Innovation by SIT

As a budding copywriting student in the Watford College of Advertising, I used to wonder how I too could create ads like Stella Artois’ “Reassuringly expensive” campaign.

No matter how hard I tried to be witty, original and persuasive, few of my concepts ever seemed to quite resemble those magnificent campaigns that graced our screens and magazines. Bruised but not (totally) beaten, I limped off to become an account planner, where from close distance I watched my colleagues in the creative department bash out their wares week in, week out. What was their secret? What was I missing?

We are now in 2003 and I am just about to read a mind-expanding article that will radically change the way I think about advertising. The article, entitled “The Fundamental Templates of Quality Ads” , offers a revelatory perspective about the way award-winning ads are created. You can probably guess it is not written in Madison Avenue. The authors, a team of researchers from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, have made a fascinating discovery. Not only have they discovered a set of patterns that repeatedly pop up in award-winning advertisements, but they have succeeded in designing a methodology for imitating these patterns. For a moment, I feel like I’ve stumbled into a Magician’s Training camp…”this is how we saw the assistant in two, and yes, this is where we hide the rabbit”.
To quote Professor Jacob Goldenburg, one of the authors and a founding father of SIT®:

“…Creative ideation is a highly complex process…which is difficult to formalize and control. Evidently, even in a complex thinking context certain patterns of creativity may emerge. Relying on such observed patterns may help in “organizing” the creative process by promoting routes that have been proven to lead to productive ideas and avoiding those that do not.”

All of a sudden I see the Stella Artois campaign in a completely new light (that lessens its magic, but in no way its appeal). There is a simple, robust logic behind this ad. It’s the logic that explains why a Stella drinker will not think twice about cracking open a bottle of Stella on the sparkling bodywork of his new BMW or use his beautiful B&O hi-fi as a make-shift bottle opener for his favourite Belgium brew.

Like a Victorian botanist, SIT would classify, describe and name the patterns they identified: this particular one is called Extreme Effort. In the manner of the many other ads that follow this pattern, we see the consumer go to some outrageous length or make some personal sacrifice to get hold of the advertised product. A villager will risk catching the plague for a sip of beer, or a prisoner happily accepts solitary confinement as long as he is with his bottle, and a tongue dislodges from its owner’s mouth to track down an ice cold beer.

Viktor Kayam once famously announced in an ad campaign for Remington shavers (funny how it is ads from the 80’s that most readily stick in my mind) “I liked this shaver so much I bought the company”. In my case, I liked the tools so much I joined the company, teaching ad agencies how to make use of these tools and promoting the belief that “creativity can be learned” (read Peter Souter’s article). Working in the field, I’ve become a pattern-o-phile, always on the look out for new patterns or patterns in patterns. For example, why do we see a higher than average number of Extreme Effort type ads in beer advertising?

In my view, Ad patterns seem to evolve by natural selection. Some patterns simply suit the marketing challenges of certain types of products or the shifting mentality of the consumer (as he becomes more marketing-weary) better than others. In the case of beer (or soft drinks and snack foods for that matter), real product difference is hard to find among the hundreds of competing brands. As a beautifully self-ironic TV commercial for Carlton Draft beer tells us “Made from beer”. Thus, rather than wave the white flag, creators of quality advertising, have found a way to by-pass the issue altogether. By exaggerating the efforts made to get that “icy beer” they have found a neat way to suggest desire, without having to really explain the reasons behind it. And we, the consumers, seem to play our role faithfully time and again. When we see someone making some super-human effort for a product, we assume it must be worth that effort because…well… just because! Thus Extreme Effort, plays on a little psychological deceit. As long as the pattern works, it stays in production.

SIT has to date identified around 12 patterns behind award-winning advertising which it has turned into thinking tools. With time, some early discoveries like Extreme Promise or Extreme Promise Inverted have faded into history, while others have been discovered, Extreme Need and Absurd Literalism. Some often appear with interesting mutations. Every year we scan the Cannes Lions awards to see which patterns are popping up where (spotting a tool is, as you can imagine, an interpretative art, but we think we’ve honed it). A pattern like Absurd Alternative will recess one year, and then the following “account for” many of the Gold Lion winners. I haven’t identified a pattern for this yet.

Those familiar with SIT’s Advertising Tools often fall into two groups: the yays and the nays. Before I am assailed by a flood of criticism by the “Anti-Advertising Formulas League” I will end this blog with a little qualification. In the numerous workshops I’ve run with advertising professionals, I’ve gained a more rounded picture about the benefits and limitations of using the tools. Although for some, they’re a kind of ad “cookie-cutter”, I prefer to see them as very useful catalysts for unleashing lots of fresh ideas quickly. And because SIT’s tools follow “routes that have been proven to lead to productive ideas and avoiding those that do not” they continue to help creative teams in dark offices the world over, deal with the stresses of having to produce a consistent flow of good ads.

As anyone who has ever tried to create great advertising knows, it is a “Reassuringly Difficult” task. Nevertheless, using the SIT “tools” can make the effort a little less extreme. Try them and make up your own mind.