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On Strategy Showcase
Planning for Effective Outcomes 2026 #1: CMOs on writing the client brief
00:43:28
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- [00:00]
A
This special series is brought to you by the Effie's for over 55 years, Effie has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. They lead the way with the largest, most prestigious marketing effective awards across 130 markets worldwide and the EFFIE Index ranks the most effective brands, marketers and agencies globally. But EFFIE is more than awards. They're dedicated to helping all marketers understand what makes marketing effective by equipping them with the insights, tools and inspiration they need to succeed. Learn more@effie.org that's e f f I e.org and by tracksuit, the affordable, always on brand tracking tool that helps marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working? Companies pay $100,000 or more for brand tracking, which is out of the question for many modern brands. Tracksuit provides brand tracking without that big price tag. Their in house research experts do the heavy lifting, using best in class practices to craft your survey and get you results fast. Check them out@gotracksuit.com that's gotracksuit.com now back to the show. Here's the thing about this conversation that struck me. These are three sophisticated top marketers and the insight they return to again and again isn't about creativity or media or technology. It's about organizational design. What George Felix is describing at Chili's, what Colin Kavanaugh is describing at Pernod Ricard, and what Adam Kraw is describing at Amazon, it's the same. The work that determines whether a marketing investment succeeds or fails happens mostly before any creative person touches happens in rooms where finance and commercial teams are arguing about portfolio allocation and P and L scenarios. There's a real tension tension here that's worth sitting with. We have an entire industry built around evaluating the outcomes, but what the CMOs are telling us is that the upstream decisions are doing most of the work. And then there is the prioritization problem. While Colin names most clearly as fewer better choices. Think about that for a second. Fewer, better choices. Organizations are structurally biased towards doing more things. Everyone has a budget to defend and everyone wants to protect or champion their idea. Saying no requires a courage that's genuinely hard to sustain. What I find most interesting, though, is what all three of them said about feedback, and it's something we can all relate to. Adam and George both flagged it as where things most commonly can go wrong. Too many voices, too many conflicting signals. Which suggests that the real bottleneck in effective marketing isn't necessarily the quality of the idea. It's the quality of the decision making structure around it. It has to be better protected. So here's the first conversation in our six part series. It's a focus on the very beginning, the point when the objectives are framed, the challenges are defined and the priorities are set all within the client brief. Let me know your thoughts@hellonstrategyshowcase.com I hope you enjoy. I'd love to know what's happening at the earliest stages. If we assume a calendar year is the starting point. I guess say January 1st is the starting point when you're launching. What is happening internally for you at those earliest stages and what is expected of you. I mean I got to think number one, you have to be evaluating what has happened last year.
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B
No, it's exactly right. And when you said assume it starts in January, I wish it started in January. It was a nice easy cadence, follows the nice calendar year, but it's happening throughout the year. And you know, we do have those milestones and key points in the year where we're kind of doing the, the deep dive and the rigor. But yeah, we're constantly evaluating campaign performance. We call it our operating plan. That's where we start. And it's at the business level. Our organization is, if you think of it as a central marketing organization, we have multiple verticals that we are in charge of the brand marketing for. And so we have to pull all of them.
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A
Such as what would be examples of that example?
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B
So myself, I lead prime, but we also have the Amazon retail brand, if you will, we work with the Amazon health team. And so those are probably the three big. And you know, I recently did the Alexa super bowl campaign. So that was thrown into the mix, you know, at a different part of the year as well. And so all of those brands have to come together as a central marketing team. We manage a portfolio. What's the investment level look like? How are we dividing our investments up? What are our business priorities that we need to focus on for the year? And all of that's coming together with all the inputs that we're getting throughout the year. Brand health trackers, business health trackers, macro environment, you know, economic competitive pressures, all of those sorts of things have to get pulled together into a nice tight six page document with clear direction that we can.
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A
Then that's an Amazon thing, right? You guys have from Bezos down, it was always about a simple document that people could read in 15 or 20 minutes right before they even start talking.
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I will say having been at Amazon for coming up on seven years. I have a hard time with PowerPoint presentations. I miss this Word document, whether it's printed out or on my screen, to be able to read. But it forces you to really think through the strategy, articulate it in a way that if you're not a marketer, you understand what the plan is and how it's going to address the needs of that partner.
