What's to Be Done About Misaligned Briefs And a Broken Creative Process?

Good morning. Welcome to the latest episode of Inspiring Futures. We have quite a motley crew assembled this morning in the four corners of the planet myself and obviously in Brooklyn, New York, Mr. Jeremy Diamond from Oxford in the UK Peter Paul Van Rauer and Tom Noble who are in some kind of bunker system in Melbourne and Matt Davis up in northern part of Victoria, Australia, some Matt some kind of cabin Looks like anyway, so I'm gonna start with Jeremy Do you want to give us a quick introduction because what we are planning to do today is talk about briefs and ideas and Peter Paul and Matt have some research that they've done on both that they are gonna share and then we're gonna talk about the findings in perhaps ways in which some of the challenges that they've identified can be overcome so Jeremy, would you like to do a quick introduction? Yes, sure. I have you on and high listeners. Jeremy Diamond here friend of Edson long time Advertising guy I actually run a company called Distillery which is brand strategy agency based in New York and London We we do all sorts of strategy and insight work for clients often leading to briefs my background is actually in the advertising world With sarche tbw a m a can in London the moot in New York with ogle v in 2000 and have a particular interest in this topic because it's so critical and something we found from our working with our clients is that that translation of strategy into creative is such a pivotal juncture And so often doesn't actually go as well as you hope some really interested in this conversation Thanks Jeremy Tom Yes, welcome listeners. I'm an ex-cline of Edson The fact that we're still here on the on the same podcast Means we must have done something right of creating briefs or or presenting ideas over the years I'm ex widening Kennedy and from the early 90s for the the one of the OGs long time ago Jumped to Adidas Been in the car business with BMW and and and Jeep and many for about 10 or 15 years So I've seen a lot of briefs written a lot of briefs some of them were good some of them were horrible And and at least now I think you know in my advanced days I can tell the difference between the two so it's taking taking a while to figure that out Great did Paul introduction, please Yes, I'm an ex-AZ strategist recovering from nearly 20 years of helping brands all over the world writing briefs receiving briefs overseeing strategy teams When I was an AC strategist I had a particularly interesting effectiveness and I found that is a bit of a weapon when you want to Unlook bigger budgets and More interesting creative ideas and that resulted in fair amount of f's two grand f's and then I Guess I started a better briefs with Matt about over four years ago And so I'm now the gold founder of better briefs and recovering advertising strategist Thank you a bit of Matt I'm in a similar boat to Peter Paul so recovering advertising strategist I spent the first three months of my career in advertising back in the early 2000s in account service I quickly got moved on from that because I was useless at that so don't come to better briefs for account service That's for sure And And Peter Paul and I actually worked together about ten years ago and rekindled our Relationship and our passion for great briefs that lead to great work as as you said four years ago and it's It's just been it's been a bit of a wild ride for us who would have thought that such a specialized topic could open such a Huge kind of worms for so many clients. So yeah, it's really excited about this conversation actually Cool So, yeah, thanks everyone for for making this happen because there's a lot of All the logistics and we'd plan to do this a while ago Guys from better briefs of also you've also we've also had a conversation which probably seems like it was four years ago on the podcast so There is a sort of companion and this is in a way almost like a second Part two of the initial conversation that we had So the way we're gonna do it is to better briefs guys have two pieces of research We're gonna talk about why Why this research happened who commissioned it? And but most importantly what it learned and found We're gonna go through each piece of research And then we're gonna have a discussion about the findings with our group so How do you guys want to want to go through this and I might I might just interrupt with some questions as you go through it, but Let's go It's that let's start with the commissioning it was commissioned by ourselves. It was commissioned by frustration. It was born out of frustration to wheels of the U.S And I think madden and me had had enough There was a specific day that met at a really poor brief that landed on his desk that specific day and I think it must have been it must have been a bucket. I was pretty full and that last pretty was the last drop but I think a key An important thing to note is that hardly any research has been done only a topic on the topic of marketing briefs That's what we're gonna focus on for now the brief that goes from brand to agency It's also known as the client brief for the agency strategy over the agency creative brief but that's document What we think is probably the most important document that exchanges hands from brands into an agency had very lightly been researched So we're gonna just take you through the greatest it's over that Research that we've done largest and first global study into marketing briefs over 70 on and 30 respondents both sides represented agencies and marketers More than half of the sample had more than 15 years of experience So what we're gonna share with you is really reliable data and we want everybody all listeners to use it to start having better conversation about breaks. So one thing we found Is that marketers and agencies have a completely different definition of what a good brief looks like We found that 8 in 10 80% of marketers believe they're good at writing briefs One in 10 or 10% of agencies agree with that same statements So what's important here