Creative inspiration is essential so our creatives all have top 20 Ad Agency experience, but they have all then gone on to prove that they can work in a wider creative environment, our team includes novelists, film directors, photographers, pop video creators, teachers at St Martin’s School of Art…

Creative workshops are useful, but they are not THE answer to creativity

Workshops, facilitation and lateral thinking techniques are invaluable to capture the wisdom & creativity in the team, but we strongly believe that they should not be relied upon as the principle source of creativity.

What other creative process uses a large group of people over only a few days to generate ideas? Music, film, novels, comedy, advertising are all created by individuals or pairs working over an extended period. So why is it that the default answer to brand positioning and innovation issues always seems to be “lets have a workshop”?

Innovation & brand positioning need just as much creative emphasis, attention & time as other creative challenges. Our approach is quite different. We use workshops to kickstart the process… but it is after the workshop that the creative work really begins, with our creative teams often working in pairs over an extended period.

In short, we believe there is a lot more to creativity than sitting on brightly patterned bean bags playing lateral thinking games!

You need senior teams

You want the people who turn up at the pitch. You don’t want to be passed down to other teams. You want experienced teams working on your business.

That’s why we have no juniors. All the team have 12-20 years experience.

Everyone says they are passionate

Passion is essential to get outstanding results. The problem is, it’s all too easy to claim. But if you have a true entrepreneurial spirit it is impossible not to show it.

We are always working on our own projects and we have just created and launched our own brand of super indulgent biscuits. We’ve just been listed by Virgin Atlantic – take a quick look at our website as it is a great example of our passion in action PTbakery.com


What you show consumers in qualitative research must be creatively excellent

Why is it that the stimulus shown to consumers at the strategic part of a project is often so boring? Stimulus has to do what it says… stimulate. This is a big issue for us and our whole methodology is based around this, see below…

A background to our methodology
Click here for published articles on our Adcept Methodology

We developed the ‘Adcept Methodology’ a number of years ago because of a growing frustration with ‘traditional’ methodologies for creating new brands, repositioning existing brands and defining communication strategies.

The methodology is used to:

… the very enemies of a good positioning and communication.

But worst of all they are unrealistic. Consumers have never seen concept boards before so it’s impossible for them to put them into a context and really judge them.

Our Approach

Benefits of our adcept methodology

Precision – The methodology forces us to go and create actual executions rather than merely describing them. By their very nature executions have to have a precise message, style and tone.

Realistic – consumers can contextualise the Adcepts because they are in a familiar format – they can easily compare them to the competition and so assess their relative appeal / uniqueness.

The ideas have to compete against each other & win to be noticed and picked. Just like real life.

Brings to life – most brand models and briefs are based on descriptive words and perhaps a collage of images. Words are essential but interpretation can be different – plus many people (especially creatives) respond better to visual stimulus. A collage of generic images is not good enough. At the end of the project there will be 3 -10 key Adcepts that define the brand direction precisely and visually – not by describing but by being.

This is particularly important in the area of brand personality. Most descriptions of a brand personality are generic and vague. Indeed, if it was a description of a person one would be hard pushed to recognise them. This methodology allows us to create and define a rich, deep, believable description and illustration of the brand personality.

Breadth – the methodology allows much wider investigation than normally possible which means there is a real confidence that everything has been investigated – no stone left unturned. It allows us to look at the less obvious – which in turn may provide a more original solution.

Speed - although the methodology is more comprehensive it actually saves time. Instead of the team spending time deciding which areas to include and how to merge areas together to get to a manageable amount of stimulus – we simply include all areas.

This methodology also advances the project further. It effectively does two steps in one as it both:

       - scopes all the wide areas the brand could occupy
       - provides detailed analysis of the most compelling area, even including executional guidelines.

Powerful facilitator for international teams – normally involving international teams in a brand positioning or innovation project is a Catch 22: involve the wider team and progress is slow and a clear direction almost impossible; don’t involve them and they don’t buy into the answer.

This methodology actually benefits by involving the wider team as all their perspectives help our creative process. The process is generative so different countries can all add their thoughts / wishes and we create Adcepts for each area. No time is wasted in the consumer groups, because if an area isn’t relevant or appealing we have a simple method to ensure the group doesn't spend any time on it.

Getting to the 'killer' communication brief

Define / create compelling brand positionings

• Regular brand positioning methodologies just focus on the key questions in a particular proforma – not how to answer them.

• It is easy to write the positioning of a successful well established brand – that’s because one has the hindsight of great consistent communication. Analyse that communication and the brand models are relatively easy to complete. However, it is a different story if it is a new brand or a brand that needs to re-focus. This methodology gives one hindsight now by identifying the most compelling way for the brand to behave; and so we can work back to defining the brand.

Turning an innovation product idea into a brand idea

• The methodology can create a distinct personality, character, style and tone for new brands. And so move a rational product idea to a fully fledged brand idea that is ready to be briefed to agencies.

Scope innovation ideas

• Normally when an innovation idea is tested just one execution is tested. Here we develop multiple angles exploring all the potential benefits, styles and tones. This both ensures that each idea is given its best chance, and allows for deeper analysis into potential appeal.l

Process Outline

The basic process is divided into three stages: Scoping, Creation, Definition

Scoping

Here we scope the potential areas that the brand could occupy. The contents of this stage vary greatly depending what work has already been done. It may include steering research, a review of previous research and / or creative workshops.

This stage ends with us writing our “Creative Brief”. Unlike a regular brief that focuses on one key idea, our brief lists all the areas we want to creatively explore. It lists the key potential creative themes and the creative hooks that expand, explain and enrich the theme.

Creation

Here we take our Creative Brief and our creative teams work through developing multiple Adcepts around each theme.

Our creatives are selected from wide creative disciplines: copywriters, novelists, film directors etc. who are fully trained in our generative technique that is so different from writing regular advertising.

There are Creative Reviews where the Brandcepts are reviewed. The interesting ones are selected by the team to go forward to the research & any missing or additional areas are identified and re-briefed.

Definition

Here we use qualitative research of the Brandcepts to identify and investigate the most compelling areas for the brand. We made the decision years ago to work with qualitative research agencies rather than do the research ourselves. We did this for several reasons:

       - Many of our clients have researchers they know, trust and who know the brand well ...and so it makes          sense to work with them.

       - Qualitative research would always be a secondary part of our business – the best researchers are well          known and have set up on their own, we want to work with the best.

       - Using a 3rd party ensures the research is completely unbiased.

Although it is almost unheard of to use such a large amount of stimulus in qualitative research, we have a simple method to making it manageable that ensures that the group focus to get a deep and detailed analysis.

Following the qualitative research groups and the debrief there are Definition Sessions with the core team to crystallise the learnings and write the implementational briefs.

Click on the following published articles for our Brandcept Methodology:

Sadek Wynberg sadekwynberg.com

Spinach spinach.co.uk

Motivaction motivaction.nl

Keystone keystone.be

Davies McKerr daviesmckerr.com