Having spent close to 20 years in the creative departments of ad agencies, I’ve always found it curious how the vast majority of companies all but ensure that their marketing efforts end in failure. Why? Because they’ve burdened themselves with the Armies of “No.”
The Armies of “No” are all the extraneous people who are called on to weigh in on the latest marketing campaign, regardless of their having any actual expertise in marketing.
And by “extraneous” I mean anyone who is not the CMO or the handful of people who report directly to the CMO. Product managers. In-house legal teams. Graphic standards guardians. External consultants. They’re all called upon to offer their opinion on a specific part of the campaign, but in my experience, that rarely happens.
Mostly it’s human nature: someone calls on you to offer an opinion and you feel you need to offer something beyond a rubber stamp or be viewed as a dolt. So you find something to criticize, something to improve upon, and that “something” is usually the entire campaign. Not just their small piece of it.
Let’s take Product Managers. Product managers and sales managers know the product better than anyone, so they’re often called upon to weigh in on the advertising. Ideally, their commentary should be limited to “The Acme 24X actually comes with 3 widgets, not 2″ or “The free shoeshine with purchase program actually wound up costing us a lot more than we expected.”
That’s “ideally.”
What happens in reality is that they feel it is well within their rights to offer piquant critiques of the campaign in general. In language that anything but reflective:
“I don’t like that photograph.”
“Okay. Why?”
“I just don’t.”
“Well can you explain why?”
“I just don’t, Okay!! She doesn’t look like someone I’d want to be friends with.
“But would the target feel that way?”
“We’re not using that photo. You’ll have to find another one.”
Now in many companies, the marketing team is simply not empowered to tell the product manager to shut the heck up, that those are not the sort of decisions she’s being asked to make and that all she’s being asked to comment on is the veracity of the ad or banner or PR letter.
That, or the marketing team may have six more projects with this particular project manager and they don’t want to make her an enemy. Plus they’ve got to face the legal team, whose solution to phrases they don’t feel comfortable with is to rewrite copy and declare it unchangeable. The brand guidelines team, who’ll re-art direct the entire banner so that it feels like they’ve had some input. And sometimes even the owner’s spouse, who simply doesn’t like the color orange.
In all these situations the onus is on the CEO to make marketing a priority. To play an active role in defending the campaign and to let the Armies of “No” know that advertising is not something just anyone can do, and that he’s purposely hired the ad agency and the marketing department for their expertise in this area. So please just shut up and listen to them.
This sort of control is especially important now, when consumers are disinclined to listen to corporate messaging and are demanding honesty, not banal platitudes. Companies must rid themselves of the Armies of “No” now, or they will all but ensure their ultimate defeat.
Toad,
“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”
– H.G. Wells
Given that, ahem, passion, have you not had success with creative briefs? If the creative aligns with the clearly articulated goals on the creative brief – which everyone has signed off on – then individual opinions matter less. Much less.
Maybe the solution is to ask people specific questions and keep it at that. Ask the product manager is this accurate in terms of the product?
Make it clear that is the narrow focus of the question and you don’t want to hear about the photograph.
You are right, though, the CEO would have to set that tone of limited scope of questions. Feedback in someone’s area of knowledge but not beyond so the project does not get bogged down in a morass of ground No Warfare.
Toad,
Been there and here is what we did to solve the problem. Neil touches upon it. Set the ground rules in advance, so that everyone commenting knows what they should be looking at and for. This includes the CEO and COO.
We used to run creative by the Executive Team as it was being developed, not only after is was developed. The commenting guidlines applied then, as well. Once the creative was finished, final approval was limited to major errors only (not opinions). The process works because the Executive Team has buy in throughout the process and everyone who comes to the final creative review knows that.
Managers won’t say no to a campaign already approved by the Executive Team.
@Gwynneth: If only. Creative briefs all too often get swept aside by people outside (and often inside) the marketing team. Even if all those people have agreed to and signed off on the briefs. And bringing up the brief only serves to make people madder: they will either claim that the thing they don’t like (the photo, the color orange) is “off-brief” or they will pull the old “I don’t care what the brief says, this is what I say…”
@Neil and Lewis: Yes– what you both lay out is the ideal way and is what I proposed. Unfortunately, few companies are prepared to fully disempower the Armies of “No.” If marketing is not a priority, everyone feels it is within their rights to offer opinions outside of the scope of what they’ve been asked. As in “I know I’m just supposed to tell you if this is factually correct, but I do not want that photograph in an ad for my product. And I hate orange.”