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A
Because one of the things that, that's, I think important to draw a distinction between is the business strategy and the marketing strategy. So those business goals that are coming down, are you given goals, business goals, are you, are you helping define those business goals?
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B
I think it's a combination of both. Some are, you know, kind of given, given, given down. Those are probably at the top, the senior leadership level and those are the big goals. Those are the main goals that our leadership team is most focused on. And then we'll have other goals that more at the team level. Think of those as like the inputs to the bigger goal. What are those maybe more tactical goals or tactical initiatives that we're going to do or execute against in order to achieve the bigger goal.
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A
Right. So that could be increased subscriptions. That could be a subscription goal. It could be even more granular than that.
- [07:27]
B
Yeah, it could be that type of goal. It could be we have a deadline to hit on a big strategy. Say we've got something new and it could be, hey, we want to launch X strategy. But we've got milestones along the way, critical stakeholders, alignment on a document before you even go write a creative brief to go make an ad or a marketing campaign.
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A
So Colin, how is it inside? Pernod Ricard, what's the process like for you?
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C
No, it's pretty similar to what Adam was saying. I mean, we have a fairly robust planning process. You know, we would typically work even, you know, 18 months, 24 months out at times on, on various different things. Certainly on innovation, it's, it's, it's a three to four year pipeline that we're looking at in our, in our business. But I would say just to build on what the, the guys were saying, like the initial stages can be pretty uncomfortable because you're kind of faced with the reality of having to make in some cases some pretty tough choices. So, you know, in our case we manage a portfolio of brands. So very early on in the planning process, we will have a high level P and L scenario at a total business level that we'd be looking at. We may even have a couple of different scenarios in terms of top line growth, market share, and then the investment that will go with that across the portfolio, where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, is when you have to start getting into those, those tougher conversations around what choices to make on specific brands or even within a brand. Then you know, are we going to focus more efforts on above the line versus below the line tactics? So I think the key for me is making sure we involve all the key stakeholders up front. I would say our exec team are involved up front. But when we really get into the nitty gritty of it, it's three functions really working together. It's marketing, finance and commercial. And those three functions really are the engine and driving the planning process for us. And it's equal ownership across the three. I would say actually, I mean marketing might take more of a lead in terms of the planning process itself in our case, but finance is very engaged, very involved. We absolutely need them at the table. They hold the purse string so you have to have them firmly engaged. And then commercially, you know, actually just a few weeks ago we had a meeting with our commercial leadership team, our marketing leadership team coming together, planning for our next fiscal and really having those upstream conversations on some of the choices we're going to make. And Adam, I hear you on the PowerPoint as well. I had an old boss of mine back in Ireland who used to say everything always looks perfect in PowerPoint. If we all lived in the world of PowerPoint, we'd all be living in the perfect world. So having finance and having commercial at the table also makes sure that everything is quite grounded and that we're making sure that the plans flow the whole way through from what might be very media led campaigns right through to the shelf to the bar, to the event, to the experiential event that we're doing. So I've certainly found in my years that if you don't involve those key functions upstream, you're on hiding to nothing. I would say is it sort of
- [11:00]
A
shark tank like where you're pitching your ideas, how do you keep it productive? And then do you find that you have to advocate more for marketing and to defend marketing's role, do you have to fight for those dollars?
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B
Are you.
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A
And then what's that dynamic like? Because it can't be easy. Everybody wants a piece of the pie.
