Don't go changing

 
Want to know how to win the first round of a game of paper, scissors stone?

Hold a clenched fist out in front of you before the game starts, then put it behind your back as you begin counting. On 3, reveal your hand… still in a fist shape (ie stone).

Most people will be showing scissors. Rock blunts scissors, you win.

Although I have a degree in psychology, I can’t really claim to know why this works more often than not.

My theory, however, is that when you show your opponent your starting position of a fist, they do the same, because they follow your lead as to how the game should start.

Then, of course, they have a clenched fist behind their back, the count goes on and they feel the need to do something. And the most action you can take when your hand is in a fist shape is to change it to scissors.

Which means by ‘doing nothing’ and keeping your hand in a fist, you win.

This need to take action – and by doing so, lose – pervades many areas of life, including fundraising marketing and charity advertising.

Marketing directors change jobs every couple of years, and when they start somewhere new, feel the need to show they’re doing something – taking action – by changing the campaign that’s been running, regardless of how well it’s performed. Rosser Reeves (advertising pioneer and inventor of the TV ad) was once asked by a client what the 47 people working on his account were doing when the campaign hadn’t changed for 12 years.

“Keeping you from changing the ad,” was Rosser’s instant reply.

Nowadays, needless change can occur because of the way some big organisations work. Namely, that some of them insist that about 20 different people across 8 different departments have to approve every piece creative work.

And if you’re given some creative work to sign-off, how do you show that a) you’ve seen it and b) you’re adding value?

By changing something. You literally ‘make your mark’. And 19 other people do exactly the same, creating a ‘designed by committee’ nightmare.

Maybe we should champion the idea that sometimes, the best contribution you can make is to look at something, not find every detail to your own personal taste and still be strong enough to not change it. To leave it as it was intended, so it retains a single, strong voice.

The funny thing is, if you do refrain from making changes the creative team will work harder on your account, knowing more of what they put in will get out.

In 1962, Avis gave DDB their ad account.

The CEO of Avis wanted (and needed) great work to compete with Hertz, but they only had a small budget. Bill Bernbach, creative head of DDB, told him that if he wanted the creative team to work nights and weekends coming up with great work, all he had to do was to run the ads as they were submitted. No changes.

Avis agreed. The creative team worked like buggery, knowing what they created wasn’t going to have the life amended out of it.

And the ‘We try harder’ campaign became one of the longest-running, best-known and most successful of all time.

New is so old

Heard of ‘crowdsourcing’?

It’s one of those shiny new things. People are like magpies: we love shiny new things. Even if the new things aren’t as good as the old things. We just get infatuated with their newness.

Sometimes I think that’s why marketing isn’t advancing as quickly as it should. Because someone comes along with something new that doesn’t bother building on what we’ve already learned. It just starts again.

We reinvent the wheel. And this time we try it with sharp pointy bits.

Crowdsourcing is a new way to do creative work.

You put your brief online, you invite anyone and everyone to come up with ideas to answer it, and the best idea wins a prize.

Brilliant. Instead of seeing just three concepts, you see hundreds or even thousands.

Admittedly, most of them will be appallingly bad, and you’ll go mad having to sift through the piles of bad puns, borrowed interest, plagiarised, off brief, brand illiterate, old or just plain terrible ideas.

But on the plus side, you’re getting lots of people, including your target audience, to submit ideas, so you’re bound to get infinitely more surprising and original ideas than you’d get from an agency.

Aren’t you?

Peperami is one of the biggest names to have tried this new gimmick recently. They offered a first prize of $10,000 and a second of $5,000 for a TV and print campaign idea.

They sent out the brief, they judged the entries, they chose the winning work.

And then discovered that the winning entry had been submitted by a professional copywriter. And that the runner up was from an ex-creative director.

Who’d have thought that?

That highly-trained, highly-experienced, highly-skilled professionals are better than a random collection of amateurs?

That creatives are better at thinking like the target audience than the target audience is at thinking like creatives?

