Why Meaningful Brands Will Matter

[Jotting]

The job of an advertising agency is to create work that will move people to ultimately purchase a product and be loyal to the brand. Easily said, but to actually do it - tough. And that's the continuous struggle each advertising practitioner will encounter. So how does the agency do it?

Human Potential
Advertising is a people business in every aspect. People paid by people to create advertisements for people. And if the creators of advertisements are not well trained, advertisements created will not be effective, let alone inspiring.

The tools to creating great advertisements are all in place, it's the people who create them, who need to be trained.

Database Collecting

The first phase of this media project is understanding my target audience. And in order to understand what advertising agencies feel about training, I will need to first compile a database consisting of the below information :-

• Name of advertising agencies
• Contact person 
• Their position(s)
• Email

Searching for these information online will consume time, and only advertising agencies that are tech-savvy will be in this database (trust me, not all advertising agencies are tech-savvy. Some have terrible sense of interactive design, but I digress).

The advertising agencies will be from London (sheet 1) and Newcastle (sheet 2). This is because London is the advertising hub of United Kingdom and Newcastle is where I reside.

Here is the database of the advertising agencies in London and Newcastle.

The Game Plan

This project will be a very challenging one, because it is not about handling objects and technicalities anymore; it’s about handling people. Also, it’s because nobody in the advertising industry in UK knows 95% or Janet Lee for the matter, whereas Janet Lee is well known and respected in Malaysia. I would need to approach this first from the angle of understanding the internal processes of the local advertising industry before thinking about marketing this to them.


Phase 1 : Know Thy Target

This will perhaps be the longest and most challenging part of this project. I will need to research about the advertising industry through the below methods :-

1. Researching online and printed materials how the UK advertising industry works;
2. Try to gain access to a few practitioners who have undergone the IPA Excellence Diploma and speak to them regarding the programme and their experience; and
3. Try to gain access to the HR departments of a few advertising agencies regarding their efforts to train their staff.

The aim of this phase is to understand the UK advertising industry. Methods of contact will include making calls, emailing and perhaps occasional trips to the agencies. 

Some of the other things I will also need to look at are :-

1. What exactly does IPA Excellence Diploma teach? What topics do they cover? 
2. What do the graduates think about it? Based on some of their testimonials, they mentioned that their lives are being changed – why so? What exactly did IPA Excellence Diploma bring into their lives? 
3. What kinds of advertisements are currently being churned out in our local papers (the bare minimum)? 

Phase 2 : Strategise

Like every campaign, the advertising practitioner will always need to strategise and devise a game plan. Likewise, after doing sufficient research, I will need to strategise and build a strategy. Some of the questions I will need to answer are :

1. Why does the UK advertising industry need training?
2. Why is the IPA Excellence Diploma insufficient? Is my assumption about it being ineffective right or wrong? 
3. How to position 95% The Advertising Academy? 

Once this phase is done, a 9-point marketing strategy should be ready. The strategy will consist of :-

1. Marketing Objective
2. Advertising Objective
3. Target Audience
4. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
5. Consumer Benefit - physical benefit (if any) and/or emotional benefit (if any)
6. Support – details that support the above claims
7. Consumer Perception – before and after
8. Tone and Manner
9. Positioning Statement

Phase 3 : Idea Generation 

This is where I will brainstorm for ideas to introduce 95% to the advertising industries. Because I am marketing it to people who are in the business of bringing creativity to life and engaging people, my ideas will need to be up to par, if not better, to get their attention. 

As of this moment, I will not be able to ascertain what kind of ideas exactly will be produced. Hence, I can’t say for sure what exactly will the outcome of my project look like – I don’t know if I will write a script or produce a storyboard or develop a website. 

Once the idea is constructed and developed, I will proceed to the final phase – execution. 

Phase 4 – Execution

Depending on what the final idea is, I will try to execute it. However, I must stress that I have not been trained in design, writing copy or shooting a movie. Hence, should I decide to produce a 30-seconds advertisement, I will attempt to draw a storyboard to show the idea. Should I need to develop a website, I can give an idea about how the website would look like with either sketches or words. 

This is what I ask of my supervisor and examiner – that the scores be based on the thought process and the idea generated, instead of the final executed work as I’ve been trained in neither of the areas, and I doubt that I will have enough time to master any of the skills, as I will only know what skills I need after I am done with generating and developing ideas. 

Introduction

OVERVIEW

Having been exposed to the advertising industry in Malaysia, this is what I’ve learned : First, it’s a people business – it’s selling ideas that were created by people to people. Second, creativity is like a muscle. One can’t just will oneself to be creative; one has to train one’s creativity with discipline and perseverance. But here’s what makes it even more challenging for the Creatives – they are expected to churn out new, fresh and exciting ideas every day, but the time to replenish inspiration is simply not enough. How do they work under such pressure?

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has been conducting a course called “IPA Excellence Diploma” for advertising practitioners who have been in the industry for a few years. According to my research, they will be “reading something every day: a proscribed chapter of a book, article or similar. Then you’ve got a 2,000-word essay to write at the end of each module. Then a 7,000 thesis…”

But here’s my personal question, which is the basis of my project : Can reading and writing really help these practitioners shine and be able to generate unconventional, interactive and fresh ideas? If what they’re doing is exercising their minds to think rationally and write, what happens to the ‘creative workout’ they need every day to be able to constantly generate ideas that wow the world? Surely the thought process for generating advertising / marketing ideas would be very different from ‘how do I construct my 7,000 word thesis’!


THE IDEA

With that said, I want to develop an advertising campaign to introduce this Malaysian training agency “95% The Advertising Academy” to UK’s advertising industry.
95% The Advertising Academy is started by an award-winning Executive Creative Director, Janet Lee, who believes in the value of experiential training instead of textbook studies as done in institutes such as universities and colleges. She believes that people learn best by getting their hands dirty (experience). This is especially important for the advertising industry because everything done is hands-on, and must be new and innovative – which would mean that generated ideas will not be found in advertising award magazines and textbooks.
Having worked in 95%, experienced and facilitated in a few trainings, I can vouch for what Janet believes in.