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D
We're again in an interesting place where when I got here four years ago we were not. Chili's had not been advertising for nationally for a few years and they'd come out of COVID and, and just kind of change strategies and diverted things away. And so we've been kind of building things back up over the last four years. So that's been an interesting journey. You know, year one was, how do we divert some investments we were making in other channels and other places to at least get a proof of concept to say, if we go back on this is what it can do for the business? And so from there, we have built, you know, each year just kind of tried to keep building on that. And so that's been helpful because the whole. Our whole leadership team's been along for that journey. And so we've been along. You know, it's kind of rare that I got to flip the switch on. You know, usually, you know, usually you're. You're always lapping something else that you've done the year before and trying to figure out the effectiveness. And what did that drive versus this. This was probably the purest case of saying, hey, marketing. Turns out marketing does work. And so that was. That was very helpful. So a unique situation. But, you know, as we go, as we go forward, I, I. For me, the biggest thing I've learned in this role is, and the biggest help for me is that I've gotten very involved in our. With our operations and partnering with our operations teams. And in my case, that means being in restaurants and really understanding what our team members are doing. And the best. The biggest thing I believe that's driven the ROI for our marketing is that we have invested a ton in improving our experience for our guests. And that's been improving the. The facility, like the building itself, like the restaurants, making sure those are in good shape, making sure we have enough people staffed in the restaurants to take care of our guests, and making sure we're investing in higher food quality and better drinks and all those things. And so I feel like in the past, I might. I might be like more of that shark tank vibe of like, oh, I need marketing instead of this now. I think the discussions are, I have a more holistic view where, you know, I might, you know, I'm probably more willing to give on some of the investments if I know that the investments we're making are going to make the experience better. And so when I drive people into the restaurants, they're going to have a better experience, and it's gonna. It's gonna create that flywheel. So I think in. In some of my past lives, I didn't have that. I didn't have enough of a broader, like, a broad enough perspective when I was in those conversations. And I think now Just, you know, partnering with our operations team has given me a little more sense of like what the trade offs are like. Yeah, sure we could go invest more in marketing but we're just driving people into an experience that isn't going to be as good as we want it
- [14:01]
C
to be for us. I don't think it's less shark tank, it's more co creation. If you know, I'd articulated more that way. Like I was saying earlier, just very much working in collaboration with our commercial team, with our finance team. Look, what I find very important in our business as well is just that commercial grounding. So spending time in the field, spending time with our distributors, you know we work through a three tier system in the US so everything is sold through distributors here in the US and spending time with them and you know, just what you were saying George, in terms of spending time in the restaurants for us it's, it's similar, it's like getting out into bars, getting into retail accounts across the country and just being very, very ground. We've done a lot of work at the back end internally on marketing effectiveness. We have our own tool that measures everything marketing effectiveness wise, from above the line campaigns through to below the line tactics. It's a tool we call matrix and I suppose that's able to give our finance team some reassurance as to the effectiveness of how we're spending our dollars and being able to prove that. So we're measuring return on ad spend roi, of course, we're measuring all the brand health metrics as well across the portfolio and then we would always look at the sales drivers as well. So value, market share, household penetration is one of our biggest KPIs we look at across the portfolio. So I think we've done a better job as marketeers within Perno Ricar of upskilling ourselves and being able to demonstrate the ROI of our marketing sprint across, across the brands and then within each brand we look at a touch point by touch point. It's a tool that allows us to optimize as we go through the year as well. So it's quite useful when we're having those higher level conversations just to kind
- [16:06]
B
of build on both Colin and George. I think the theme is that we have a lot of partners and stakeholders and they're in different functions and I think it's easy and having been on the agency side it's easy like client, go sell this thing. It's the most amazing thing but it's, it's, we're having to get a Lot of people in alignment. And it can be tough, it can be challenging because they have, they have different concerns, they have different challenges. You know, that healthy debate. Amazon has this, you know, principle of ownership. And if you have the right recommendation with the data to back it up and you debate, if people, if they have questions, it creates what I think it creates the momentum to be successful because everybody's part of that discussion. We're very much an ownership culture and we work together. I can remember on many campaigns of having stakeholder partners who, you know, may not agree with the approach that we're taking. And so we work together, we understand, listen to what their challenges are, what our plan is. And we build, we build consensus and alignment. I was told early on, I think early on of, we're not asking for approval, we're asking for alignment because alignment is a lot stronger of a bond in the relationship than just approval because people can disagree with an approval, but when you're aligned, it's all systems go and everybody's moving forward together.
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A
So what are the common friction points though? I think I can imagine that at a time that you have a goal that you need to achieve, you probably know in your heart that your spend level that you're allocated is not going to get you there. For example, how do you resolve that?