is this complete lack of alignment 8010 right And it's not who's right or who's wrong. It's just that both parties have a completely different idea on what a good brief looks like So the first thing to do there is to have a conversation but what actually defines a good brief The second thing we found is that Almost eight in 10 or 78% of marketers believe their briefs contain clear security direction Right a brief is the summary or should be the summary of all the thinking of Brian that's been doing It should be the end point. It shouldn't be the starting point should be that the the market here the brief writer I'll pick up a document to start writing now a lot of thinking should have gone before it Right so 78% of marketers believe that their briefs contain clear security direction When you ask the agency's they Say that only 5% of the briefs they receive contains clear security direction 5% That means that 95% of agencies are unclear on what the strategy is in a brief And if you're unclear on what the strategy is in a brief, how do you go from there? Matt over to you Yeah following up on that point on strategy what we also found was that lots of marketers admit to using the creative process to clarify their strategy So I think we were all for collaboration and and having a really robust conversation with our clients about what strategy They were putting into their briefs, but it's a really expensive way to use the credit process So six in 10 marketers admit that their strategy is ill-defined before it hits the agency So what that does is set off a really negative chain reaction of events And this is something that we've we've spent a lot of time coding open-ended responses and it may feel like a fairly intuitive negative chain reaction that is that is caused but lots of time effort money is going to waste So poor brief leads to really shallow creative thinking So if you're not clear on that strategy and you put that brief into the system We've got a whole bunch of agencies trying to interpret put the brief rather than trying to solve for it. So that's where the time is spent, right? So we might think these agencies are spending weeks and weeks concepting, but they're actually just trying to figure out what you want as a client. So we get a whole bunch of mediocre ideas back as a result. Ideas that we're not happy with as marketers, hey, agency, you haven't delivered on this. What's happened? What has been the stumbling block for you? Well, the strategy wasn't clear. So we go through additional rounds of concepting approvals. We spend more time, more money, more weeks down the drain. Energy levels and motivation just drops for the whole entire project. And we settle for less effective work. We just want stuff off our decks and into the market because we can't bear the sight of it anymore. So it's a really worrying thing that, as Peter Paul said, if we're not clear on what a good brief looks like, if the strategy is unclear, if we're using our agency for the wrong thing, then we're not going to get the work that we want. Last one. And then let's have a discussion. So we also wanted to put a number on what Paul breeze are costing the industry. So we asked both marketers and agencies to give us an estimate what percentage of the marketing budget is going to waste due to Paul breeze. And what came back was pretty shocking. So let's just imagine we're going to spend over $1 trillion US this year on ad spends. Over trillion. Over first year, we're going to break through trillion. Now, the sample is telling us that 33% is going to waste due to Paul breeze. Now, the critical listeners build we thinking, I want to hear what the percentage for marketers. So for marketers, it was 30% for agencies. It was 37%. It was super aligned between different countries as well. Maybe US listeners are interested in their number. What was the game that met 30%. They were bang on 33% in the UK. It was 23%. So Australia was 26%. So slightly over in the US, actually. Yeah. So US marketers, 33% of their budget is going to waste due to Paul breeze and Mr. Rekted work. But let's see opportunity here as well. There's a lot to be won when we get our breeze right. Yeah. So concerning, concerning, concerning findings, I'm going to ask a question of a, the gerum, let's start with Tom. What's your take on what you're hearing? Is it surprising you? Is it something doesn't surprise you? How do you react initially? It doesn't necessarily surprise me, but I think the problem starts before the creative brief or the advertising brief. And the real problem with a lot of companies, or subsidiaries, or whatever your organization is working with, there's no clear marketing plan. So they're actually writing briefs for specific things without having an understanding of what the overall plan, the strategic marketing plan is. So you don't know what problem you're trying to solve in the first place. You know you've got some money you need to run from an advertising point of view. You've got a new product that's going to be launched. Let me brief you on that. But what are the steps you need to get to before that to understand what the overall marketing plan is meant to deliver? So I think there's probably a little bit of better work to happen in that side of things. Before you could get to the creative work and start figuring out, you know, spending creative time. You know, the first job is to figure out what your marketing plan is and not ever-- and not you'd be surprised at how many companies don't have them. Yeah, that's really-- I mean, obviously, if you don't get the big a picture, you can't possibly put a briefs together. There's room to hide. There's room to hide, right? There's so much room to hide in a strategic document. We were talking about PowerPoints before. In a marketing plan, if it's 40, 50 pages, whatever format it is in, there's room to hide. When you write a brief there or when you write a good brief, there's no room to hide. The brief is a series of decisions. And if you have a maiden decision, poor brief writer, oh man, it's going to hurt. Yeah, it's kind of the limitless test, right? You know, it's a test to see if you're thinking it's solid. And obviously, what we're finding is that thinking isn't solid because the briefs are like strategic clarity. Jeremy, you're impression you'll thoughts on hearing. Yeah, I mean, I've read some of this stuff from your reports previously. I think what's most shocking is the fact that none of us are really shocked to hear this, because we've been in agencies or clients in York as Tom. And we've been there and we know what it's like. And the shocking thing is that after all these years, this is still happening. And I think what your work has done has kind of codified and crystallized. In a really clear and bold way that this problem exists. Ultimately, there's clearly lack of alignment and also lack of discipline on the part of clients and also agencies that's leading to this. To Tom's point, we shouldn't be using the-- at your point, we shouldn't be using the creative development process to solve for the strategy. And we should have a clear set of evaluation criteria, even template, before going into creative development. Ultimately, I think a lot of it-- and this is by way of trying to find an explanation, certainly not an excuse-- comes down to fear on the part of agencies and on the part of clients. Too often, I've seen agencies give clients what they think the client wants as opposed to what the client needs. And agencies inevitably get punished for this, even if in the short term, it feels like the right thing to do, because they're scared of losing the business. Equally, you see clients who would sooner have quantified good than take a chance on great. I think it was-- maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it was telling that you're better ideas report. And indeed, the comments you've made today seek at every stage to quantify everything, because that's the language people talk, not the language of ideas. But when it comes to evaluating briefs, developing strategies, and evaluating creative ideas, it's the language of ideas that count. So doesn't surprise me. I think the one-- the most uplifting comment there was the comment about the upside, because there's so much that could be done. Personally, I think I was just throwing quickly. I think agencies, to be honest, they kind of have themselves to blame in many ways, because I don't think they stand up to clients, so they don't bring enough rigor and discipline strategically. I mean, I was so amazed when I moved to the US from the UK about how Lucy Goese, the strategy development and the briefing process was. The UK was much better in that regard. I don't know how it is. Now, I think-- and this is my last comment-- I do think that we talk about creative ideas. I do think, and of course, I'm biased, because I'm a strategist, as we all are, in many or different ways. I think that there's a need to separate the strategic idea from the creative idea. And if there's no clear strategic idea in the brief, then your creative is screwed. To use a metaphor, it's like setting off in New York to sail to London, your half a degree off, and you end up in Lisbon. It's-- and I just think that there is a need for absolutely clear crystal-- clear, single-minded ideas, ideas, propositions, whatever you want to call it, in briefs. And I too often that doesn't exist. So some remarks, but there's obviously lots to talk about. I think that's great. I think one of those-- one of those I'd like to build on, because back when I was a junior and starting out, the world was very, very different. Both Jeremy and I worked in McCann, but at different time periods, we had our client logos were literally bricks in the wall in the lobby. We had long, long-term, decades-long relationships with clients. And the teams that worked on that client business worked in that year and year out. And I mean, I worked on-- my first account I worked on was Black and Decker, Power Tools. And I remember my head of client service on that business. We literally have one and a half hour long status meetings, which were reports back from his previous dialogues, often two hour dialogues with his client. We knew that business inside and out, because we were on it on a regular regular basis. Now, agencies, again, handed briefs on a project. Procurement, DERDA, DER have agreed to a three-month project. You have won a pitch for a project. And surely the transformation of the agents client relationship has impacted this. When you're in a cooots with your client and when you have such a strong relationship because you can almost finish each other's sentences, that gets to better work. You never get about, you don't really get a bad brief out of that because you work together on them. Now we've really broken these two pieces apart and you get and handed a short-term assignment and I think this is, I mean, there have always been issues, but I think these issues have been compounded by the stated play and the relationships that exist between agencies and clients nowadays. I'm throwing you at anyone. I think having worked at Widen's on Nike, you'd walk into a meeting and you weren't sure who was on the Nike side and who was on the agency side. There was such a crossover of cultures maybe not be exactly the right word, but you know, you were an athlete, you understood athletes, your client was an athlete, then he stood athletes and you spoke the same language and you had 20 years or 30 years of experience working on the business so you could push back. Yeah, I agree with, sorry, I was just going to make one brief comment. It's how I agree with that, though I think there is a contrary being devil's advocate, a contrary perspective. Of course, there are examples of, you know, like you say Tom, like absolutely seamless relationships between client and agency and coming back to my point before about fear, you know, there's a saying that clients get the advertising they deserve. I do think having confidence that this is a client that wants to do great work, I think is so important. On the other hand, I have seen situations where agencies have retainer