Presenting our creative proposals (notes from mentoring new planners, part 7)

26 November 2012

My day-job requires me to mentor new planners. I usually summarize the sessions on a note and post it here as an installment of the “planning communication strategy for beginners” series. I hope one day this series can be published as a textbook, both in Indonesian and English.

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Letter of rejection from Museum of Modern Art to Andy Warhol, 1956

Few months ago, I came across a rather depressing article about why creative ideas often get rejected, even though we crave for creativity. The article is based from an academic paper that reports the finding from two experimental studies. I highlight the most relevant ones for this post:

Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable
People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical —tried and true.

Proposing a creative or break-through idea is tough everywhere, and now we have scientific evidence for it. But this should not become the excuse of communication agencies to stop pushing the creative boundary. In fact, this only puts a greater urgency for agencies to improve their skills to sell and defend their creative proposals.

Obviously, planners and strategists should also bear this responsibility. We are expected to convince clients that the creative idea being proposed by the agency is based from rigorous thinking and solid data, and has a big potency to solve the clients’ specific problems.

Being able to explain the idea we want to sell clearly and briefly is the essential first step (discussed here), but it’s not enough. We have to package this idea into a persuasive short presentation.

(Yes, “short” needs to be emphasised because firstly, clients’ attention span is always limited. Secondly, agency’s work is rarely if ever the most important part of their jobs).

I have written a short e-book on how to write the content of persuasive presentations (you can download it for free, here). It’s not specifically written for the context of agency’s creative proposal presentations to clients, but the same principles and steps apply.

I would like to highlight three principles:

We present to convey one key message. This key message must be about why or how our proposal is the best option to solve the client’s specific problem.
Presentations should adopt the classic story structure. In other words, we should structure our presentation like a story. Human beings are hardwired to pay attention to and remember stories.
Using slide-maker software (PowerPoint or Keynote) should be the last thing you do when writing presentation content. You will save a tremendous amount of time and energy if you plan the content in analog. Planning the content in analog also helps you to focus.

I will elaborate more on the classic story structure. In the classic story structure, a story is broken down into 3 acts:

Act 1 introduces when and where the story takes place, and who the protagonist is (or protagonists are). Then an incidence happens, and this gives the protagonist a challenge.
Act 2 is about the trials and tribulations the protagonist has to overcome to complete the challenge.
Act 3 is where we find out if the protagonist succeeds or fails to complete the challenge. This is about climax and resolution.

Let’s adopt this structure into the context of agency’s creative proposal presentation.

Act 1

The key to persuasive presentation is that it focuses on the audience, not the presenter. It’s about “what the audience should remember, feel, or do”, not about “what the presenter should say or show” (presentation is a form of communication so of course the basic principles of communication planning apply).

This is why Act 1 should frame the audience as the protagonist. In Act 1 we remind them about their situation and challenge. If we start this way, we start with something they agree on, and this is always a recommended place to begin a presentation.

Act 1 consists of several elements. You have to spell out each of them:

The baseline situation

Start with the client’s “before” situation, and make sure every member of the audience will agree. Data from client’s brief can be useful.

For example:

“Under the almost monopolistic market structure, Brand X has been dominating the market for the last 10 years.”
“Brand Y is planning to launch a cheaper variant to recruit new consumers who previously see us as unaffordable.”
“For years, Brand Z has been trailing as a runner-up behind the rival Brand Q that overspends us by 2 times.”

Complication

This is the incidence that disrupts the baseline situation. It can be something they incite themselves (e.g. a new initiative) or externally driven (e.g. competitor’s action or new regulation).

Following the above examples:

“Next year, the government will introduce a new regulation that opens up aggressive competitions against Brand X.”
“Our competitive intelligence indicates that our rival has planned to launch a new variant that will be cheaper than Brand Y’s new variant.”
“The R&D department has invented a new technology that may make Brand Z become the smart-phone with the longest battery life ever.”

Challenge

As stated before, the incidence (complication) brings clients to face a challenge. Now we are going to write that challenge as a question.

Following the above examples:

“How can we make consumers actively prefer us, beyond simply lack of other options?”
“How can we make consumers with limited buying power feel good about choosing our new variant that’s the more expensive?”
“How can we enthuse consumers about our battery life with a budget that’s a tiny fraction of our competitor’s?”