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D
The spend question, like, or, you know, like if you're trying to get after a particular goal, like, again, I think it really comes down to the level of collaboration you have in that room or with those stakeholders. And you know, I think we've all probably seen examples where it is probably not as healthy and more adversarial and, and you're, you don't have that. But I think, you know, just in my, in my current case, I think it's been really helpful. Like for instance, like one example, I think with my finance group and I, and I completely agree with, with Colin, like, if you're not, if you don't, if you're not lockstep with your finance team, then, you know, good luck. And you know, thankfully, you know, I've got a finance leadership that like really wants. Like, they're very supportive of marketing and they want to lean in. And I think what, what has helped and I think what sometimes marketers might do a disservice with the finance team is, is maybe not, you know, like kind of over complicating, like what we need to do and like what we, what our job is to deliver. And I think you start going too far down the metrics funnel with, with Missing the things that like the finance people are really going to care. In my instance of are you driving traffic? Are you driving people into our, into our restaurants? When I turn on marketing, can I see that, you know, more people are coming into our restaurants or you know, with the work you're doing on the menu or people buying the higher, higher ticket items and the premium tequilas and things like that. Right. So like sales and traffic. For me it's like I've like tried to root everything we do in. Number one objective is sales and traffic. Yes. I'm going to also show you how we're building this brand over time and why the things we're doing are also building long term benefits. But I can't skip over that first part and I think that has helped ground everybody. And we're not trying to, this isn't smoke and mirrors over here. We are going to commit when we invest this money and we're in lockstep on if we invest this much, then we would expect this much return. So I think sometimes as marketers we over complicate like the equation and that can sometimes cause some friction with a finance partner.
- [20:07]
C
I think where it can get more difficult to work and get more challenging is if there's not a clear narrative. Like your point on complexity, George, I think is spot on. And that's something we're always pushing against. And I know as marketeers we sometimes can drive some of that complexity if we're not careful. All with the best intent. So it's really having that clarity and having a really strong narrative around why we're making certain choices and what our ultimate goals and objectives are. I think where you land yourself in trouble as well is it's back to prioritization. Right. If you're trying to do too many different things that could be across a portfolio of brands or even on one brand, maybe we just have too many, we're trying to do too much
- [20:57]
A
all
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C
with the right intent. But it's really having that rigor and discipline to actually we talk a lot about fewer, better choices, particularly when it comes to the marketing mix. That can sometimes be really challenging. It can be very challenging for our marketing teams. But ultimately I think that's what you, you need to drive effectiveness. So it's rooted in all the data, it's rooted in all the evidence that we have. But it's making sure you have that clear narrative I think for me is one of the key success factors. And if the narrative isn't clear, it's generally for a very, very Good reason. It's probably because you don't have that clarity.
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B
Right.
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C
So you really need to pay attention to that.
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B
You know, as Colin said, I think it's a prioritization exercise. You know, you have. Again, going back to the first question, you have a roadmap, you have an operating plan. How have you pri. There's a lot of rigor that goes into that operating plan. And if you, and, and if there wasn't, or if the narrative wasn't clear enough, then you get into debates. Now things change. The, the, the world around us changes. And sometimes something that was below the line, which is not. No, it's not right now, can come above the line because the dynamic has changed. And so again, you know, I kind of go back to that principle of being an owner. As an owner, what would you do? And is this now become a bigger priority? And those are the debates that we're having. Is, is this a bigger priority than something else? And you have to be ruthless about it because there's finite resources, whether that's, you know, the budget you have, the media spend you have, the people you have, and all those sort of factors have to come into the play. I would hope that we're not getting into debates on what's our media spend is our budget. Right. Because hopefully that's happened at the operating plan. Now those things can move around, but in, knock on wood, you're not having to make cuts, though. Those happen in the course of business and those sorts of things. But really, I'd agree with Colin. It's a prioritization exercise, and that's where the debates are happening.
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A
So it sounds like that internal process, you've learned how to do it diplomatically, you've learned how to do it effectively. So if we turn it around now, we start looking about how do you then begin to communicate that externally to your partners? Let's talk about what is referred to as the client brief. I don't know how, and I'd love to know how you guys think of it, but there comes a point where you've got to talk to people outside. What have you learned is the most critical thing for you to get right in that briefing document? Maybe it's a conversation, maybe it's a document, but what's the most critical thing for you?
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B
We call them the Integrated Creative brief, or icb. We love our acronyms. Isn't that also a missile? And, you know, we sweat them. We sweat them pretty hard. I think it's because we have a nice mix of folks who have Been brand marketers for a long time within our organization as well as folks who've been on the agency side. So we're able to think really creatively and we know how important that brief is. Whether it's internally. We have an internal marketing or internal creative group where we can execute campaigns ourselves, but we also work with external partners. And so that document needs to be as inspiring for creative teams as it is informative of the business challenge, the context, the message. So if I were to kind of boil it down into those kind of, you know, things that are super important are got to be clear on what that customer insight is. What, what, what, what is their mindset, what, what are they thinking about? What do we want to communicate to them about X, you know, campaign X, you know, X product, what have you and why that's compelling. You know, it's, it's kind of classic, you know, what's those, what are those RTVs? What are those reasons that the, the customer should care about whatever you're going to say to them in order to
- [25:28]
A
get to a great brief, it's got to also involve market research about who you're trying to connect with ultimately, which used to be a job that the agency was deeply involved in. But it sounds like you guys are maybe doing a lot of that up front before because maybe that's feeding into your operational discussions a lot further upstream.
