Mike Barnwell, Executive Creative Director of creative agency FCB in Cape Town
believes that marketing professionals and their agencies need to stop thinking
and start doing when it comes to brands.
Barnwell explains, “Each presentation normally consists of two or three “big
ideas’. And each “big idea’ has a number of through-the-line creative
expressions, demonstrating the various ways in which that particular idea can
be brought to life.
“The process of over-thinking and under-doing means that the likelihood of a
marketing team taking any form of action at all becomes less and less a reality.
Instead, they develop an acute case of analysis paralysis. And no matter how
much they’d love to get closure on the situation, they simply cannot make a
decision.’
Formed by his years of experience in dealing with clients who leave briefs in the
system for too long, Barnwell contends that too much analysing, interrogating
and strategising can increase the chances of a brand becoming obscure.
“Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing, involving too many reverts to
mention, it’s often revealed that a clever piece of analysis has taken place and
the initial brief and strategy are all kinds of wrong.
“You’re then sent back to square one and asked to carefully reword the single-minded proposition. This is okay though, because through the process of
exploring various routes, you’ve helped steer things in the direction they now
need to go.
“Unfortunately, round two pretty much ends the same way. More presentations,
more reverts … and yet another epiphany, sending you back to the start again.
And so it goes, week after week, month after month. Once we even got all the
way to actually producing a big budget TV commercial only for it to be canned
due to yet another “rethink’.
“Of course, while all this wheel-spinning and money wasting, is taking place, the
product in question is all alone in the wilderness with nothing and no-one to
give it any support whatsoever. As a result, it slowly dies a horrible death. No
one knows what it stands for anymore and, quite frankly, no one cares.
“Fortunately, there are some people that know – more often than not – the best
answer to most problems is the simplest one, and that doing nothing will usually
result in doing damage.
“They have the ability to trust their gut and realise that the only way of knowing
if something will work is to try it. If only the rest would take a leaf out of their
book and stop thinking and act.’