Answer

Lastly, you immediately introduce the answer to that question. Of course, that answer should refer to the core of your proposed solution alias your creative idea.

Yes, we are introducing the core of our proposal or the creative idea early in the presentation? In fact, we should not postpone it till the near end. This is because clients’ attention span is limited and it’s our duty to keep them interested.

The fact that we are explaining our creative idea quite early should make us realize how utterly important it is to come up with a very clear and compelling description of the idea.

Act 2

Although in the flow of the real presentation Act 2 comes in the middle, I strongly recommend that when developing the presentation content, we start first with Act 2.

Act 2 should show how our proposed solution (creative idea) will help the clients (the protagonist) meet their challenge.

This is how you build your Act 2:

Look back at the description of your creative idea (written as Answer in Act 1)
Imagine yourself as the clients and then ask tough questions they will ask about it. For example, “What does it mean?”, “How does it look like?”, “How does it work?”, “Why is it better than the other (safer, time-tested) alternative?”, and so on.
For each question, write its answer in the form of an assertion. Of course one question can have more than one answer, so you can have few assertions to address clients’ doubt or question.
Depending on the question, you need to give evidence (e.g. statistics, anecdotal examples, or credible endorsement) or explanation (e.g. metaphors or analogies to render new concepts familiar, or diagrams to visualize process, relationships, or complex concepts) to support your each assertion.

Act 3

This is where we rephrase the Challenge and Answer from Act 1. We do this to reassure the clients that our proposed solution will help them complete their challenge. If needed, you can also give a call-to-action to your clients (e.g. “Let’s take emotional persuasion route to make consumers prefer Brand Q”). Obviously the call-to-action should link closely to Answer from Act 1.

Once you’ve finished building the presentation content in analog (I recommend using sticky notes for each part), rearrange the parts by following this diagram:

Diagram for presentation structure

After this, you can start thinking about developing a storyboard for the presentation flow if you plan to use slide show as the visual aid.

Why should we develop a storyboard first, instead of jumping ahead to PowerPoint or Keynote? Two reasons:

We will be able to see the bigger picture or the overarching presentation narrative and not get lost with slides after slides
We will save time

Few things to remember when you’re developing the storyboard:

One idea per slide
Never, ever use any of your slide as your reading note or as a teleprompter. If you do, you will deliver a very boring presentation that will harm your creative proposal
The less slides we use, the better

Once you’ve get your storyboard, then you can start using PowerPoint and Keynote to create each slide and build the slide show.

If you want to read more about slide design, I recommend you these two books: slide:ology by Nancy Duarte, and Presentation Zen Design by Garr Reynolds.

I hope this long post help you to sell your creative ideas better. I will follow this one with a post on defending your creative proposals.

Explaining the creative idea clearly and concisely (notes from mentoring new planners, part 6)

12 November 2012

1 Comment

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When I was still a junior in advertising, every time I saw great work got made I wondered, “How did they come up with it?”

Few years in the industry got me to change that question into, “How the hell did they sell it to clients?”

The world will never be short of ad agencies’ brilliant ideas that are never executed. I don’t think this is clients’ fault —it’s way too easy to blame clients, and doing so only takes us to a dead-end. I think this happens because most agencies can’t sell those ideas to clients. Agencies fail to convince clients that those ideas will solve real problems, not just because they are “cool”, or “never done before”, or “award-worthy”.

Once we fully accept the responsibility of selling ideas, let’s continue with how planners contribute. For me, a planner (or a strategist, whatever your business card says about you) plays a big role in two areas:

Explain the idea clearly and concisely, so clients can immediately understand what it’s about
Convince clients that the idea solves their real problem
Defend the idea from attacks and criticisms

This post will focus on the first area: formulating the idea clearly and concisely. It’s dead simple. When we present our idea to clients and they don’t instantly get what it is all about, how can they believe that the target will?

Unfortunately, too many times we fail to formulate our idea in a clear and concise way. We often use fancy or flashy words to label the idea (e.g. “Shinning moments with Brand X”, or “Brand Y Partylicious”) without explaining what it actually means. Or we often use slides after slides to show the elements that make up the idea, without summarising upfront what it’s essentially about.