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C
Yeah, I'd say, Fergus, it's probably a bit of both, to be honest. I mean, I still highly value the strategist role at agency level. I still think that's a key role. Right. So you can have your internal strategist and your external strategists. We have a lot of great teams internally that spend a lot of time. To your point, I would say, Adam, building on what you were talking about, like the power of a really strong insight for me is key and critical in the briefing then it's just been clear on the expectations with the agency up front. But I don't think.
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A
Meaning what, Colin, the expectations just in
- [26:40]
C
terms of deliverables, what exactly we want by when. And I think also what I've learned as well is just being clear on the process, the decision making process and being upfront with the agency on that as well. I mean, we all work in matrix to organization, so we have an internal decision process that we need to handle and sometimes it's just helpful to give the agency context on how that works and who's involved in the decision making and just being clear with them upfront on that. But what I was going to say just on the strategy side is you have your internal strategists, your external strategists, but I think the agency strategists can bring a huge amount to the table when it comes to, obviously there's the creative, but just some of the more nuanced pieces around. Culture, I think, is where I see our agencies really step in and add a lot of value, which we wouldn't always have line of sight of internally. So I think it's a bit of both, to be honest. Fergus, to answer your question.
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A
Interesting.
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D
Yeah. I mean, I would. Plus one to the importance and the key parts of the brief. I'll say for as long as I've been doing this, I still think writing a good brief is probably the hardest thing we do, and I still find it very difficult. So as I'm coaching junior members of my team, you know, it's like, hey, this is, this is not easy stuff. And so we've actually taken the approach of, you know, we, we've brought on Fergus, you know, my good friend Britton Taylor. Like, he's, you know, an ex Wynton Kennedy strategist that I've worked with. And now he's on his own. And, and so we basically have, you know, we've set up an arrangement with him where he's. He's going to write us X number of briefs a year. And it really helps having that perspective because, you know, we can bring a lot of that. But I think having having his experience and the way that he can craft it to, to the earlier point of, you know, what Adam was saying, like, you know, the agencies often say, okay, this is, this is now in a really good spot for us. We don't have to do a ton more there. And it helps us because I think I'm a big believer in the outside perspective that, that the agency can bring, whether that's a freelancer or, you know, an aor, whoever you work with. And so that's been a big unlock for us. Just knowing that it's so critical that if you get that, you know, if you get the brief right, the, the likelihood of success is so much higher going forward. So I, you know, I think that's. That's been a big, A big one for us.
- [29:26]
A
That is, that is pretty unique. I think that's pretty unique, George, because, I mean, you work at least. I mean, I think of your lead agency as being mischief. They do terrific work.
- [29:37]
D
Yeah, we have two. We work with another group called Advertising Time, which are some guys that We've worked with John Marshall and Matt Sorrell that used to work at Wyman Kennedy, Same thing. They've kind of gone on.
- [29:49]
A
On their own.
- [29:50]
D
And so they do quite a bit of work for us as well. And so both of those groups, you know, we.
- [29:56]
A
We.
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D
We use this process with the briefing in the case of mischief, Obviously, then Jeff McCrory and his team take that input and they do amazing work, you know, and we. We want that strategic lens that they bring. What's the.
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B
What's the.
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A
What's the distinction in your mind between what Jeff's work, what Jeff does to that brief, versus what Britain does?
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D
I think Britain helps us distill the challenge, you know, that we're. That we're going after, and what's the business opportunity? What's the challenge? You know, how do you. How do you contextualize that way in a way that is easy for them to receive and then begin their process? I think what Jeff's team does a very good job of is takes that kind of open challenge and then codifies it and says, here's. Here's a few ways we would. We would go after it. And they take that and. And they give us distinct, like, call it three distinct directions. We could go that are grounded in cultural insights or other things that they're seeing and give us an avenue to pick from. And then from there, then it gets handed off to the creative. After we make that choice, then the creative team can go do their thing. So I think there's. There is some nuance there, but each step, you know, should. Should refine it along the way, because
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A
you've built a rhythm with somebody like Britain. Because I think you worked with him back even he worked on the Old Spice work at.
