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.