I recently wrote an article about a career train wreck that happened when reviewing ad concepts with Larry Ellison — Oracle co-founder, long-time CEO, and now chairman. In response, several people requested more detail on how I approached the job. Here’s a taster.
When I was originally asked to take on leadership of global advertising, I quickly and loudly refused.
Why my hesitancy?
First, Larry Ellison is famously mercurial — he was once voted the tech executive most likely to be a Bond villain. Second, he is very hands-on with advertising creative.
As a result, the life expectancy of advertising VPs at Oracle was roughly equivalent to that of a goldfish in the hands of a five-year-old boy.
After I dodged the offer, recruiters pursued outside candidates for three months without success. Eventually my boss knocked on my door, and asked one question: “Do you like regular paychecks?”
I answered, “Um, of course, yes.”
“Good,” he responded, “because you are now officially in charge of advertising.”
Five Concepts in 48 Hours (Or Less)
The most stressful part of the job was producing advertising creative concepts for review with the CEO.
Typically, I would get a call on Tuesday saying, “Larry wants to review new ad concepts for Product X on Thursday”. In most cases, no other guidance would be provided.
48 hours isn’t remotely enough time to engage a creative agency — they would just hang up on me. And we were too cheap to pay for one.
48 hours also isn’t enough time to follow a mature creative process: generate a creative brief, review with stakeholders, assemble a team of writers and designers, brainstorm concepts, finalize ads and build out formal pitch materials.
Instead, I figured out a brute force way to drive creative concepts. Here it is:
- Machete Your Way Thru Datasheets, Powerpoints, White Papers
Before you talk to the product gurus, you need to get up to speed on the technology and how it delivers meaningful benefits. Once you’re done, shove it all into the farthest corner of your desk because it’s not usable. These materials are almost always written in corporate-speak and stuffed with jargon and platitudes (“empower business transformation by re-envisioning processes as agile change agents”).
- Interview the Experts
Find the people who can communicate with other human beings in everyday language — they might be in product marketing, maybe sales, sometimes in development. Ask them to talk to you about their product one-to-one and face-to-face.
98% of the time, they will use entirely different language than the published materials. They speak casually, they deploy analogies, they bad-mouth the competitors, and most importantly they speak with passion about their baby (their product).
Capture that language, that passion and you have your ad concepts. In my case, I jot down key phrases that grab my attention and then I connect the phrases together. I draw rudimentary sketches that make the technology understandable.
- Boil Down 17 Features to One Differentiator (Per Concept)
The product experts are in love with all 17 new features. But each ad concept needs to communicate only one unique capability (that is valuable to the target buyers).
If there are three unique differentiators, then you immediately have three ad concepts. Multiple those by drafting alternative versions: “Safe” (everyone expects this one), “Stretch” (slightly pushing the boundaries of comfort) and “Wild” (breaking outside the box).
- Include the Obvious Bad Idea
Sometimes we knew that Larry was already attached to an idea. And sometimes we knew that it wouldn’t work in a small Wall Street Journal front page ad unit.
Naturally, he wouldn’t take our word for it — in his place, I wouldn’t either.
So we made sure our concepts included at least one example of these known fails. Only by seeing it live would he be able to acknowledge the problem.
- “Kill Your Darlings”
This phrase is a cliche for writers… but it’s a cliche for a reason. Revisit all your concepts and be brutal. That ad concept that you loved from the first moment you imagined it? It might be time to acknowledge that it just doesn’t work in the space you have.
Here’s where you go from 10 concepts to three or five. More is not better. Too few is also not better.
- It Doesn’t Have to be Pretty
When it comes time to convert paper ideas into proper creative, be careful. Unsurprisingly, creative people want to be creative… sometimes at the price of impact.
I believe great creative combines strong copy (messaging) together with attention-grabbing visuals to maximize impact. I’ll go out on a limb and argue that great ad copy with weak visuals can still succeed. But weak copy on strong creative is rarely successful.
- Finally, a Live Editing Session
The last step of our crazy process was a live editing session in the boardroom with Larry. While I laid out print versions of our five concepts, a designer (in my era either Darci Terlizzi or Jodi Cordova) would hook a Macbook up to the boardroom display.
Larry would quickly review the ad concepts and choose one that he thought best. The designer pulled the concept up on the large screen and Larry would dictate changes. We used to call it “Bonzai” editing… cutting, trimming, shaping until the idea was as tight as possible. I became very good at this — but Larry often took it to another level.
Wrapping Up
With the success of this brute force process, I was able to shift executives from expecting two-hour turnarounds to accepting 48-hour turnarounds. It is my sincere hope that the next generation of creative leaders can move to two-week or two-month turnarounds that allow true creativity. Best wishes to them!
P.S. >> I am not the ‘gentleman’ brandishing the sledgehammer in the above photo. I have the same hairstyle but less tattoos. 🙂