Truth, Lies and Advertising was recommended to me by Russell, as I wanted to get a better idea of how the advertising system worked, what planners do, and how research was used. It’s actually a fun read, but what it boils down to is that good advertising is often about luck, and good planners can push luck in the right direction. Sometimes.
I have a long standing bafflement about the advertising industry, in that they can never ever say to the client that the product is wrong. I guess it’s just not what ad agencies are meant to do, even if the research says otherwise. Coming from a product-meddling background, it feels like lipstick on a pig.
There are a lot of similarities between design and advertising, notably the treatment of real market feedback and the opinion of the client, and I think this book nails when and how to do proper user research. There’s also something useful about selling the idea to people who don’t really care about the creative process. It’s also crystal clear from this that you’re only as good as your client.
p44: “..If planning is a new business tool at all, I would argue that its greatest contribution is indirect, by helping the agency assemble a more impressive portfolio of results for its existing clients.” ... “‘the consumer opinion is the only one that matters’ (This is a phrase that reappears in.. the book. ... What both parties mean is that ‘consumer opinion matters when it endorses my own.’)”
I’ve never seen truly objective research, or a research agency say in big letters that the product sucks.
p50: “A planner’s job is to provide the key decision makers at both the agency and the client with all the information they require to make an intelligent decision. It’s not up to the planner to make that decision for them.” ... “The kiss of death for any planner, however, is to claim credit for [their] ideas if they find their way into the advertising. Some of the most satisfying experiences I have ever had … were … when I subtly suggested something to creatives, and next day they told me that they’d had the idea I suggested to them the day before. Of course I would never let on.”
This stuck for me as it’s often what happens to me, and I used to be a bit narked about it. Now I realise it’s a good thing.
p62: “The first reaction of many advertising … professionals on being asked a difficult question is to say, ‘let’s do some research’. ... Do we really need research at all? ... The agency and client might be able to answer it themselves, without recourse to research, using some combination of their own experience, intellect or instinct.”
Very similar to design – and I feel that a lot of design is even harder to get a reaction to (interaction design even more than product design). A good designer know when it feels right, and hopefully the ‘rightness’ is right for the users too.
p68: “a client … responsible for a chocolate-covered biscuit called Club … briefed the agency one day on a product improvement, the result of a new technology that allowed an extra half-mm of chocolate to be added all around the biscuit… He waxed lyrical about the technology … and talked of a response from the British public to this great advance that would be little short of life changing … He was abruptly pulled out of his fantasy by one of the agency planners, who said ‘John… it’s only a fucking chocolate biscuit’”
I’ve been known to utter something similar. Most people are so involved in their products, they can’t see the context in which it’s being sold or used. Jones always used to say that our diagrams always put the phone in the middle, when for most people it’s really not.
p77: “Behind that mirror, which is of course not a mirror at all, but a viewing window, an assortment of agency and client staff are eating M&Ms, making telephone calls, and making fun of the ugly respondents. From time to time, these jokes result in uproarious laughter that, believe me, can be heard through the glass by the respondents.”
Been there (done that). The book has changed my antithesis to focus groups slightly. It’s also argued that the planner should be conducting the market research, which I think is close to letting the designers in the room with the real people – which in my experience is most useful during concepting and initial design.
p110: “One aspect of any qualitative research project that is rarely spoken about is the need to experiment in the first one or two groups… It is thus important that a moderator has the latitude to deviate from a discussion guide… or to introduce a completely new idea if it seems that [they] may stimulate a more interesting conversation.”
The best researchers I’ve seen have done this – and collated the changes and got them to everyone before the second day of research.
p212: “Planners are much more likely than outsiders to be able to work with a creative team to implement findings from creative development research… A successful debrief on this type of research does not take place in one meeting and a document, but in a series of (usually informal) conversations that are obviously not possible if the moderator and creative work for different companies.”
Again, backs up the planners doing the research themselves. One beef I have with research agencies is the inevitable two or three slides where they try to suggest how to change the product or ways to mitigate the findings. They are, unanimously, wrong. They have no background to how the product got that way… I guess that backs up the idea that agencies shouldn’t meddle with the product.
p226: “‘You’ve gone too far.’ said [the client]. ‘You’ve gone too far’ said the focus groups… others were able to see beyond [the visuals] to the bigger idea that Simpson had been trying to communicate, and they loved what they saw. This campaign polarised people as much as any campaign we have ever exposed… I have come to believe that a campaign needs to polarize people if it is going to be effective. It has to elicit an emotional response… if people are going to notice it and think about it.”
This is true for advertising, but is it true for design? Do you want a notable product that creates media uproar, or one that sells 10 times as many that no-one talks about? Depends on the product, I think, and what the product is meant to do and appeal to.
Regarding p. 50, “there’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” I’ve tried to operate this way, with varying levels of success. =)
— Michal Migurski 11.12.07 #
..And what a fucking Club it is. Nice one, Chris.
...I subtly suggested something to creatives, and next day they told me that they’d had the idea I suggested to them the day before.
hah, sounds just like the usual client meeting/workshop. It’s just not planners who need to put their egos aside, but the creatives as well.. especially when dealing with physical products :)
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