Again, solution is for CEO to step in– and it has to be the CEO, not the CMO– and set very clear rules and let people know that if they don’t like them, they can complain directly to her.
Toad: You hit perfectly something that my agency faces every day, and is facing right now on a project.
The brief has an objective that is different than the usual objective. That means different creative, different tactics and – gasp – a different approach than the one everyone has already aligned behind.
We are fighting for what we think is right, but the client solution is a meeting with all functions together to sort it out. Which means marketing by committee, so make sure everyone is happy.
And the good ideas are killed.
I suggested a core, cross-functional team might make sense (CMO engagement would be better). At least we could present and discuss and work with them…but everyone together offering input.
I am already writing our ideas’ eulogies.
The issue here is trust.
People have to trust the marketers to make it happen. If they don’t have a level of trust, then failure is much more likely.
Good stuff. Question: being that you work in big ol’ agencies (so we’re talking big budgets on the line, not a 1/4 page ad in the local), do your clients ever test concepts? I don’t ask that sarcastically, btw.
Being that the initial concept usually looks vastly different from the revised/revised/revised–due to the Armies of No–I’m just wondering if some testing with actual customers might help your plight.
It’s hard to disagree with legal and product managers, much easier when customer data spreads some sunlight on what actually works. Curious am I.
I mean this in its cynical and straightforward meanings: It’s hard when the client gets in the way of good work.
The issue with testing, at least in my experience, is that testing measures against things that have been done before (and institutional biases).
Would testing have said that the Bernbach “Lemon” VW ad would be successful? Or BK’s Subservient Chicken? Or anything new and breakthrough?
I doubt it.
Which is too bad because it would be nice to be able to throw the decision to consumers and let the best creative win.
@CK and DB: I’ve actually worked at smaller “boutique” creative shops as much as big agencies. And there’s not much difference in the way clients operate. Big clients, anyway. Smaller clients generally don’t have as many layers and the CEO is often the person who started the company so s/he is very involved in the creative.
Testing is rarely done correctly and during testing, people tend to tell you what they think you want to hear or what they think they should say, rather than what they actually feel. (SEE ALSO: Gladwell, Malcolm “Blink”)
Here’s how many spots are tested: People are invited to a large auditorium. They often come in groups, with friends. They are told they will be evaluating a new TV show. They are shown a failed pilot of some sort with all sorts of half-produced commercials(crude animation of what’s intended to be live action or crude editing of stock footage)
At the end, they’re asked which spots they remembered.
Often they will “remember” spots they never saw, but that they remember having seen on TV at some point.
Clients make multimillion dollar decisions on this type of research.
‘Nuff said.
gotcha. sorry, was talking actual market testing…a la run this spot in market A vs. the other spot in market B and see which, if either fares better.
In this scenario, it’s the agency’s vision against that of many armies. It can help to build the case against ‘muddling the message’ is my idea.
@CK: We often propose that. But the general response is: Fine. But YOU have to pay for production costs.
For TV or a big web project, that’s prohibitive. For print, it’s doable, but still costly.
Plus you’ve created an adversarial relationship and the Armies of “No” do not like to be proven wrong.
Hell to pay on your next project with them.
I definitely think that it can be helpful to seek outside perspective on creative. Sometimes we get too close to the project and are unable to see the flaws or possible shortcomings.
At the same time, I think it is imperative to have an approval structure in place that leaves the final decision up to someone within the proper function (i.e. a sales associate’s comments should not dictate the final decisions related to creative).
Basically, comments from various departments and individuals are welcome, but should not lead to a finite creative decision.
@Toad: I might have found a cost-effective middle ground to prove them wrong–and not do so “in public”. I’d like your take on the idea before running a post on it, anyhow.
@Ginny: Yes. If you show it to 10 people and they all have the same reaction, you may need to make adjustments. But why 10 people from the Army of “No”? Why not 10 consumers or 10 people from the middle ranks. You see, it’s tough to tell someone who thinks they’re Very Important (the legal dept., the product mgr) that their opinion is only being taken under advisement. These people are used to being listened to. The CEO needs to tell them that they need to listen to marketing.
@CK: Email me about it, or post on here- either is fine.
