Newsworthy

It is quite a common trick employed by the P.R. agencies to earn column inches for their clients by making a song and a dance about the launch of a new ad campaign, especially if it is of the ‘brand’ variety, and can be packaged with statements like “the move is designed to promote a new brand positioning with a Pan-African focus that will centralize and streamline operations across Africa”.

By way of an aside, I am wondering if someone at Ecobank’s agency once worked on KCB, the whole ‘To make a difference’/’making the difference’ thing being rather to close for comfort.

Whilst in general press release like this can be a rather lazy way for the PR guys to justify their retainer, the underlying logic of the exercise – that you need to get people talking about your latest ad campaign – is sound.

When you make an ad, and it goes out there into the world, one of the greatest and most satisfying results of your endeavors is to hear people say “Have you seen XYZ ad? It’s too deadly/wicked/imenijazz”. Truth be told ad people tend to live for the applause as much as anything else, so knowing that you’ve got a ‘hit’ on your hands is probably worth more than the salary that clocks in at the end of each month.

You’ll notice that when people talk about ads they tend to use very emotional language in relation to them: “I love/hate that ad!” in general if their feelings towards the ad don’t fall into one of these two categories it means that they are ‘feeling nothing’, which a good ad person will and should take as a slap across the face.

The emotional reaction generated by ads puts them in the same territory as other artistic forms like movies, books, music an TV shows. This should not be surprising as all these artforms are essentially forms of story-telling, where the emotions are manipulated and the mind engaged to carry the viewer/listener/reader on a journey from A to B via C, D and E.

Media guys (by which I mean planners/strategists) will always tell you that, at the end of the day, the most powerful media of the lot, by a long way, is word-of-mouth. The basic truth here is that if you can get people talking about your ad, to get them spreading the message (“It’s the one where the guy walks into a bar and there’s a donkey with a pink hat…”), then you are ¾ of the way home…

It is this need to generate a ‘buzz’ around your advert that makes dramatic technique so important to the communication process. Whilst there is often a lot of pressure on an agency to keep an ad ‘simple’, factual and to-the-point (read boring as…), the truth of the matter is that if you do not make an effort to ‘enliven’ the story that you are telling, you ad will almost certainly fall flat – like a book with no plot, a song with no melody and a movie with no point.

‘Creatives’ are often accused of wanting to be ‘creative’ for the sake of being ‘creative’. Whilst this is sometimes true, it is often times the result of the ‘creatives’ understanding that if they don’t do something to make their ad interesting and engaging, no one will pay any attention to it, no one will talk about it, and it won’t be very effective as a result – which means that it won’t sell.

(It occurs to me that if every ad we read in the papers, saw on TV, heard on the radio and drove past on the road ‘jazzed our lives’, Kenya would be a much nicer place to live in, but maybe I should keep such thoughts to myself…?)

It is not especially hard to ‘get creative’ with your ad. It’s just about thinking about the things that you can add to it that will bring a smile to your face (or an emotional/intellectual reaction of some form). Shooting a mum in the kitchen for a cooking oil brand? Why not dress her up with an Orie Rogo-Manduli pineapple head-dress? At least it will catch the eye… or why not have her talking on her mobile as she cooks? You’ll be implying that she has a life beyond the kitchen, as most mothers do. Or why not have her husband in the background fast asleep in an armchair with a newspaper covering his head, much like in my house? The point about these ‘creative touches’ is that they add value and interest to the communication. Many of the ads that we produce in Nairobi are very one-dimensional – mum, dad, kids, pack of orange juice/breakfast cereal/soda/rice/sausages/whatever – there are no layers to the stories that we are telling – is that a parrot in the background? Does the parrot talk? What does it say? Does it swear? Does it speak English, Kikuyu or Dholuo? Where can I get a parrot…?

No matter how you tell someone a story, you must remember that your story is actually happening inside that persons mind. Your words and pictures and sounds are being interpreted by that person’s imagination in a particular way.  Therefore as you tell a story you should try and feed your audiences imagination with as many cues and reference points and implications and question marks as is possible – for by so doing you make their imaginative experience so much more vivid.

At ad agencies we are great ones for choosing to ignore the impact of the work (accountability being the rudest word in advertising). We think that once the client has approved it and it has run, that is it. Given the wonders of the digital age it would be great if we could find a way to measure the ‘buzz’ that each of our ads create – likes on facebook, positive tags, re-tweets and so on.

If you are a true ad man or woman you will encourage the above, because the above is what passes for glory in our game (especially since awards were last held in Kenya when we were still a one party state – now we’re just a one agency state), and if it’s not all about glory, then what exactly is it all about?

And if you are ‘the client’ (da da daaaaaa…) please remember that the issue isn’t always to cram your ad so full of facts about whatever you’re selling that it’s like you’re forcing your customers to study for KCSE (8-4-4 has a lot to answer for).

The issue is just as much to ensure that you make your ad newsworthy, which means that it needs to be: funny/sad/sexy/stupid/silly/dramatic/deadly/cool/fresh/disruptive/provocative/evocative/beautifull/unique/moving/profound/refined/subtle/stunning/sincere/gritty/glamorous/deep/sentimental/stylish/hilarious/mind-blowing and all the other wonderful adjectives by which all true creatives live and breathe. The end.