – the freedom it gave to re-invent the tenants of Integrated Campaigns.  In Bill Small’s day it was PR, media advertising (traditional print/broadcast), maybe some Direct Mail with/without a Promotion thrown in.  Today, it’s Traditional Media Advertising doesn’t stand alone.  Direct Mail/Promotions now contain - if they don't lead with - Web Campaigns/Promotions, Ambient, etc. 

As the definition of Integration changes, Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies become more important.  Not because the Objective is more important than the Prospect, but because the Objective has so many possibilities for fulfillment.  Invent a new way to reach the Prospect by considering what it is you have to say using the rest of the KCWP just as you’ve always done (you do write one for every assignment, right?). 

How big is Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategy?  The last (or next-to-last) term I taught it at the Creative Circus, at least 5-6 years ago, a line-up of nationally and internationally recognized Creative Directors came to Atlanta at their own expense to give assignments and critique my students’ resulting creative.  These guys were on the cutting edge of the Advertising/Web Divide – still are.  They – and now, everyone else - all want creatives who don't just understand the goals of Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies.  They want people who drop dead know it. 

As far as I know, the course hasn’t been taught since.  So while this entry may be a fairly basic intro to Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies, it may also be one of the few places you’ll find information on the How/What of it.  

Want to learn more?  If you’re in school, ask the head of your department – print this out and take it with you if you want.  If you’re working and think you haven’t tried it, think again.  If you’ve ever suggested putting stickers above urinals or painting copy on sidewalks, you’ve thought about it.  Now practice it.  On every assignment, whether it's supposed to be Objective Based or not.  No matter what they call it, it’s what clients and Creative Directors are looking for.

Today, Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Strategies are The New.  Cutting edge.  You’ll find it done wrong in integrated campaign formats straight out of Mad Man Bill Small, with nods to today’s ad tech.  Done right, the media invention/integration bit's written into the KOBCS.  Same old/same old.  How’s that for everything old is new again?


FYI:  Objective Based Kamikaze Creative Work Plans go in this order:
1.  Objective
2.  Prospect Definition
3.  Problem to Solve
4.  Kamikaze Key Fact
5.  Competition
6.  Reason(s) Why
7.  Competitive Information
8.  Mandates & Limitations

EXTRA!  Some of my Kamikaze Occupational Safety Rules for Copywriters and Other AdCreatives proved their usefulness in a big way this week.  Had to do with a cryptic suggestion one of my early CDs, Ron Spatero, then of Bozell, made.  When I complained about an AE being so bad, ("Do not think you - or anyone else - can change an Idiot...") I was working directly with clients on things he should have done, Ron said, “If you want a better AE, be a better Copywriter.”  

Confused the heck out of me.  Until I realized he was telling me to focus on my job, not the AEs.  (Be good at what you do; accept what they are.)  Sure enough, as soon as I stopped trying to make my job easier by doing what the AE didn't , several big gaps appeared in the way the account was handled.  Especially regarding creative budgets, input and approvals.  Before long, I was a better, more focused copywriter.  With the expected client complaints, the AE became a better AE.  The account became my favorite.

**An apology for my too-long silence.  Business, family, family losses, new pet search, life – all ganged up on me and ate whatever time I had left over.  Will try to do better.  In the meanwhile, if you have a question on this no one else can answer, email me.  I’ll help if I can.

MANY THANKS to those of you who expressed kind thoughts at the passing of my 26-year writing partner, Elvira the World’s Oldest Cat.  I’m happy to report Miss Olivia, eight weeks of kinetic kitten craziness, now has the job.  You’ll find her pictures on my facebook page.  As soon as she learns climbing up my leg (by digging in her claws) isn’t the best way to get onto my desk, she’ll be perfect!

Marty*:  If you haven’t seen it, get it from Netflicks.  It's a bastion of Cultural Literacy; One Best Picture Oscar winner that really was.