Ad properties as long term assets

My good friend, Bobby Pawar, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Mudra, wrote an article called "Planning ahead to win" - (http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/planning-ahead-to-win /357628/) about the Zoozoo campaign by Vodafone.

I am quoting the whole thing below, because the lessons are salutary.

"Looks like, the marketing community has had an infestation of Zoozoos. Most ad folks are going, ‘******od, why don’t we have clients who let us do this kind of work?’ Clients are loudly wondering why their agencies can’t bring them such breakthrough ideas, maybe they need added motivation in the form of a reduction in fees.

"Meanwhile, consumers of every stripe love the zany critters, unmindful of the deep introspection going on in the hallowed halls of marketing.

"Before we go on, lemme add my spoonful of praise to the heapin’ helpful that has already doused Harit (Nagpal of Vodafone) and Rajiv (Rao of O&M). You guys deserve a toke from Jimi Hendrix’s hookah when you get to heaven. Another thing, I love and hate you in equal measure. But, hey, enough about me.

"Let’s get back to us, as in “us” who wish we had thought of, or bought, the Zoozoos campaign. Or, an idea just as big. Heck, bigger. Yup, we can’t get there from where we are. Let’s admit it, shall we? If someone had come to us asking for six months and a budget to develop brand mascots, our reply would have been two words, one starting with ‘ f’ and the other ending with ‘ it’.

"Let’s go over the statistics for the Zoozoo campaign. Six months: They started designing and crafting the characters six months ago. Most of that time, they didn’t know if they even had an idea to build on.

"The next number is three. That’s how much pre-production time Nirvana Films took to figure out how to shoot the commercials. And I have a sneaking suspicion they did not do it for free. The last figure is 30. That’s how many television spots they made. I am not going to bother to count the number of print/outdoor executions, digital activities, etc., because at our age it is best to keep the excitement to a minimum.

"Zoozoos happened because both the client and the agency planned way ahead. They kept at it, through everything. Then when they saw they had a winner they put their all behind it.

"Is that how we work everyday? We think fast is great, don’t we? Some of the creative folks we admire the most are those who think on their feet. But the quickest ad in the West is no good if it is no good.

"The creative process is a process. It takes a while for the brief to sink in and for all the obvious ideas to be flushed out of the system. It is only after that do the really interesting ideas begin to come your way and make your acquaintance.

‘Hi there stranger, my name is Zoozoo’.

"I don’t say this because that’s just good for the creative, but because it is also good business. How many business owners you know will risk Rs 10 crore, or whatever your media budget is, on a few hours of thinking? Steve Hayden, the man who wrote the commercial of the century, once told me you have to write at least twenty scripts to get a couple of good ones. He would know."

After the kind of years and hours Bobby and I have together put into the ad industry, it's really heartening, because it's so rare, to come across the kind of concerted effort that Zoozoo represents.

The most important lesson to be learnt out of this is that if you think of advertising as an investment, please plan for the investment in the same way as you would plan for investments into capital equipment, and other kinds of assets.

There's a lot of hot air that I have heard over the years about advertising being an investment expenditure, and that advertising properties are assets. Hot air, because a couple of days after such pronouncements, the client and the ad agency go back to the "fast is great" mode; forget about quality, and who's to judge anyway? We'll change the campaign six months later.

Let's go through the way the thinking might have gone. I must add that I am not privy to any insights from either Harit or Rajiv, so all that follows is speculation on my part. I have put down what I would have been through if I had been part of the discussion.

First question - should the pug be junked? Screams of "murder" from consumers, who love this adorable little creature. But...the pug may not be the right creative idea to tie in all the various aspects of the brand any more. Consider this: the pug began life on the proposition of wide network. Later on, it personified quality customer service. But could it be used to cover other propositions? The answer - test it out, see how far the idea goes, see what boundaries it can't cross.

Second question - what other property should we create? What are the parameters? Obviously, it must be applicable across a wide variety of product and service propositions, and must be relevant, charming and engaging over time. Obviously, only then could this be called a 'property'. Hence, create some alternatives, and test these out for size, stretchability across current propositions, and even across propositions which are not yet available in this market. That's where the 30 TV spots that Bobby talks about fits in. These, and many more, must have been fleshed out much before production, just to test the idea.

Third question - should the pug and the new property live together, each with its own 'spheres' of application? Quick answer: no way. Why can't we create one single property which answers to question two? Only if we fail (and why should we assume that we shall fail?) shall we consider this sub-optimal option.

If we are serious about creating an asset - like some new technology, a new pharma molecule, an office building, or any other things we normally call an "asset" - we must think like other industries when they create properties. And not like ad agencies and their clients appear to do - you'll see so many examples of shoddy or no thinking at all in IPL 2, that individual examples are unnecessary.