Clarity matters: be yourself

A long time ago, I joined an advertising agency and found that the media and creative strategy on one of my to-be accounts had already been signed off. Worse, the commercial had already been shot. The Agency should have been.

Our client’s brand was a weak No. 2 in the market. To close the gap, the Agency had developed a commercial that was full of “category cues”. It said all the right things. It was beautifully written and produced. It tugged all the right heartstrings. Consumer research showed how well those messages and emotions were received.

The only problem was that those consumers assumed the commercial was for the market leader.

When you make a generic pitch, people are always going to do that. So, in this case, a couple of million quid had gone into reinforcing the market leader’s position. And I had to watch my boss try to convince the client that this was, in fact, a good thing and proof of the creative strategy. He failed.

It is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, to get your brand positioning unambiguously sharp and distinct. But look at 10 TV commercials for cars, and tell me what those brands stand for and are saying about themselves. Sorry to sound like a Luddite, but I fear AI is only going to make this work: as normally sane professionals eulogise on the amazing creativity of new technology, I’m seeing a rush towards the generic.

If you’re market leader, maybe you can afford to stay at the generic level ( at least for some of the time) and there is an argument that says that’s what leading the market demands. But if you’re not, and you’re probably being outspent by the one who is, you have to do better.

The brilliant basics are still the brilliant basics, and the one of the basics of brand strategy is clarity of brand positioning. Be yourself.