Download Workshop agenda, deconstructing the brand

MODELS, METAPHORS AND CLIENT
RELATIONS: THE NEGOTIATED
MEANINGS OF ADVERTISING
WRITTEN BY TIMOTHY D. MALEFYT
PRESENTATION BY LEAH HEYMAN
OVERVIEW:
• Advertising is socially constructed
• His aim is to present advertising as a “hot-blooded activity performed by a range of
people”
• Clarifies that the world of advertising must be treated as a social process, not a product
• Chapter focuses on the relations between advertising agencies and their clients and how
the agencies attempt to moderate tension
UNCERTAINTY OF THE ADVERTISING WORLD
• “Because the marketing world in which advertising operates is so uncertain and unstable,
the value placed on managing impressions and directing human relations is at an all time
high” (139).
• There are countless ways in which a campaign can be derailed, haulted, or ruined during
the process
• Strategies are frequently dropped altogether mid way through development
UNCERTAINTY OF THE ADVERTISING WORLD:
COMPETITION
• Increased competition among agencies
 battle to capture consumer’s share of
mind
• Agencies often increase spending on
consumer advertising even in declining
markets. Why?
UNCERTAINTY OF THE AD WORLD: COMPETITION
• “The marketing climate breeds an environment of such
intense competition that agencies and marketers may
lose focus on the consumer and fixate on rival firms”
(142).
UNCERTAINTY IN AD WORLD: DECREASED CLIENT
LOYALTY
• The average contract commitment of eleven years in the US has now dipped to around
two and a half
• Overall advertising spending among corporations in the US has declined by 7 per cent,
the worst decline in forty years.
• As a consequence, the top 200 US agencies in 2001 eliminated 21,750 jobs
• The urgency to maintain client relationships and seek new ones increased
• How do agencies combat competition and marketplace instability?
ACCOUNT PLANNING
• To “make an agency sizzle,” responsibility lies heavily in the hands of the account planning
department
• “Account planning helps generate new business by demonstrating an agency’s strategic
competency through its proprietary marketing approaches and brand and consumer
models “(143).
WHAT DOES AN ACCOUNT PLANNER DO?
• Discovers consumers’ emotional connections to products and brands
• Acts as insight expert to the consumer
• Acts as ‘partner’ to client
• Presents proprietary models that engage social interaction
• Express ideas in language that evokes shared emotion
• Ultimate goal: create a longer-lasting relationship with the client
THE WORKSHOP PROCESS
• Describes the typical advertising process from start to finish:
• Workshop agenda, deconstructing the brand, mapping and owning a human need
• How agencies build affinity and demonstrate competence via maps and models of
equivalence, and metaphors of war
• Gives details about how each team at the agency breaks down consumer needs via each
step
IN THE WORKSHOP
• Breakdown of the initial stage
• How each department understands the consumer
• Many use the consumer model pyramid due to its simple design and magnanimous
understanding of consumer motivation for products
• Others also use Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs
DECONSTRUCTING THE BRAND
• Goal: enhance relations between agency and client and identify brand’s core essence
• A brand briefing takes place
• In this example, Smirkov is the brand in mind
• Teams start creating brand pyramids to dissect the attributes, benefits, and values that
match the target consumer’s needs
• Everyone reconvenes and ultimately, the client decides on the brand image
MAPPING AND OWNING A HUMAN NEED
• Goal: agency and client to agree on strategic position for the brand that distinguishes it
from rivals
• Final task of the day, most important task. Also causes most debate
• Agency presents a consumer needs map
• After all is said and done, the agency has showed competence, and has also created
unique and ownable position for the brand
WHY ARE THESE IMPORTANT?
• “Each mode of communication reveals how the agency, intentionally and unintentionally,
manages impressions to build affinity and demonstrate its competence. What appears as
friendly cooperation and lively discussion aimed at carving out a brand identity is more
likely social communication that is symbolically and pragmatically directed to achieve
certain end” (152).
MAPS: WHY THEY MATTER
• Symbolic meanings
• the mapping of strategic positions and the making of consumer and brand models
illustrate the way marketers collectively imagine their consumer domain
• Mapping is a strong tool for creating affinity
• Transforming human motivations into objective marketing facts on the map is a way of
ordering, containing and homogenizing them
MODELS: WHY THEY MATTER
• Symbolic meanings
• The pyramid models of consumer and brand work another way
• “They pave a way for the agency to transform the consumer and brand into entities of
comparable equalities” (153).
• When human needs are ranked and ordered through a binary type of representation,
they become complementary to brand benefits that are ranked and ordered in the same
way
• Building models is how the agency can gain control over the client
METAPHORS
• The importance of using metaphoric language to maximize interaction with clients
• metaphors used in group discussions and team building exercises do not help clarify
brand objectives or market positions, but, instead, rally feelings of affinity among all
present
• Ex: war metaphor, the director of account planning rallies participants bydescribing longrange marketing objectives in terms of ‘targeting’ the consumer
and increasing market ‘penetration.’ He claims that taking a ‘harder’ look at theconsumer
data will ‘strike the brand message home.
METAPHORS OF WAR
• Example: War Metaphor
• The director of account planning rallies participants by describing long-range marketing
objectives in terms of ‘targeting’ the consumer and increasing market ‘penetration.’
• He claims that taking a ‘harder’ look at the consumer data will ‘strike the brand message
home.
• The goal, he continues, is to achieve ‘campaign objectives’ by ‘carving out’ a unique ‘brand
territory’ against the competition
• Why might using these metaphors of war be
productive?
RATIONALE
• general familiarity of war to participants
• its use as a call to action
• it allows for corresponding metaphors of possession and containment.
IN ACTION
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkzAgsOQJQE