The freedom of a tight brief

mediacommunicationsbrands
Written By Tom Darlington
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief”
— David Ogilvy
“Dr Caneel Joyce conducted a number of studies, both in the lab and with 43 new product development teams, to test the effect of choice on the creative process. Previous studies showed that giving people too much choice limits creativity, just as giving them no choice at all does....just enough constraint incites us to explore situations in new places and new ways”
— Adam Morgan and Mark Barden in A Beautiful Constraint

A new campaign from Specsavers launched in the UK yesterday. It has been immediately filed under ‘stuff I wish I’d done’.

Showing up in standard spots and space in TV and Video, the campaign also includes a series of non-standard, more creative placements in national press, outdoor and TV continuity that serve to accentuate the brand message and create some proper cut through. The idea has also been flexed to incorporate the retailers ear care service (in the second video above).

At the risk of overstating it - the campaign is joyous - it brought a series of big smiles to my face as I saw it play out across the launch day ( and it provided some much needed levity against the backdrop of current affairs). It’s a case study in the impact that you can realise when you seek to create harmony between a brand idea, what a brand says and where and how it chooses to say these things. A case study in the power of integration. From a media perspective it’s a important reminder of the fact media works not only as a means of transmitting an explicit message, but also functions as the body language of a brand, communicating an idea through specific and selective choices about formats and placement, which serve to act as a demonstration or performance of a brand or campaigns core idea.

In Hitmakers Derek Thompson discusses Raymond Loewe’s concept of MAYA - most advanced, yet acceptable - an idea based on the notion that “people gravitate toward products that are bold, yet instantly comprehensible” (Thompson, 2017, p.47). One of the reasons this activity lands so well is because we’ve seen versions of it before. On the one hand it is familiar, almost comforting. Yet there is novelty too in the form of new articulations and new media placements. It is this combination of the novel and the familiar which makes it so powerful.

Central to realising the potential of the MAYA effect is the brief itself.

Specsavers have stuck with the same ‘should have gone to Specsavers’ platform for 20 years. The decision to iterate from this platform, rather than start afresh, is a core part of what gives this work its potency. From a practical perspective, placing the long-running brand platform at the heart of the brief forces a constraint upon the people working on it. “Constraints have a bad rap. Constraint is, by definition, a negative thing. Its imposition prevents us from acting as we would like to, because it restricts us in some important way” (Morgan & Barden, 2015, p.2). But, looked at another way constraints are good. As Ogilvy says, the best briefs are the ones which contain a specificity to them. Constraints provide a structure and that indicate what good looks like.

The key question in answering briefs like this is less “what do we do?” and more “how do we show up?” and “how do we make this feel new?”. The emphasis is less on strategy, instead people are freed up to focus their time and efforts on execution.

In adding constraint, briefs like this actually liberate those responding to the question to be more creative. Unfortunately, these briefs are all too rare - and striking a balance between no direction whatsoever (you could do anything?!) and overly specific (this is what you have to give us!) is an incredibly fine line indeed, one which many struggle to navigate.

Snickers is another good example of a brand which employs this strategy - the constraint being the brands You’re not you when you’re hungry platform. A singular, consistent idea with hard edges, that stimulates people to think about new and interesting ways to iterate and innovate in execution. The brand manages to take this thought into new and interesting spaces time and time again, as the videos below demonstrate (Katie Price tweeting about Quantitative Easing is a personal favourite!)

What these examples show us is clear: there is huge value in consistency and there is huge value in the constraint this consistency forces upon the creative process.In an industry that is notorious for ‘short-termism’, this is a timely reminder that the people making the ads often get bored of ideas long before consumers do. From a consumer perspective, this consistent ‘constraint’ allows the work to land with greater impact. The combination of novelty and familiarity is powerful in communicating to people. For those responsible for the work itself, the constraint is an enhancing component of the question they are faced with. People are liberated - they are able to explore new and innovative routes to market by virtue of the rules in place, they are given freedom by virtue of the ‘tight brief’.

Bibliography

Morgan, A., & Barden, P. (2015). A Beautiful Constraint. New Jersey: Wiley.

Thompson, D. (2017). Hitmakers . London: Penguin.

Tom Darlington
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