Junior

by Thomas Kemeny

  You don’t need to convince everyone on Earth, just the people who everyone on Earth look up to. If your favorite chef recommended a restaurant, you’d probably check it out. If a musician you love did a song with an artist you hadn’t heard of, you’d listen to their album. If all your friends on Instagram went to the same event, even if you didn’t make it, you’d think it was the place to be. In simplest terms, if the popular girl at school says it’s cool, it’s cool.

  IT’S LIKE MAKING A COMMERCIAL, EXCEPT YOU HAVE TO BUILD THE SET YOURSELF.

  Pretend that on the day of your event everyone’s cameras stopped working. Would there be any record that it ever happened? Would there be anything that you could share? What would you do if the news called up and asked for a clip? Is there something that the agency could share with future clients or that you could put on your own site to show off? Don’t count on the press to show up with their own film equipment and get everything you need. You’ll probably get photographers, but you’ll also want video and a written storyline of the event, a narrative way to condense the entire event into an easily digestible snapshot. That way, no matter the format, you’ve got what you need to get noticed via 1) words, 2) photos, 3) video, 4) all of the above. Even before the event you’ll want to get as much of this as possible. Get behind-the-scenes because you won’t have another chance. You can’t recreate an experience in post-production. Even if it’s just an agency camera guy, or an intern with a video camera, make sure you get the build, the backstory, the production. If there’s a huge line opening day, 100% get footage of it. Unlike with a TV spot where the behind-the-scenes is a huge wank fest, the behind-the-scenes of an experience is often an important part of the story.

  BE A CREATIVE ARCHITECT.

  Typically when you write in advertising, it’s narrative and linear. In experience work you will write in structural building blocks. What’s the smallest and simplest the message can be and still make sense, what’s the longest and most informative it can be while still being readable and interesting? You’ll be writing for everything from pins to 30-foot walls. Bathroom signs will need copy as will social media posts. Press releases will need synopses and news sites will need quotes. Create a phrase that’s your elevator pitch for why someone should care about the idea, write a paragraph that’s your phrase plus the most interesting parts of the idea, then create a page that starts with that paragraph and then gets into all of the details and an alternate version that also includes the client/brand benefit. That’s your basic kit of parts that you can tweak slightly for each individual need and will save you hours of stress later.

  A ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME IS THE GREAT RED FLOWER 4000.

  Coming up with a name for your experiential idea is as important as naming a product. It’s the shorthand everyone will use both internally and externally to pitch the idea. It’s the name the client will say in the lunchroom to impress their coworkers. It’s the name you’ll have to say 100 times to vendors and partners. It’s also the way the press will introduce it to the world and will likely be your hashtag. One good way to come up with a name is to think of it as a one or two-word headline. Look into the brand’s DNA and the experience idea itself and think of words that overlap between the two. Make the name telegraphic and clear as to what the idea is. Think of words that toy with the idea, exaggerating or underplaying it. If it’s huge, consider calling it tiny. Be descriptive and use the language and tone of your creation. If it’s a house is it a manor, estate, shack, home, or mansion? Is the name friendly and approachable or staggering and awe-inspiring? If there’s no perfect word consider making one up, or mashing up two words. Use roots of words and all those Latin word origins to get across what you’re going for. Once you’ve got something you like, say it out loud to a bunch of people. If it makes you cringe, keep going.

  SHARING IS CARING, BECAUSE SOME CLIENTS ONLY CARE HOW MANY PEOPLE SHARED IT.

  Somebody within the organization will be all about numbers, and you can argue the merits of deep conversations all you want or you can cook the books in your favor. When you do an experience there’s a certain amount of basic sharing you can expect simply because some people share every moment of their lives. Beyond that, there are three different categories of sharing that you can use to keep the numbers up. The first is the dumb one. Simply pay influencers to show up and post. You can guarantee their reach and require them to make a certain number of posts over a set period of time. The best part is that you can often pull this from the client’s media budget so it doesn’t take away from your production. The second way is building in sharable interactions. The simplest version of this is a photo booth that shares right to somebody’s social media. You can get more creative than that too with overlays, distortions, candid images, props, or building them into unexpected places like scanners. Maybe it’s not a photo at all, maybe it captures something they create or it’s a video or an animation of the guest. You get the idea. Basically, since it’s in the space people will interact with it because they’ll feel they should. Otherwise they’ll fear they missed out. The third way to get people to share is to give them that iconic moment that they feel compelled to take a photo of. At a wedding it’s the first kiss. At a concert it’s the encore. It can be a central sculpture or a noted time or a moment. It can be an extremely personalized moment or a huge public spectacle. You’ll know it’s a success if two seconds after it everybody is staring at their phones to make sure it posted. Last note, imagine thousands of people in a small space all using the same signal at exactly the same moment. You’ve got to have some amazing Wi-Fi and it’ll have to be open network. You’d hate to lose all that sharing due to a poor connection.

  What makes a fun event:

  Good people, good drink, good music, something to take a picture of.

  HIGH ON HASHTAGS.