relationships with clients and live so in fear of losing that business because it would hit the agency so hard that they really end up delivering the client exactly what they want as opposed to what they need. And sometimes I think the freedom of projects and knowing you live or die by the success of what you do, I would like to think can on occasion push people to be bolder. I actually saw the best and worst of it the first, at the very beginning of my career when I was at Sarge's in London and I worked on PNG and I saw the best of it in the sense that PNG were so rigorous and disciplined in the briefing and in the evaluation criteria. And I went on PNG copy evaluation courses and I still find it useful even these days. On the other hand, it was felt on the agency side that expectations of creative what the client was willing to buy was so low that there was essentially a PNG ghetto in the agency whereby, you know, you know, groundfully think and Jeremy Clark would go into all the sexy work for, you know, BA and other clients and beds and the hedges or silk cart rather and these kinds of things. I'm kidding frances and his team would run the PNG side. But I don't think it's necessary, I'm not sure it's necessary that the kind of relationship, I think the kind of collaborativeness you're describing is essential. I'm not sure about the whether that's still not possible within more of a project, both space relationship. Thank you, sir earlier, Jeremy, where leadership from the agency side is important. Our agency is willing to lead their clients into interesting places and that doesn't have to be the tenure of a lasting relationship that could be by reputation, by runs on the board, by work that they've just produced and so how do you want some of this as well. So we work with a lot of clients who we ask them what their creative ambition is for their for their marketing for their brand. But really that should be a conversation that's had with their agency and a strong agency who's helping them set that creative ambition. You think about their debty b's and McDonald's of this this world and the debty b's and averses of this world and the leadership that debty b was able to take in those relationships and understand, hey, we know creativity will take you to those creative places but we have to have buying that this is the method. So I'm not sure marketers are necessarily buying into agency's method of getting to great creative work. Do agencies still have the same strong method that they used to have? Is there their same leadership? I think it's yeah, it's a situation that we describe I think. Yeah. I think the relationship needs to be redefined almost. It's like nowadays it's when you think about human relationship. Let's just take between two married couple, right? And they're almost at the end of their lives and they know each other inside out. They hardly have any sex anymore and everything is nice and safe and everything is nice and warm. That's the start when we go on this journey to come up with great creative ideas and but they don't start safe like oh we don't know each other that well and there is a favorite of a soon knowledge but where we need to breeze in our twenties in our firties when we just experiment stuff and do we shit and do some unexpected trials and see what happens without just having all these trust issues and go out of our safe space in our and that's psychologically extremely hard but we need to do more of it because I was just thinking what why do you go where you go a bunch of jumping you hand over your money and five minutes later you're hanging on a court jumping towards your own death and you trust that expert that court is right but that trust is not the anymore in ages anyway and a friend. Any other thoughts? Well I was just gonna say and I don't know I know Tom hasn't jumped in on this so I don't want to kind of interrupt if he wants to go but I'll jump. Do you want to go next Tom and I'll know. No no you're going to go ahead. So let me let me just want to kind of briefly echo these points particularly I think what you said Matt and Tom earlier which is about the conversation that really needs to happen before you even get to a creative brief and before you get to the creative development and I personally you know having been in ages is like mechanical and ogle v I personally my big believer in structure and discipline I reject this idea that you know you know that some people in ages seem to have that you know the only rules there's no rules you know I think it was ogle v who said give me the freedom of a tight brief you know the um but I think that there needs to be conversations that happen before you even get into creative development I mean just thinking about this prior to this call you know there's never I don't think I've ever seen a conversation on how advertising works or how we expect how advertising to work if you go back to what Mike ordered like many years ago when he set up his company you know I think what was you know before then you just had me were brown etc and everything went into the same meat grinder um what Mike Hall said he I think he was the first person at least to come out and say or at least be recognised for saying it's different advertising works in different ways you know this advertising works might be through persuasion through building um you know shared values and empathy and all sorts of things um this was the problem we had with P&G you know it was great in many ways but bad in other ways because there was an assumption all advertising works a simple rational persuasion kind of model so I think there needs to be a conversation early in a relationship about how advertising works how we expect the advertising in this particular situation to work what kind of advertising we're looking for what kind of what does a brief look like um you know shouldn't be more than one page aha but it shouldn't be more than one page you know how we got to use that page usually you ideally with some fairly big point point size and then what are the evaluation criteria because if you have a