How is Advertising made?

Nothing excites budding marketers more than the idea of making advertising! But how is it really done? It seems so much more art than science & really something the wizards at the agency, pull out of their magic hat!

However, there is a definite science behind how it’s all done! So do enjoy this article on the art & science behind winning advertising!

Making an advertising really follows a few basic steps!

-         Figure out your core issue

-         Understanding your consumer

-         Uncovering the Insight

-         Making the creative

Figure out the core issue

The most critical thing to do before kicking of the creative process is to get pristine clarity on task that you are trying to solve for!

So when I was working on Cadbury Gems “Raho Umarless” Campaign, our Brand Task was to make Gems the ‘Brand for me’ for Kids and Teens, as our Kiddy advertising always made Gems as ‘the Brand for my younger sibling’.

Again in the case of Cadbury Celebrations “Toh Iss Diwali Aap Kise Khush Karangay?”, we wanted to convert “Aware Non Purchasers”, who were Aware of the Brand but just didn’t think about it, during their purchase occasions.

So getting precise clarity on what you are solving for is the first step!

Understanding the Consumer

The next steps is perhaps the most exciting step for any Marketer, and this is best done through a workshop!

Here you get everyone into the room – Brand Manager, Consumer Insight Manager, R&D Manager, Sales Manager, Agency Planner, Agency Client Servicing, Design Teams etc.

Then you divide yourselves into teams of 2-3 people each and go out there and meet consumers, read about your consumer, do expert interviews.

Through the journey, you keep making small notes of what you are observing. At this stage its critical to only to write the “Pure Observations”, only what you are Seeing/ Hearing or Reading and not your guesses on Why the consumer is behaving in that manner!

Finally each team member brings 50 observations & you paste them inside the walls of a large conference room and you have 500 observations on the walls. This is called the Mind Map of your consumer. Everything that you know about the consumer is on those walls.

Next you group observations into similar sounding observations to get large behavior patterns of what you observed as a group.

After you have uncovered the “What” of the consumer, you start debating the “Why”, what’s really at the heart of what you are observing. You ask “Why?” at least 5 times to reach an Insight!

Uncovering the Insight

The whole process is really intriguing and it’s amazing, that when I did this process in India, Nepal & Dubai, I observed completely different behaviors.

I realized that the consumers in India are so caught up in our passion towards progress that our societies are becoming insular, which is the insight that led us to the “Toh Iss Diwali App Kise Khush Karangay” TVC. It’s the same Insight that led to Good Day creating the Smiles TVC with Deepika Padukone. The fact that as Indians we rarely smile at our neighbors.

However, when I met consumers in Nepal, I realized that the Nepalese really believe in every day goodness, of contributing towards charity, helping out at old age homes, because the country has seen so much trauma, especially post the earth quake.

While, in Dubai the Insight was similar but so different. The Expat communities of Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Filipinos are lonely in an alien world and want to celebrate the togetherness of their cohorts!

Such basis human truth but slightly colored by our individual contexts and hence lead to very different communications & activations.

Making the Creative

Once you have arrived at the clear consumer understanding and have an Insight that is powerful enough to base your communication on, there are 3 important questions that you need to answer before the Creative team can start showing scripts!

The first question is “Who am I?”, or what is the way you wish to position your product. An example of a few brilliant campaigns that did this extremely were are Cadbury Dairy Milk which positions Chocolates into a Modern Meetha and hence where ever Mithai was relevant, Cadbury Dairy Milk is too. Coca Cola did this with “Thanda Matlab Coca Cola”, where they simply told the consumer that Coke is not a fancy American beverage, it’s your local roadside thanda! So why have nimbu pani when you can reach out for a Coke.

The next important question is “Why should you buy me?”, and again some Brands that have done a fabulous job of creatively expressing this are Dominoes, cause what other tasty and delightful meal can you get under 30 minutes? Again, AXE does it very well by saying that it can make you smell like Candy for the opposite sex!

Finally, the third question is “How do I make you feel!” The real currency of advertising are the emotions they evoke and hence this is perhaps the most important question of all! Does that Advertising make you feel elevated & joyful like a Coke does and hence do you buy into happiness, or does it reassure you like an Insurance player or does it just make you nostalgic like Paper Boat does!

Conclusion

So while most advertising does indeed feel magical and has the power to impact people & often society, the process of creating advertising is a clear science and starts with pristine clarity of what your core issue is. You next meet consumers and uncover winning insights. These insights then form the bed rock of your concept or creative briefing. Next the magicians at the creative agency help you de-clutter and break down what you want to say to these 3 simple questions “What am I”, “Why should you buy me” & “How do I make you feel!” And this process results in the creation of award winning & more importantly advertising that delivers business results!