  It’s usually tasteless to make brand icons huge, especially a hashtag or a logo, but experiences are the one instance where I wouldn’t say that’s the case. Make it enormous. Gaudy huge. At least double what would seem excessive in ordinary circumstances. Because once you fill the venue with hundreds of people, dim the lights, turn on the smoke machine, blast wall-shaking music, you will barely be able to see it. It will feel hidden unless it’s gigantic and high enough that nobody could block it. Also, and this is rare in advertising, people will actually be looking for it. They want to know what hashtag to use to make sure everyone knows they were there. If people want to share the brand, who are you to deny them?

  DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT PARTY NOBODY HEARD ABOUT?

  One of the quirks of experiences is that they are part ad and part something that needs to be advertised. “Foot traffic” as the sole way people find out about what you’ve created is the same as posting a video to your Facebook friends and hoping it goes viral. There’s a chance, sure, but not a good one. Hand out flyers, make posters, billboards, get posted in the local blogs, send out invites to people of interest, post teaser videos. Promote until your invite list is at least 50% OVER total capacity. Expect at least half of people not to show up in a best case scenario.

  YOU HAVE THE PERFECT EXPERIENCE, NOW ADD ANOTHER.

  If your experience is something people can walk into, a physical space of some form, you’ll need to fill it with programming. It could be bands performing, artists painting, creative people performing in any other way, whatever. The space itself can be inspiring, but it’ll get boring and each new program in the space is another reason someone can have to write about it and visit it. It’s another audience who can find out about it and another list of potential guests who will make the effort to show up. The program ideally matches the ambition and narrative of your space, so it doesn’t overshadow the event itself or underwhelm people by comparison, or come out of nowhere. A good measure is the photo-moment test. If the programming becomes more iconic than the experience, you’ve just created a set for someone else’s brand.

  NOT JUST FOR MAKING YOUR BOSSES RICHER.

  The
saying goes that the first day you work on a piece of business is the first day you begin to lose it. That means they’ll have to lay off you and your friends if they don’t have something to replace it with soon. Even if agencies don’t lose business, it’s still important for an agency to be able to expand its stage. A boss of mine once put it like this: talented people want to grow and if the agency doesn’t give them the space to grow into, the talented people will leave. Pitching new business is a necessary evil in that quest for growth. A quest you will periodically be brought along on whether you like it or not. Here’s a bit of what to expect: A pitch is like a reality TV dating show where agencies compete against one another to court clients by showing that their ads are smarter, more creative, and more interesting, and hoping the client doesn’t just pick the hot agency because they’re hot.

  Every now and then you can come in with an idea so brilliant that they throw caution to the wind and make out with your agency, and it feels so damned good. Through the process you will have great bonding moments with your colleagues, because you are deep in the trenches together, late into the night, with agency top brass paying close attention and making lots of eye contact with you. It’s a rare occasion where the best idea can truly come from anywhere—because money. Get ready for long hours and frustration, but also laughter and good old-fashioned human connection. It’s a perfect place to make a name for yourself, make some new friends, and pick up some weird stories from when you all lose your minds around 3 a.m. It can be a lot of fun, if it doesn’t kill you.

  THE BEST WORK YOU’LL NEVER MAKE.

  If you’re on a pitch, almost for sure you’re not going to produce a single thing that you presented in the meeting. If anything does get made it will be the manifesto video you showed to sell the idea, but you never imagined would be seen by a single consumer (more on that later). It seems a shame, but it’s freeing as well. You don’t have to hold back. You don’t have to worry about logistics or directors or any of that. You just have to think in the broadest possible perspective, without any taint or skew from past experiences. You’re the step before the first date, just thinking of that one line that’ll start a longer conversation.

  LIKE SMART, BUT SIMPLER.

  To win a pitch, keep ideas brief. If any idea takes longer than 15 seconds to explain, kill it. No matter how genius it is. You can show it later if you actually win the business. Repeat your one hero line forever. Put it on everything. Win through consistency. If you have an outlier, kill it. They’re not buying ads, they’re buying a vision and the clearer the vision the more likely they are to buy it. You can change it later, edit it, etc. As previously mentioned, you won’t be making any of it anyway. You just need a big idea, and by big idea I mean you need one idea. A single breakthrough insight brought to life over and over again until you can’t miss it. A thought so all-encompassing that you can quickly spit out 100 pages of ideas, because you’ll need 100 pages of ideas, and you’ve got about 2 weeks to do it. Think wide instead of deep. When the client is making a decision they need to know exactly what you showed them and what they’re buying if they choose you.

  WHAT’S A MANIFESTO? IT SOUNDS IMPORTANT.