In my experience, a lot of people involved in the process believed that advertising is just a matter of I like/I don’t. And this is true in small local clients as well in large multinationals.That’s why I fully understand TT call to army. Testing, as suggested by CK, is unfortunately seen not always as a solution but a cost. And last the conservative approach from clients is driven most from fear: fear to lose the job, fear to innovate without success, etc.
I think this whole problem arises from a misconceptualisation of what advertising is.
From the point of view of the client business, making an ad is just another project, not fundamentally different from, say, developing a new product or constructing a supply chain.
It therefore gets carried out according to the types of processes and strategies generally considered by management gurus to be “best practice”. And one of those is consultation with multiple viewpoints.
From the point of view of someone watching/reading an ad, however, it’s not a project. It’s a cultural product in the same category as a book, a piece of music, or a painting (even if it’s not generally as interesting).
And by and large, the cultural products that are the most successful – even the inherently collaborative ones, like movies – are those that are born of a strong, single-minded authorial vision.
Excellent, excellent point, Cleaver.
We can see this at play in other areas too. Take design.
Apple products look great because Steve Jobs makes design a priority.
Microsoft… well, there’s that famous video of the iPod as designed by Microsoft: http://youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0
Toad,
Great topic and spot on.
gianandrea makes a good point too – for most people it’s about “I like this” which somehow extrapolates to, “I think this way so of course everyone else does.”
One good way to defuse an argument [where people are sticking to their guns as if life itself depended on their opinions being heard] is to simply say, “I’m telling you this not because I like the color orange, but because data tells us that more people like orange than purple. Personally, I’m not very partial to orange either.”
Sometimes that can help take the personalization out of the argument.
Great discussion. Isn’t it interesting how almost everyone you ask has an opinion on advertising? Most people without any background in marketing or advertising will eagerly share their opinions. That isn’t always the case with an HR or finance issue, but marketing is often open territory.
Elaine, that’s a great point. (As in: “I don’t presume to know more about plumbing than my plumber, or more about cars than my mechanic”). For some reason though this seems to be universal.
It may be because for a lot of people, the marketing and advertising aspect of running a business is by far the most “fun.” People get to be creative while they’re at it, and I’ve observed this trait many times with both clients and colleagues (There are few moments more priceless than spending hours taking a client through a design process, only to have a third person show up and offer an unqualified opinion with all the authority of the Great And Powerful Oz).
So I’ve found that the mechanic reminder is good for just about anyone. . . It’s nice to be able to gently remind people that [as in anything else] to be really good at something requires years of effort and training, or you can easily cause more damage than good.
Eden, I like your analogy. It takes a degree of finesse to remind people without them getting offended.
Elaine – I completely agree. It never fails to boggle my mind that every non-marketer I know feels that because they’re a consumer, they’re an expert on marketing.
We see this same problem every day – the most innocuous information sheets are being sent back for change after change after change (the boots look lonely, I don’t like that kind of font, why can’t you make this picture 2% bigger?).
Out of sheer desperation, we finally put a policy in place (signed by every exec up the food chain) that specified exactly what each department was supposed to approve (is the product accurately described, have we used imagery or wording that is controversial in the industry, etc.) and telling them that subjective comments were welcome, but would be implemented at the discretion of the marketing department.
It’s helping, but there’s always that meeting where the CEO shows it to a visiting auditor (sad but true) and he advised us to chuck the whole thing and do it his way.
I couldn’t agree more violently. I would point out, however, that your key concern — that vast committees of “commenters” make comments like “I just don’t like that photograph” — is, in my opinion, simply an indication that those commenters have been neither trained nor briefed. I have always considered myself lucky that I had a mentor who took the time, early in my careere, to TRAIN his organization on this very issue. He made it clear for every functional representative which issues and, just as important, at which time, they should comment. So lawyers commented on the legal ramifications, salesmen discussed the impact on customers and how they were going to present this positively to the customers, engineers discussed specs, etc. For my own part, I am now senior enough to not only mimic my long-ago mentor but to also insitute a rule at every creative review meeting: The word “like” is officially banned. Anyone who uses it will be invited out of this and all future meetings on creative. Morevoer, that person will still be held personally and fincnailly responsible for assuring the correctness of the issues for which his/her functional area has purview. People usually pay very focused attention to their area of experitse thereafter.