The creative industry bangs on about clients needing to take more risks and be bolder with their advertising, but Mike Daniels, founder of research company The Behavioural Architects, questioned why clients would want to take that approach when it could kill their business?
“There is a strange assumption that clients should take risks with creativity. I fear the advertising industry is in danger of selling a proverb that no one wants to buy,” Daniels said.
“Why would a client want to buy risk when they could be buying certainty?”
Daniels was speaking at the Battle of Big Thinking event held by The Comms Council as part of Vivid Sydney. The event featured top executives from agencys such as AnalogFolk, JWT, BWM and One Green Been, with all going head-to-head to make the most compelling five-minute speech on certain creative themes.
The Behavioural Architects is a research, insights and consultancy business that works with clients such as Disney, KFC, Diageo and Johnson & Johnson.
“We are seeing more and more clients want evidence-based science and solutions to reduce risk that increasingly advertising agencies ask them to take to drive more certainty and successful outcomes,” Daniels said.
“Yet, broadly in the world of advertising, conversations and preoccupations are largely about taking risks, the size of budgets, awards and if you read any of the trade rags, the triumph and despair of account movers, rather than celebrating the success of change.”
He argued that these hot topics for industry leaders do little to address what matters most to the client, adding that it’s the role of planners to give this focus back to agencies.
“I worry that planning – the very discipline that should be thinking without objectivity and ensure the work works – has lost its focus,” Daniels said.
“Too many planners have become hunters and gatherers of cool artefacts and sharers of interesting web content. I’d argue that they have become curators of other people’s content rather than constructors of what needs to be done.”
Daniels encouraged planners to dive back into the whole creative process and begin to apply better behavioural insights.
“This is where planners can lead and build from the ground up, using science at the beginning [of the creative process] rather than the end,” he said.
“More is known about human behaviour in behavioural science than has ever been known about why we behave one way. It gives exciting new opportunities to influence behaviour.”
See: How Google is killing the planner role
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.