brief that everyone's aligned or do you have a valuation criteria that everyone's aligned based on alignment around the kind of advertising we're looking to create and how we expect it to work there's then there's a lot less fapping around and subjectivity when it comes to evaluating the work yeah I think there's a lot going going back to sort of the marketing plan side of things the most important thing from a brief from from my perspective has always been what's the problem we're trying to solve and are we agreed on that what that problem is if you're not agreed on what the problem is it doesn't matter how good your creative brief is you're you're gonna find misalignment at at at some point and um you know having either having a client that really understands what the ratio is or having strategy people who understand the business and I think there's a there's strategy people that understand creative and communications and then there's strategy people who understand how business how the business works and those aren't always in sync and those skills are somewhat sometimes missing from an agency point of view so you haven't had that robust what are we really trying to solve discussion before you get to right what's the brief and what do we want to do from you know is it is an advertising that's the problem is it you know what what is the problem you know it doesn't have to be an prioritizing ideas, specifically to solve a problem. You can use ideas in other areas. - And maybe for the listeners on the podcast, make sure when you receive a brief or when you write a brief or when somebody asks you to write a brief, the mark can be from brand two agency, make sure everybody's clear what the purposes of the brief. Why is this brief being written? If you receive a brief, just ask that question straight out. The brief should tell you, but if it's not clear, ask your client. What is, why have we written this brief, what are we trying to solve for? And the same when you're a mid-level marketer, and a senior asks you to write a brief, for what for? Yeah, we need to sell more stuff. Yeah, there's the business reason. We need to always do that. How can communication help you sell more stuff? Why aren't we selling more stuff? What is holding on spec exactly what you're saying? And that's what we see go wrong, so often with our clients. And it's, you can't just brief them plates because there's many places where you can put it. You can put it in a problem or opportunity books or the challenge books, but it's also how you set up the objectives and the picture of success because that should capture it. Mm, yeah. Do you think now we should switch to the, just unconscious of time, looking about the second piece of research that you guys did? But there we go. More bad news, don't you worry. Yeah, you go. Can I just throw in one very quick comment, Ed, in case it doesn't fit into the next part of this conversation, which is, I realize this is a debate, could be a debate in and of itself, but I would say the most important element of the brief is the idea. What is the idea? What is the idea that we need to see didn't people's heads have the ability to drive a brazilian consideration of our clients brands? Garbage in, garbage out. If there's no idea in the brief, then you're not going to have an idea in your ad. John Hegerty, apparently said, I didn't work with him, my partner did. John Hegerty said, "If the planner can write a bad ad, the creative can write a good ad." Another way of looking at it is if you take the core idea from the brief, put it on a billboard with a pack shot or some image, does it in itself drive a brazilian consideration? Of course, the creatives can make it sing and dance. But if you don't have an idea in the brief, you're not going to have an idea. Or you're at least you're not going to have a relevant, compelling, effective idea in your creative? Right. Totally agree. Let's move on to the next part of the discussion around the other research project you did, which was really about concepting idea development, and evaluation, which I think is a natural follow-on to what we've just been talking about. - So after we did the Better Priest project, we did the Better Ideas project, only launched a couple of months ago. It's on the state of ID evaluation. So after a brief goes into the agency, they do their wonderful work, which you'll talk about in a second. But then, ID has come back, and we wanted to capture the state, how are these are being assessed as we prefer to say, or how they're being evaluated by marketees and by agencies and areas of improvement around that topic. Okay, first thing we found is that, both marketees and agencies admit that most creative work does not stand out. 54% over half of the marketees themselves and 75% of agencies admit that most creative work does not stand out. If creative work does not stand out, if it washes over you, if people ignore it, how is it gonna do all the rest of the wonderful stuff we needed to do? It won't penetrate your mind, it won't shift your perception, it won't get you to think differently, it won't get you to re-apprise to use Jeremy's words, but it doesn't get you to re-apprise a brand to our product, and it won't influence your behavior, and therefore it will not return on investment. But we admit as an industry that most creative work does not stand out, which is a massive issue. We also found, that as an industry, we don't feel proud about the majority of the work we put into the world. So we asked marketees and agencies to estimate what percentage of the work they have been involved with across their entire careers that they felt proud of. Marketees only feel proud of one third, just over one third, 36% of the work they've been involved with. That number drops to 26% for agencies. Now, having purpose and being proud about your work you do is relevant in any industry. So these numbers were a bit of a shock to us. We're sharing it to have a better conversation of what good work looks like, because the current state of it is no problem. If I was making furniture and I was only