Tahaab Rais, in the centre, with his team
Great creative work is effective because it’s creative. And the most effective work is effective because it is creative. Yet, the two are seen differently, even today, across the industry. Creatives only want to focus on and win "creative" awards. Strategists and clients are more keen to win "effectiveness" awards. This is ridiculous and archaic. Let’s stop seeing them differently.
They both need to exist together, because effectiveness, in our industry, is quite simply the impact of creativity. As a creative industry, we love art and creating that art. But art on a wall isn’t going to help with bottom-lines or growth. We need to sell that art. As a fan of tinkering around creating models of thinking, I’ve deconstructed effectiveness campaigns over the past 25 years and remodelled them into 52 archetypes. And across those archetypes, I’ve noticed there are some common ingredients:
- A deep problem that demands creativity and is enviable (“wish I could have the chance to solve that”).
- A human truth that resonates and is surprising.
- A goal that’s transformational for the brand in the category and/or the culture.
- An idea that moves people and is enviable too (“wish I’d done that” or “I’d have done that better!”).
- A great team effort to bring an idea to life.
- Execution at scale, following a well-defined, data-driven mapping.
- Results that matter that demonstrating impact on people, showing influence on culture, key brand attributes and on commercial growth.
Isn’t all that what creativity should be all about, versus being the preserve of fantastical case studies entered into award shows?
Speaking of awards shows, I’ve been on several “creative” festival juries where, at times, the results aren’t really questioned nor interrogated for context, and the focus remains on the idea alone believing results on face value. At times, work with weaker real-world impact gets rewarded, as a result. And I’ve also been on quite a few “effectiveness” award juries where, at times, the objectives, insight and results take precedence over the creativity and the brilliance of the execution. Work with weaker creativity gets rewarded, as a result.
If we ensured “award-winning” work was brilliant AND had real impact, it’d be a good step in the right direction. One simple way to achieve that is to have juries that have strategists and creatives across award shows. Balance the magic with a little logic and bring a little magic to the logic. Secondly, as an industry, we just need to get better at how we get the right problems and KPIs from brands and make sure those problems and KPIs are embedded into the brief, are addressed with the work we do, and are measured and monitored when the work’s out in the market. Not enough is done on all three fronts. Not as much as it should be.
Because truth be told, what makes creativity effective hasn’t changed and shouldn’t change, despite new emerging platforms coming up with all sorts of new things to measure. As an industry, effectiveness has always been about and should always be about the “impact metrics” i.e. creativity that positively impacts people, culture, the brand and the business.
It’s the specific measures under those metrics that have evolved - with more platforms that content is being created for, more platforms where the content earns organic expansion and the increasing ability for us to monitor and measure the consumer journey more accurately with improved tracking technologies, all enhanced even more so with artificial intelligence.
The agencies that I have led the strategy office for, both Publicis Groupe MENAT and McCann Worldgroup MENAT have been the #1 ranked agency and network in the MENA region since 2013 in the Effie Index, in the top 4 for all those years in the Global Effie Index (including #1 globally a few times), and #1 Globally in the WARC Effective 100 a few times too.
This is from an agency in the Middle East - a relatively “smaller” part of the world, globally. And I’m not sharing that to show off how good we are. I’m sharing that because it proves how changing an agency’s culture to being more focused on creativity that’s meaningful, hence effective, is important.
We’ve done the simple things well. For example, I’ve made it a mantra to think about the “effectiveness case study” when writing the brief. When we do that right, this little mindset shift helps give scale to the work. And that work wins in the real world and at award shows. We insist to put the connections plan in the brief. This helps make sure the work being executed is thought through to help achieve the objectives. We have a "fame brief" that delves into how to make work famous. We have the KPIs in our briefs, so it’s very clear what the work coming out from that brief is meant to achieve. We monitor every possible KPI under the four metrics I mentioned earlier – people, culture, brand, business.
These little changes have helped us on a process-level. And I hope they help anyone reading this too.
Then, on an industry-level, we need to have more clients ensure they have their KPIs set for themselves, for the short-term but also for the long-term, and to communicate those KPIs in their briefs. This will help ensure agencies know what their work needs to deliver against and serve as a reminder that we are in the business to help grow our client partners’ business.
It's important to make this a system and a culture. Because that influences behaviour. I’ve done so personally too. Beyond my day job, I also write and direct short films, included branded ones. While thinking of these films, I constantly keep the flter in mind: Will this be effective in delivering on what it needs to do for the brand or the topic it’s tackling? In every aspect of the process – be it the music, the sets, the cast, the colours, the sound design, the cinematography – that filter stays constant. It has helped create films that have, more importantly, delivered in the real world with real people, and have also gone on to win creative awards - and effectiveness ones.
So, as I started out by writing, great creative work is effective because it’s creative. And the most effective work is effective because it is creative. Let’s stop seeing them different.