  I never used the word manifesto before I got into advertising and now it’s one of the biggest parts of my job. It’s the lead page in any campaign presentation and especially for a pitch presentation. It can take the form of words center-aligned on a colored background, words across several pages paired with (juxtaposed or literal) visuals, or a video with those words read in a folksy, witty, or British-sounding voice. A manifesto is a string of about 15–20 lines that in sum makes anyone who reads it viscerally and intellectually understand a brand platform and tone. It can be funny or serious. It can be a vibe or a logical progression. It can be emotional or blasé. The easy way to get to a manifesto is: intriguing thought at the beginning (a truth or a question), a line at the end that could maybe be mistaken for a tagline (even if it’s just a tagline for the next hour), fill in the rest of the manifesto with language that flows from your insight to the line at the end. You can do this with examples or repetition (always in threes, because thoughts sound better in threes). You can do this with more questions that start from your first question. You can do this with almost random sentences that feel in the same tone, as if you’re just an observer hearing those phrases coming from the brand. There should be a bit of an arc, leading you along a journey to your final closing insight. It’ll take some practice, but once you get the hang of it you’ll be able to communicate with a client quickly and save having to explain every idea for 15 minutes.

  The idiot-proof manifesto is this:

  “Blah used to be great, but then blank happened. Shit started to suck, we lost our way and/or times changed. But now there’s product. Changing the way/getting us back to the way we blah. Because in today’s world we need more blah. Product—cleverline.”

  IT’S NOT A KID’S BIRTHDAY PARTY.

  You’ll probably hear the term “pitch theater” when you first work on a pitch. No need to buy clown makeup, all pitch theater means is having one special something you can bring to the meeting that isn’t an ad, but that will make the clients like you. Because, as important as the work is, the potential client is also thinking, “these are the people I have to meet with every day for the next few years.”

  The difference between a quick and clever pitch theater idea and a cheesy idea often comes down to context and execution. If the meeting takes place at the client’s offices, tone it way back. We sometimes forget that agency offices are places where dreams and silliness are not only welcome, but encouraged. Even stodgy agencies. But corporations don’t usually inspire the same spirit. A good test of your idea is to think if it would still be clever if you were presenting it in a noisy food court and you had to stop for a minute halfway through presenting it. If you’re presenting it in your own office, you’ve got a lot more leeway. Then, make sure it’s executed fully, not cheaply. If your pitch theater feels flimsy, it’ll come off as pandering or as a gimmick. Lastly, if the meeting is going well, clients will love this stuff. If they’re not feeling the work, they won’t. It’s either the cherry on top or the coffin nail, with little in between. If the work is great, feel free to skip it and just be memorable in the way you present.

  If you’re pitching a chain of butcher shops, you might wrap the presentation in high-quality butcher paper, tied elegantly with twine, a perfectly typeset sticker on it featuring the butcher shop’s name and the name of the agency. Done tastefully it’ll look thoughtful. Done poorly it’ll look like you put five cents worth of brown paper around their multimillion-dollar brand.

  If you’re pitching a furniture brand, maybe the team assembles all the furniture that will be used in the meeting and films a time-lapse of it, showing this film at the end of the meeting to the surprise of the prospective clients.

  YOU WILL BE STARTLED BY THE NUMBER OF WAYS AN IDEA CAN DIE.

  Your ad is a Fabergé egg rolling through a minefield. Students just make ads good. Professionals make ads good, then watch them die for no reason, and then do it again as if nothing happened.

  I have a TV spot that’s fully-produced, color-corrected, cost the client $300,000, and has yet to air. It’s mind-boggling.

  Be prepared for some heartbreak, but also know that smart work does get produced. And, all this craziness is what makes it feel special when it does. Keep hope alive.

  A friend and one of the few people with two black D&AD pencils, had this to say: “Good work has to get produced. I’ve just gotta believe that.” It seems to have worked for her.

  The following are real reasons an idea has died:

  Too funny. Not funny enough. The product no longer exists. There’s no money. The suppliers don’t like it. We can’t find a vendor. We don’t have the media space for it. Someone sent a complaint letter so the whole campaign died. The client showed it to a friend who has an English minor and they think that the writing isn’t good. The foc
us groups don’t like it. The focus groups like it, but people in the focus group worry that others might not like it. To o colloquial. Not colloquial enough. Too expensive to produce. Not enough time. It’s not the right time. There’s something similar to it. It’s too new. It would work if it were Spanish. The CD doesn’t like it. The client doesn’t like it. The client is worried their boss won’t like it. The client’s boss doesn’t like it. The client’s boss doesn’t like the client. The account left. The client doesn’t want unicorns because they’re extinct and we don’t want to remind people of it.

  SOLVE YOUR CLIENT’S PROBLEM AND THERE’S NO LIMIT TO THE SHIT THEY’LL LET YOU GET AWAY WITH.

  Above anything else, keep in mind that your ad must be the missing piece of the sell puzzle. Explain how your work does that and the ad will be on its way.

  If that doesn’t work, find out what your client’s real concern is. Sometimes it’s as human as not wanting to get yelled at by their boss. If you offer to arm them with case studies, references, etc., then they might bite on work that’s juicier than you thought they would.

  EVERYONE IS DOING THEIR JOB. YOU DO YOURS.

  The client wants to sign off on an idea eventually, the account team wants to sell something that makes the client happy, and your creative director wants to sell either your idea or the other idea from the other team. Basically, it’s on you if you want your idea sold. You might want to blame the account team or the creative directors or the planners or anybody else if the work dies. If you’re in the meeting, it’s on you to know how to sell.