proud of 26% of the tables I made, it'd be a pretty bad way. So there are things that are underpinning this. So worth it doesn't stand out, that we're not proud of feedback and how we feedback on ideas is really important. So when you ask marketers whether they think they provide clear and constructive feedback, only 52% of them say that they do. So only half of marketers are giving feedback to agencies, going yep, that's absolutely clear and constructive. The rest is misdirecting agencies and sending them down rabbit holes that they shouldn't be looking for answers. Goes hand in hand with the approvals process. When we ask people to describe, use words to describe the current approvals process when it comes to getting ideas signed off through businesses inconsistent, slow, subjective, painful. They were the four words that we got back from a sample of over a thousand people. Again, creativity and getting to great ideas is yes, it may feel like a burden, it may feel like a labor of love, but those words are more akin to putting in tax returns or going to the dentist and dealing with something that is wonderful as creativity. The other thing that we're seeing is that evaluation criteria, frameworks, tools, ways to evaluate the work, what are we holding up, what is this idea meant to be doing? Only 10% of all organizations have that in place. So you mentioned the PNGs, you mentioned the unit levers, the Diasios of this world have criteria in place where they can assess the work when it shows up. That is a sophisticated way to look at creativity. Creativity doesn't just happen. You need to put guard rails around it. There needs to be something to prop it up to help you understand what you're looking for really. There needs to be something that defines a creative ambition, because otherwise, if you're not aligned as a client and as an agency or what the creative ambition is, or what type of idea you're looking for, things get really, really messy when our Dias show up and you need to decide which one is right and which one's wrong. So the other thing you guys found was the multiple rounds problem, right? Yep, thanks for the prompt. So we wanted to know how many rounds on average it takes to for an idea to get signed off. Some people call this the rework rate. Some people call this the amount of revisions. And what we found is that it didn't take one. It didn't take two. It didn't take three. It didn't take four, but it took, it takes on average five rounds for an idea to get signed off. And marketers and agencies, all over the world, all the major advertising countries were very, very much aligned on this. Now, the most worrying fact here is that this number seems to have drastically increased over the last 15 years. In the UK, it was free. The last time it was measured 18 years ago or so. So that is really, really concerning that it takes on average five rounds. Because how do you feel off the round number three that you have to rework stuff, right? Motivational levels drop as Matt was saying. It's something that you just wanted over your desk and you don't care anymore. So it's been more time getting to less good work. So. But I guess the other question is, what are the rounds and what level of work are you showing at each of the rounds? Are you bringing people along the process with you to get to ideas? I tended to like to work with multiple ideas in a room that we sort of early in the process to sort of say, that feels okay, that doesn't, that feels all right. You hear the two or three areas to explore and move on from there as opposed to coming back with completed work. Every, you know, you're bringing your child to the meeting and you're presenting your child and the kids two years old. You don't want to tell the kids ugly, but the kids ugly. If you would have started before that, when it was still a baby and couldn't understand what you were saying, you had more opportunity to mold and shape where those ideas go. So there's a lot to do with how work is presented and when work is presented, I think that drives the longer period to get approvals. I mean, the other thing you also got to remember is, while you're presenting to the people in that room, people in that room are always thinking about how do I sell this to my boss or my boss's boss. And I think one thing the agency is probably not fantastic at is understanding that hierarchy and understanding how to sell those ideas up the chain in that meeting with the mid-level or or first level of approval. There's two issues there. We've got findings that agencies aren't great at presenting ideas, but when we all look back at the great pieces of combs from the last 30, 40 years and you start to really dig what happened there, it's usually a brave marketer that ignores or navigates a very difficult situation and says, yes, that's what we're making. I don't care what the rest of you says. This is what we're making. That's a bit tricky because it's so easy for us all to have an opinion on an idea, but it doesn't mean that all those opinions that are slowly killing right ideas are validated or constructive or helpful. I think it's also hard for agencies to present work as opposed to ideas. If you start with the idea, here's what we're trying to do. You can work that idea in lots of different ways. If you're focusing on the work first, you're kind of pigeonholing yourself into a style or execution that may or may not be right for a great idea that's in that execution. Yeah. I think what's really interesting to me is that when you go through both pieces of research that you zoom out, you just see a really broken process that really goes back to not getting the brief right. My question here is, as we're all strategists, where is the culpability? If these numbers are as bad as you say they are, what are strategists doing or what are they not doing here? This is kind of what they're supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be ensuring that there's great briefs that lead to great work that stands out in the marketplace that performs. It doesn't seem like a lot of that is happening. From