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D
Yeah, yeah, I worked with him, I think, on three different brands prior to this. And so, yeah, we have a. We have a shorthand. And I think, Adam, like, you're. You know, I think that's a secret weapon is having people on the brand side that have had agency experience. I have one in Jesse Johnson, who's a VP on my team. Again, from my past experience working with Wieden. It's. It's such a.
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A
It.
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D
It's such a, like, secret weapon is the best way I could put it, because they have both perspectives. And I think, you know, I think one thing Jesse can do, even with our agency partners, is explain. Hey, guys, when I was on the agency side, I thought, this is all they thought about all day. And now that I'm on the other side I can confirm it is only, you know, a very small portion of the day and there's all these other things that you got to think about and then vice versa. He can give us the, you know, the perspective of, you know, how do we. How do we set our agencies up for success? So I. I do think that having people on the brand, on the client side that do have a bit more insight into how the agencies operate and work is a pretty big advantage.
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A
So, I mean, Adam, I gotta go to you because you've got a similar setup where you've got people like Chris and Garrett. Right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That are. Tell us about the role that they play because they too, come with an amazing sensibility and, you know, both have been on the show.
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B
Yeah.
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A
They understand that sort of the need once it leaves the client's hands, so to speak.
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B
Yeah, no, they do. And, you know, I think the. And even Garrett and Chris bring different skills to the table. You know, Chris has such a deep research understanding and he's actually been a great partner of just the science behind, you know, mental availability category entry points. Ehrenberg, Bass Institute, you know, all of that, that great sort of literature and research and science that comes behind it. And so being able to infuse that into a brief and distill it into a way that is understandable by non researchers is great. In fact, the unique role that he can play, yes, he can write great creative briefs, but he can go take that knowledge that he has and share it across Amazon, because there's a lot of teams at Amazon that do marketing, but that we don't manage. But in our role as kind of a center of excellence, is how do we take what we know, our expertise and share that so we can scale that across a large organization where they're doing their own marketing campaigns and they may be doing mass advertising campaigns as well, that working with agencies. Hey, we've worked with some partners. How about we help you? Hey, when you write a brief, this is going to be important to those partners that you're working with. And being able to scale that expertise, I think is such a huge and unique role that folks like Garrett and Chris and Mitch, who are on that same team as well, but we can then also take that on the brands that we manage internally or with an agency. Kind of like George is saying with Jesse, it's like we speak your language, our creative team speak your language, our marketers speak your language, or brand planners speak your language, because we've been on that side of the table.
- [34:41]
A
Is that function necessary? Because that was a common friction point in working with agencies that by bringing some of that skill set in house, it creates a better set of outcomes for your goals.
- [35:00]
C
I think that's pretty spot on. I do think it creates a better set of outcomes, you know, similar to George and Adam. Like we've people internally that have worked on agency side as well and we find that really helpful. We've done a huge amount of work to upskill all our brand directors, our brand teams on brief writing. And it really is a skill. And I like the distillation image from earlier, like it's a triple or quadruple distillation at times to get you to that like really crisp, sharp, one page or two page brief. Right. That's a, that's a. There's a lot of work that goes into that, I think. Yeah, I think we've just found internalizing some of that, some of that know how has. Has been really beneficial to us. And it sort of raised the, it's raised everybody's game as a result, internally as well. Right. So I think that's where I see the real benefits of it.
- [36:02]
A
Do you think of yourselves as arbiters of taste, creative taste? Because I'm sure you're all aware of the fact that there's research out there that says that a large percentage, a majority of the creative product that gets out there will be defined as ineffective in meeting its goals. And there's different labels that are used to define that. So my question is, what role does taste play? Because an idea can't be effective if it's not a really good idea, well expressed. And who's determining that? Do you, as the leaders, serve that function?
