When last do you remember clients and agencies sitting together in a forum that was not about a new pitch, an error with insertions, problems with the design and that sort of stuff? Er….never? That’s the truth for me at least. In my twelve years of advertising, I have never been part of or heard of a situation where these two “partners” shared a communal space that was not for the purpose of getting a job out of the shop. I experienced this for the first time over the weekend during the three day “The Rules Behind Breaking Creativity Rules” workshop hosted by Pepper Advertising and the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business.
At the workshop, facilitated by Yonathan Dominitz, founder and trainer at Mindscapes, participants were provided with creative thinking tools which were very enlightening. We viewed winning ad campaigns and were shown the patterns in them that caused them to have an impact and generate improved performance in their respective markets. This is of great value to me, however, I also looked at the other opportunity that this workshop initiated. Marketing Managers got to experience that creative process and agencies got to hear some of the qualms of the clients. Don’t get me wrong. It was not a mud slinging session. There were just moments of awakening that caused some to speak of their personal experiences or views. One such moment happened when Yonathan showed us the Magic Salad Bowl campaign.
In Australia there is the The Four’N Twenty Meat Pie which the women were happy to buy for their menfolk.. For whatever reason, the sentiment from the women changed. They were beginning to stop purchasing the pie saying that it was only meat and pastry. Sales dropped. The advertising agency assigned the job to boost sales thought of the interesting idea of introducing the Magic Salad Plate.
The Magic Salad Plate was sold on a shelf at the side of the Four’N Twenty Meat Pie. The interesting thing about the plate was that it had an image of a salad painted around most of it, with a space to place the pie.
This humerous tactic worked. The print and television campaign encouraged sales for the Four’N Twenty Meat Pie to rise considerably. Even the plate was a popular feature as it individually sold at a handsome figure.
Returning to the creativity workshop, after Yonathan showed us the Magic Salad Plate campaign and the positive results, a marketing manager who was very impressed with what she saw, said that if a creative team member had approached her with that idea, she would have rejected it. She acknowledged a great error that happens too often, where an offbeat idea is killed in its infancy which could have turned into something special and profitable.
After hearing her speak, I thought of the many other ideas that now lie in the Creative Cemetery that may have been great campaign which may have brought heavy awareness or greatly improved sales.
My wish now is for there to be more sessions where marketing managers and creative people sit together exploring the world of creativity so that we can both raise the bar and then produce ads that engage and make the product perform.