a disciplined point of view, strategists are supposed to be there to help ensure that this doesn't happen. I've seen countless decks where strategists have argued that they're there to save time. They're there to stop the five rounds. If you get the brief right, you cut that down. I don't know. We don't want to point our fingers out ourselves, but it seems like an obvious question to me. What's going wrong with strategy as a discipline? OK, fine. Beckett, you-- I think there's a little strategy that don't understand strategy. I think there's two types of strategists. I always like explain it to the strategists. I've raised, and I was one of the very few to actually hire baby strategists and build them up from the ground up. And I'm very proud of where they have all ended up with, where they ended up. And there's two types of strategists. There's the type that's simplify and guide. And there's the type that confuses. And you can recognize them. You can recognize the strategies that confuse, because they will be quoting Nietzsche, and they will be playing swan lake when they are briefing the equators or talking to the client and talking about all kinds of semi-interesting stuff that sounds really complex and intellectual, but they're actually not helping the process at all. And then there is the type that simplifies, because that's what strategy is. Strategy is a simplification of a choice that shows the direction for me. And unfortunately, when I look in strategy 20 years ago, and when I look today, there is still a lot of us that confuse the hell out of our clients. So sorry to-- yeah, let's start with that. Yeah. I mean, that's a good observation. Any other thoughts? Because it just seems to me like there's a role here that has been built up over the past 40 plus years that's supposed to be embedded, that's supposed to ensure that this stuff doesn't happen. So that's to me the blinding truth that comes out of this. Is that what's happened to that discipline that means that this has got worse rather than better? One thing I have noticed is there's a lot more people with strategy in their title than I've ever seen before. That's just true. And I'm not exactly sure what they do all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I-- you know, completely agree with everything that's been said. I mean, our business is called Distillery. The reason is if you can't write it strategy on a post in, though. I mean, one of the little ones, not a flip chart one, then there's a problem. I mean, we like quoting the UK, the British creative director Dave Trot, who described his advertising as a message written on the side of a brick thrown through the window of a consumer. And too often-- and I like the metaphor because people get it. If you can't take a thick sharp hit, write your message. Your main idea or proposition, whatever you call it, on the side of a brick, then there's a problem. The job of the creatives is to get that brick through the window. And so I think that there is a lack of strategic discipline in agencies, echoing Peter Paul's point about folks talking to each and playing swan like. I think there's also a lack of leadership period in agencies, as we talked about earlier, and a willingness to stand up for the client. So I mean, I've always defined account management as the art of persuading a client that what they need is also what they want. And an offer that doesn't-- and too often, I think that doesn't happen. I think that agencies are too lax in judging creative work, making sure it's really good before it's-- and by good, I mean, right, as well as good before it goes to the client. Often really good, genuinely good ideas. I wouldn't say they sail through the system, but to some extent they sell themselves. I mean, I think it's what more asarchie wants referred to as a Mona Lisa theory, which is something's good enough. Everybody sees the beauty in it. They don't need much persuading. Although this doesn't necessarily help, and I've got mixed views on this, I think it is worth thinking about, and it would be interesting-- of the role of creatives in this, and it would be interesting to have a conversation. One of the reasons I left the agency world was because I felt that planning was the support act. You know, where the unknown local band who plays before Bruce Springsteen or AC DC come on. And the creatives I was taught from the very beginning are the geese that lay the gold necks. Personally, I think that really creative focus strategic thinking can add value way beyond the ads. It should drive it's the lens to which define every aspect of the brand experience, yet too often the strategy is only as good as the creative director says it is. Now, the paradox there is, if I was going to give you a list of great advertising strategists, it will probably start with people like Bill Bernbach, David Ogelvy, Leo Benet. The point is that there was no shortage of good, great strategy before planning existed. But I think somehow, without being too heretical, the expansion of the planning role of supposedly taking the strategic responsibility away from creatives just gives them freedom to do whatever they want to do. It also leaves a kind of a really not fully empowered strategic function in agencies. I do think an interesting question, which may be another podcast, is from a creative perspective how much freedom should they be given strategically. Because I suspect that there's a lack of alignment there. But I do think that there's some internal dysfunction within agencies that contribute to this. I think-- You go, Ed. I'm conscious of time because I want to stick to an hour. So I want to turn the corner here, which is, what do we do about it? What's the construct-- what's the construct-- what is some constructive suggestions to write the ship that seems to be sinking? Yeah. I wanted to be a little more-- a little more saying. To almost talk about partnership in the beginning. And I think how you can be most useful as a strategist is the-- really understands how your client makes money. And what key challenges your client