Buying Creative Work

The Buying Creative Work seminar is designed to fill the gap which many marketing people of all levels feel exists in their repertoire of skills, namely formal training in a number of advertising specific areas such as creative briefing, responding to and evaluating creative work, distinguishing good advertising from bad, and handling the agency.

Most clients have had to pick up these skills as best they could "on the job", which is extraordinary when you consider the enormous budgets to which their abilities in these areas are applied. Given those budgets, even an improvement of a few percentage points in the effectiveness of their abilities represents a very cost-efficient investment.

The seminar is usually run for a specific client, but it is highly desirable that at least some of the agency team who work with the client are present, since the opportunity to work and talk together in these areas helps both client and agency participants to come to understand and value each other more. The seminar is held at a venue chosen by the client and can accommodate a maximum of 12 people.

The process of buying creative work is broken into three constituent stages: recognising the characteristics of good work (and in particular the Advertising Idea), the creative brief, and receiving and evaluating the work when it is presented by the agency.

For each of these stages the participants work on actual case studies and play the roles of both client and agency, selling and buying the work to and from each other. Their performances are then discussed and suggestions are made as to how they might be improved. The seminar is directed by Roger Clayton whose experience as a client buying work for SmithKline Beecham and Johnson & Johnson, and as Managing Director and Executive Creative Director of Grey London, is obviously useful and relevant here. Click here to see his full CV.

The participants on the seminar are split into teams with three to six people in each team. The principal sessions in the seminar are briefly described below.

A ‘Good and Bad Advertising’ exercise asks the teams to evaluate a number of advertisements and then report back to the whole group their views on them: were they good or bad, why, and what was the idea in each of them? This and the subsequent discussion works well in helping everyone to understand more objectively what constitutes "good" advertising.

The ‘Advertising Idea vs Executional Idea’ session defines and illustrates the difference between an advertising idea and an executional idea. In our experience many agency people, let alone clients, do not fully understand the difference, and we believe that it is a crucially important difference since it is a vital part of understanding the true equity of a brand and making it consistent over time.

The ‘Advertising Idea Reel’ then allows participants to immediately put the previous session into practice in trying to identify and define the Advertising Idea in a series of commercials from around the world.

The ‘Creative Brief’ and ‘Creating a Good Creative Brief’ sessions cover the essentials of producing a good creative brief. It also emphasises the difference between the client brief and the agency brief, something which many clients do not entirely understand. Indeed, in some cases a better understanding of that issue alone has lead to a much more productive relationship between client and agency. In the middle of these sessions the ‘Advertising Idea Exercise’ allows participants to prove for themselves the value of single-mindedness in briefing.

The ‘Creative Brief’ exercise is exactly what its title suggests. Each team is given some background data and a client brief and asked to write the agency creative brief from that brief. The briefs that the teams write are subsequently presented to the whole group and discussed.

The last item of the first day is the briefing for the ‘Evaluating Creative Work’ exercise in which each team plays the role of both agency and client. The following morning each "agency" presents a piece of creative work (in script or rough layout form) to its "client". The "client" then responds to the presentation, and evaluates the work, as far as possible in whatever way they would normally do this. This exchange can be very useful and productive, since, firstly, it is an interesting experience for a client to get some idea of how it feels to be an agency presenting a piece of work, and, secondly, it is usually very useful to see the response and evaluative process which the "client" team goes through.

The ‘Whole Brain Model’ is a presentation originally created for Procter & Gamble, although it has subsequently been given to many different clients all over the world. It uses hard data to explore the relationship between rational communication and emotional appeal in advertising, and demonstrates that an optimum balance of both, for a given brand in a given competitive set, maximises sales.

The Evaluating Creative Work session considers the difficulties of doing precisely that, many of which arise because, as mentioned earlier, most people learn this important skill "on the job", and never receive any formal training. The process is divided into two: the initial "response" which answers the agency's desperate need for a more satisfying response other than some trivial executional comment (which is what it often gets), and "evaluation", which considers a number of evaluation methods (for example, Procter & Gamble's and Unilever's) and suggests a very practical formalised evaluation process. It also warns vigorously against the over use of such a process which is very much recommended as a guide to making a better judgement, not as a replacement for judgement.

A second ‘Evaluating Creative Work’ exercise allows the teams to swap agency/client roles and once again the "agency" presents to the "client". This second exercise enables them to try out for themselves the best practice techniques which we have just discussed and is always done very much better than the first exercise, providing a good 'before and after' testimony to the value of the seminar.

Finally, the ‘Together’ session deals with the commercial value to the client of handling an agency well and best practice recommendations as to how to do this.

The seminar has been run at least once and in most cases many times for the following clients:

Cost & Venue

2 day course for a maximum of 12 people = £9,150 + VAT

The seminar fee does not include travel (Business Class where relevant), overnight accommodation, and subsistence which we will arrange for ourselves, nor does it include a meeting room and all necessary technical equipment which should be chosen and booked by the client. Seminars held outside the UK may attract a premium. Please ask for a quotation.

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Client Comments

“The course has been judged a great success with real benefits, not just in terms of knowledge, but also in bridge building between ourselves and our agencies.”
European Marketing Director, Mars Confectionery

“Thank you for an excellent course and wonderful hospitality.”
Marketing Manager, Woolwich Building Society

“Thank you for running such an excellent course last week.........I feel we made some excellent progress both in building a stronger Agency/Client team, but also in our development of copy.”
Marketing Director, Johnson & Johnson

“Fantastic course. Enlightening! I think attendance with equivalent member of business team from agency would be beneficial and would only improve local relationships further!”
C.E. Europe, Kellogg’s

“The engaging speaker and thought provoking subject matter and especially the insight into potential client & agency problems that were hitherto a mystery to me.”
Brand Specialist, Ford

“I am an inveterate cynic about seminars: I now know that I’ve simply been going to the wrong ones. I know J&J found it immensely useful and stimulating; I have to say that I did as well.”
Director, McCann Erickson

“A “big thanks” for an immensely interesting and highly useful course. I have to say it is one of the best courses I’ve attended in 7 years of Marketing (including 3 years on the Unilever B.E.P.) and it has helped me enormously already in the advertising area.”
Activity Manager, Effems, Switzerland

“Thanks a lot! It has been the best course I’ve ever been on.”
Marketing Manager, Kellogg’s

“Many thanks for leading an excellent Advertising Training Day on Friday. As ever, the subject provoked a high level of participation, debate and hopefully, learning, amongst the team.”
Vice President, Marketing, Chivas & Glenlivet

“It was a most enlightening course, and a very enjoyable two days ... we have all come back and ‘raved’ about it.”
Marketing Manager, GlaxoSmithKline

“The feedback has been very positive. Both the Agency and all our team found the whole process engaging, refreshing and conducive to the “easing some of those skeletons out of some of those cupboards. We are a better partnership for it.”

“As I said, your conviction, clarity and convivial communication made us fix our attention for two whole days - we were all shattered going home. You are an approachable “guru” who has not lost himself in his own self-importance.”
Brand Manager, Pedigree Petfoods

“Overall an excellent course which I found very useful – should have more of these. It was great to have Roger Clayton as he has such a great experience and understanding about both clients and agencies’ sides. Good job!!”
Brand Manager, Kellogg’s

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