That the Emperor isn’t wearing incredible new clothes, but is in fact naked? 

Bolluxtorkium

I bring news of three incredible breakthroughs.

Bolluxtorkium, Madeupium and Sudosyencium.

What do you mean, never heard of them?

Our nation’s best scientific brains – bored of minor challenges like finding a cure for cancer or cheap renewable energy – have been working tirelessly to unearth these modern miracles.

Inspired by nature, these incredible discoveries... make your hair shiny. Really shiny.

So shiny it looks healthy (even though it can't be, since hair is dead).

So shiny you wake up not with bedhead, but looking as if Cheryl Cole’s team of stylists have been attending to your follicles throughout the night.

So shiny that an Amazonian tribe will begin worshipping your ’do as a new god.

It’s amazing what you can pick up from a TV ad for shampoo.

Mainly, that the laboratories of Garnier (Paris) seem to discover new elements on the Periodic Table on a near-weekly basis. They take great delight in describing a mythical new molecule (‘Nutrilium’ for example), while showing you a model with perfect hair that isn’t even hers – she’s got hair extensions.

I’m not sure how it came to be that one sector is allowed to stretch the truth so rapaciously.

In fundraising comms, we take the truth a bit more seriously. Because a charity has to have trust and credibility with its audience. 

There's a caveat, of course (there's always a caveat).

Us scribblers and scampers in the creative department rarely have the ideal raw materials to create the most powerful, compelling work.

So personally, for example, I’m in favour of using composite case studies. (Which means cutting and pasting several real case studies together, to get one really strong story - which also protects the identity of who you're talking about.) I’m in favour of using model photography and recreations where necessary. And I’m in favour of talking about a specific area of work even though the donation is for unrestricted funds.

We point out that some names and details have been changed, but that the feelings are real, and we say that their donation will go wherever the need is greatest.

So, is there a difference? 

Different charities have different views, but I certainly think so. With fundraising comms, you’re simply compensating for a lack of raw materials to illustrate a genuine, truthful need. You’re often talking about distressing events that no-one took a picture of at the time. So you have to recreate it.

Shampoo salesmen don’t have that problem. They can show the effects of their product on someone with real hair any time they like.

But they don’t. Instead they choose to show Cheryl as she carefully enunciates why they pay her millions to have fake hair of a gleaming glossiness no shampoo had a hand in creating.

“Beecuz ahm wurth it, leik. Pet.”

Hirsute fundraising

Have you ever tried to grow a moustache? 

If you're a woman, probably not. I grew one for Movember a couple of years ago (a really charming, £30 million idea in aid of prostate cancer). It was bloody itchy though.

But in the 80s, moustaches had a resurgence in popularity. Because blokes wanted to be like Tom Selleck.

If you can’t remember (or are too young to know) why, just look at the TV title sequence for his famous Ferrari 308GTS-driving detective : http://bit.ly/HK7cw

Awesome.

Now: fundraising. 15 years ago, few charities had brand managers. Now, they all do. They recognise that in a crowded market, with every good cause petitioning every good soul with good reasons to support them, their brand is an important differentiator.

It’s an important way to codify their values, so a potential donor can see if the brand resonates with their own values, and if so, to support them.

Yet, weirdly, we don’t see that much well-branded stuff in the third sector.

Oh, most charities communications look the part, right enough. But that’s just following the visual identity guidelines. The font, the logo, the colours, the layout.

Following the visual identity doesn’t mean the work is ‘on brand’. Any more than having a bushy moustache makes you Magnum PI.

A brand has got to be about the experience. The feeling it gives you. The values it portrays. The way it connects with you. Its personality. Its tone of voice.

I think some of the agencies working with charities have too narrow an experience. They’ve only ever done hard-working, technique-driven stuff, or only worked in a narrow range of media, or they haven’t got enough commercial experience to know how to really get under the skin of a brand.

So they end up doing the same stuff they’ve done many times before.

With a comedy moustache stuck on it.