faces from a communications perspective. And if you can start to link making the money to the communication challenges that the client is facing, partner with that client and set up the basics, the foundations of the brief together. And we're all four partnerships. Like brief writing is a team sport. Maybe deciding on really big ideas should be a dictator, but brief writing is a team sport that we encourage. Yes, the market is should be making most of the decisions, but there's no reason why the agency can help shape a brief and find a challenge. There will be my tip. Yeah, other constructive move forward thoughts. Don't show our way from tough conversations. I think is from an agency perspective and client's key issue in order. The person who signs off the brief should be signing off the idea. And that does not happen enough. Yeah, I think that's a fairly assessment. I think the other thing is having been on the client side for a long time and knowing sort of the level of some people that sort of are presented to elevating creative presentation to a through an important meeting as opposed to just another meeting we've got to get through to get to get this thing, the sushi train out the door. They're having the right environment to present an idea and having people calm and relaxed and focusing only on one thing at a time. It's really hard to evaluate and get it by and on ideas when you're thinking about 14 other things and your phone's going. There's some disciplines in the process of idea, approval or presentation that probably could be fixed. Certainly on a client side. But the agency, I just remember being told, your job is to make sure the environment is right for us to sell this work. So if client 3 is not available or is going to dial in from a car when we're presenting creative work that's bullshit, everybody needs to be there. This is what we do. This is really interesting point. I was last week in a pitch where half participants from the client side will remote and half were in the room, which is common. One thing to help just to build on home. One thing to help for the listeners on the call is recap the brief. Make sure you're aligned which brief is going to be guiding the creative work. But spend the first 10 minutes recapping the brief because it will force the client to really zoom in on what's to come. The client is in all kinds of things. The market is of course busy agendas that have got so many other things to do. If you recap the brief in the beginning, it really forces everyone to zoom in. Yes, quite. I would, if I could just jump in before we wrap. I mean, I think that so echoing Peter Paul's point, I think more structured and disciplined to the process, thinking about how is advertising going to work to solve this problem? What are the key elements of the brief and what are the evaluation criteria before people see work? Secondly, I do think that, you know, I think that to Tom's point, the client nurturing a trusting relationship where there is an openness to greatness within the client agency relationship. I think he's key. I said before clients and the sets get the agents, get the advertising they deserve. It's enough to say, it's not enough to say, well, you want to inspire our agencies. I think that agencies will put as good creatives on it, as put as much if ever into it as they think the client's going to be responsive to. Now, I think the third thing is, and I think it's a bit of an elephant in the room during this conversation is about testing because the reality is if you can show some numbers to senior clients and say the evidence is this is going to deliver. But then I think that that helps get it through the system rather than just trust me on this. And I do think that a lot of testing methodologies are still really stone age. And I think that, you know, whether it's more of a system one type approach or something that actually reflects the deeper understanding of how advertising works can be a great ally in selling and buying great work. Very cool. Any final closing recommendations or thoughts? Yes. Great. We did these two projects to help all you listeners have better conversations with your brands and with your agencies. That's what it's for. So maybe it's not the, maybe it's not the best thing to say to your client, you're shit at writing briefs, you don't have any criteria in place. That's what our research does. It shows that these are, there are global issues happening everywhere. Use it as a conversation starter. Hey, this is happening on the global level. Ha, ha, ha, look at the lack of alignment. Now, shall we talk about our relationship? What can we do better? It's so far in the blow. I don't think there's one way to do this because every client has a different set of structure, different hierarchy of who needs to see what, when and who can sign off on work and who's interested in work and who has the capability to evaluate it. Because there's a lot of people in that room who are shit scared about commenting on creative because that's not what their background is. Which is why the digital world is so much easier to present to because you run the numbers, you get a test, you have a solution. But evaluating ideas is different and it also goes to what type of people that you hire. There's a couple of questions I always ask in an interview with an account person or a marketing person, which is what's your favorite movie? Tell me a joke. And what do you watch it on television right now? You want to see what sort of their cultural IQ is and the people who can talk about that stuff tend to be able to be better at evaluating creative, at least in my opinion. And I would also, I don't use your creative development process to solve your strategy. Get absolute clarity and alignment on that before you go into creative development process. Make sure you can write it in a thick sharpie on the side of that brick. Then the creatives can get it through the window. Right. Thank you all so much. That was fantastic. I'm sure we could have gone for a lot longer. I appreciate you guys taking the time. I'm going to