- [36:43]
B
I would say for us it's, you know, we operate as a team. We have a chief creative officer who's Joe Shoesmith. She's a creative. It's her background and. But I would say that all of us have an equal role in, you know, making sure that we are meeting or exceeding our bar. And we bring teams from around the globe and they share work and we talk about it and we evaluate it and there are awards that are given out at the end of it to celebrate what we believe is creative excellence. But it's not just creative excellence, it's creative excellence that drives business results. So every team is getting up there and they're sharing a case study. So it's just like me sitting in the fe. Judging is, you know, what was the business challenge, what was the idea, what were the results? And it's a big forum and so you know, everyone, you know, folks get on a stage and they present and they click play and they share the case study video or play the spots or whatever it is. And then the crowd gets to ask questions to understand. And it's as much as sharing what our belief is on creativity and creative excellence that drives business results, but also an opportunity as someone who sits in a global role to say, oh wow, that thing they're doing in India is really cool. Could we do that in the US We've imported work from Japan. I worked with our team in Japan to launch our brand campaign. We loved it so much and we're like, do we think this could work in the US and we did some pre testing, got validation. It's run on television for almost a year now. And so that's a great mechanism for us to judge creativity but also be inspired by what other teams are doing around the world.
- [38:44]
A
Colin, the brief that you talked about earlier, you mentioned that was pretty critical to get right and I agree with you and I think a complaint that agencies commonly have, maybe not of you guys, but in general is that the brief can not be inspiring, can be dull, can be just a list of asks, who writes the brief inside your organization, who drafts it? Tell us about that. Back and forth. Is that you mentioned earlier that it's a, it's a pretty in depth process.
- [39:16]
C
Yeah.
- [39:16]
A
And then presents it.
- [39:18]
C
So we, we, I really want our own teams to own the brief. So typically the brief will be written by a brand director, so quite a senior, senior level person in the organization. It may even in many cases be co written with one of our brand VPs and ultimately, you know, if needs be, I'll give input on it as well. I think you really need quite a high level of seniority in the organization for when you're briefing. You know, we've done a bit of work with our agency partners as well on getting us getting feedback on ourselves as a client and how we operate as a client. And that's something that we've taken very, very seriously. So the clarity around the brief writing is key. And then the second thing I would say is just be careful not to have a multiplicity of stakeholders. I think in that creative process we need to be very clear on our end who are the two or three key stakeholders that are involved and not have too many stakeholders. I think my learning in the past on this is if you have too many stakeholders, that generally is a recipe for fairly mediocre work at the end of the day.
- [40:39]
A
At the end of this episode, we're going to have a second episode. The second episode, we have six total. But the second episode is going to be the people who are receiving the brief from you. The CSOs, the chief creative officers, the lead person on your account or for that particular product or whatever. Give me 30 seconds on what you want to make sure they understand clearly, Colin, and then I'll go to George and then to Adam. What either advice or encouragement or call outs would you sort of make for them to be, to be most effective on that brief?
- [41:22]
C
It's a great question. I. Are they clear on. I suppose I'd have a few things right. Are they clear on the audience that we've defined? Are they clear on the objectives we talked earlier about? The insight, for me, that's maybe one of the most critical pieces. Is that crystal clear for them? Inspire. You know, you want to see the, the eyes light up when we're having those conversations and for it not to feel like a, too much like a, a boardroom process.
- [41:57]
D
Along those lines, I would encourage them to call BS if they don't buy it, you know, like, like, you know, if it, if it doesn't feel like, if it feels manufactured, if it doesn't feel true, call bs because that conversation could lead to the right, to the right brief or make it better. And you're better off having that conversation early on than trying to have that mid process.
- [42:19]
A
Yeah, great point, Adam. To wrap us up.
- [42:21]
B
Well, I, I mean, Colin and George said it all, but I, I think, you know, just kind of building off of George's comment about asking questions is be curious, Be as curious about our business as we are. And I, again, as I was just saying earlier, I think call us if you have questions or you want to talk about anything. You know, shoot us an email. You don't, I guess we don't pick up phones anymore, but shoot an email. We'll jump on zoom, we'll talk it out and think of us as a partner, not as a, as a client. And because, you know, we're not perfect. Our, you know, if you have questions we want to clarify and have those open lines of communication.
- [43:12]
A
Adam Craw, Colin Kavanaugh, George Felix, thank you for your time today. It's been really great to chat with you guys. Thank you for coming on the show and being a part of this EFFIE series.
- [43:22]
B
Thank you.
- [43:23]
D
Thanks very much.
- [43:24]
A
We'll see everybody on the second episode, which will follow in a couple of weeks. Have a great day, everybody.