The best way to explain the agency idea is to use a log line. A log line expresses the essence of a story (usually of a movie or a novel) in one or two simple sentence(s).

Some example of log lines from famous classic movies:

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son (The Godfather)
Set in unoccupied Africa during the early days of World War II, an American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications (Casablanca)
While on a trip to Paris with his fiancé’s family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight (Midnight in Paris)

A good log line gives a clear answer to the question of, “What is it all about?” without having to recite the whole movie or novel. Yet it also intrigues us to know much more about the details: what actually happens? How does the story progress?

To explain an idea using the log line format, you need two elements (the order of appearance is interchangeable):

The short summary of what the idea is, AND
The strategic intent of that idea, or what the idea is trying to achieve.

I will give you an example from one of my favorite TV spots in 2012:

I would describe this idea as, “To give life to Samsung’s belief in the virtue of relentless effort, we show a visual montage of several different athletes with disabilities who are training very hard without lenience.”

Let’s dissect this description by each element:

“To give life to Samsung’s belief in the virtue of relentless effort ” is the strategic intent of the idea. Obviously it has to link with the communication strategy
“Showing athletes with disabilities who are training very hard without lenience” is the summary of the idea
A visual montage of several different athletes” refers to the chosen vehicle to tell the story or idea.

Another benefit of using log lines to express our creative ideas is it delineates which elements of the idea that can’t be substituted or changed (because doing so will break down the idea), and which one are more “flexible”. From the example above, we know that:

If the clients believe that the training feels a bit “cruel”, we probably need to convince them further that viewers should realize how these athletes train as hard as “regular” athletes. In fact, the lack of leniency is the beauty of the whole idea.
If the clients insist on showing his favorite sports, let’s say badminton, we can incorporate it without breaking down the idea.
If the clients are not entirely happy with visual montage of many different athletes and are thinking of focusing only on one (famous) athlete, then the discussion should be about which route will be more effective to deliver the strategic intent. In this case, I believe if we use one famous athlete, we can potentially distract viewers’ attention from effort to “special talent”.
If the clients insist on showing moments of victory instead of episodes of training, they may not realize that they have the problem with the strategic intent of glorifying effort. The discussion needs to refer back to the strategy.

This way, formulating the idea in the log line format also helps us in protecting the idea’s integrity against naïve suggestions or uninformed criticisms.

What about the criticism of “But I’ve seen something like this before!” We have to probe what the clients mean by “something like this”. Is it just a matter of setting (e.g. in Serengeti desert) or props (e.g. red Corvette)? Is it the storytelling vehicle, or the whole idea itself?

If it’s a matter of setting or props, we can discuss if those elements are essential or irreplaceable –my experience tells me most of the times they are not.

But the discussion gets more interesting if it’s about the same creative device. Let’s see two examples here.

Both of them are using the same creative device: in the eyes of children, parents appear to be something else. Yet the similarity ends there, once we recognise the strategic intent and the log line of each advert:

IKEA’s “Playin’ With My Friends” idea can be expressed like this: A cheerful, upbeat, and naïve depiction of how children see parents as toys they can play with, in order to render the IKEA kitchen as a happy place.

Meanwhile, Fragile Childhood’s “Monsters” idea can be expressed as: An eerie and gloomy depiction of how children see alcoholic parents as menacing monsters, to help us empathise with what those children have to go through everyday.

This is why we need to explain, discuss, and defend our idea in its entirety, not in piecemeal fashion. This is also why we often need to add qualifiers (like the words I emphasised in the above examples).

Are the log line technique suitable to explain ideas beyond TV spots? Of course. Let’s look at these example.

“To save more trees and discourage wasting paper, we build a tool that enables us to prevent any document from being printed out” (Save as .WWF)

“To stop Romanian consumers from taking their classic chocolate brand Rom from granted, we replace it with a new, Americanised version to provoke public protest” (American Rom)

“To help ensure the survival of the big segment of its costumers, American Express creates a special day where people are encouraged to shop in small local business for the holiday seasons” (Small Business Saturday)

After reading this, let’s make sure that before presenting the agency’s proposal to your clients, we spend enough time to internally discuss and agree how should the idea be expressed, so it’s easier to explain and defend it.

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Paramita Mohamad elaborates.