What do you get when you hire an agency to do ‘creative’?
Hello, your resident mind reader here. Don’t tell me, you’re sat down? I can sense the astonishment on your face; guess it’s just a gift I was born with.
Now, while I’m on a roll – read aloud the start of the below sentences, then wait for me to telepathically help you finish each before moving onto the next. Ready?
Hungry? Specsavers? It? But, how did I do that? Now, without me saying another word – what brand was behind each of those well-known thoughts? Bear with, I’ll telepath it over now –
Got it? Thought you might’ve.
But I guess I should come clean: the answer isn’t magic. Oh, and I’m not a mind reader, but you already knew that. The actual answer is something S3 know a lot about, the answer is: because creative advertising campaigns work.
Each of these big, overarching thoughts has enabled the businesses behind them to rise and outshine their competition, and where do those results begin? A creative agency, of course.
There’s a few ways to answer that – you’ll get new and improved results, higher brand recognition, the ability to form a connection with your consumers, lots of things, but they all come as an end result from the one thing you’ll get the most of: big, creative ideas. The most powerful advertising tool there is.
You might be reading this thinking, yeah sounds cool. But what does that even mean? Give us a couple minutes of your time and we’ll tell you how it goes. 120, 119, 118…
Once a business problem or client brief has been given to a Planner/Strategist, these calculated wizards identify the best way to solve the issue, then translating it into a creative brief containing key details that’ll help our department solve the same problem, creatively. The most important of which is the single-minded proposition, also known as the one thing we want our audience to take away from whatever form of marketing communication we produce. The most important, compelling reason a consumer will buy the product/service we’re selling.
Then, and only then, we (the creative team) get our hands on the brief. Put simply, it’s our job to come up with imaginative ideas that solve these business problems in a way that consumers will engage with and remember, all the while setting brands apart from their competitors and getting results.
Traditionally, to get there – we work in teams made up of a Copywriter (specialisms: ideas and words) and Art Director (specialisms: ideas and visuals), bouncing back and forth to come up with a ‘big idea’, then a ‘concept’.
Getting started, we begin identifying a deeply felt, widely held, often surprising statement that acts as a window into the mind set of our audience, known as an ‘insight’.
We use this to help us tap into how they feel and think, then take the connection and produce an idea that will bring product benefits (reasons to buy a service or item) to life alongside that very connection.
Once we’ve reached this overarching idea, our next job is to turn it into a creative concept. Up until this point our thought has remained format agnostic – but now we bring it to life using words, images, and media choice. Which unlike the beginning of this article, is where the real magic happens.
The insight: Our audience find themselves looking to snack when they’re hungry, but end up settling for sweet treats that aren’t substantial – leaving them feeling unsatisfied and unchanged.
The big idea: When you’re hungry, you’re not your normal self. Snickers are the bar of substance (tasty and full of nuts) that’ll sort you out.
After nailing our big idea – we get even more creative, deciding how we’re going to communicate it through an attention-grabbing concept, and how we’ll execute it to fit with our client’s personality.
The best big ideas stand the test of time and give consumers a reason to repeatedly buy into a brand. The ways these ideas are conceptualised and executed bring benefits to life through emotional storytelling, never shouting or intruding – forever engaging.
Our team present ideas back to the client and once given the go ahead, work alongside the other necessary service teams at S3 to, well, make them happen.
As an integrated agency, S3 have the services on-hand to take whatever concocted concept has come out of our Creative department and see it through to realisation. Depending on the objectives of the brief, this might see us work alongside our Media Planning & Buying and Design department to bring special-build billboards to life, it might see us work with our Production team to produce TVCs and videos, or if the solution heroes social platforms, we’ll work with our Social, PR and Digital teams too.
Because a big idea is usually best communicated as an integrated campaign, we pretty much work alongside all our service teams, at once. End-to-end stuff means we get to oversee an idea into production, then share it to the best of its ability, and track the results. Giving an all-round picture to a campaign, working with client partners at every single touch point, from start to finish.
Aye, couple of good questions there. Ready for an even better answer?
In one sentence, and I’m sure you’ve seen this while browsing our site – we specialise in helping the little bite big.
We don’t just put our heart and soul into ideas and results for anyone. We’re particular. We get the struggles of the little guy, and so that’s the area we own; helping brands with untapped potential in their pursuit to become the overachievers they straight up deserve to be. It really gets us going.
To match, our Creative department operates a little differently, too.
We’re all about brilliant T-shaped minds coming together to produce something you wish you’d thought of first, right? That’s what we do.
So to make sure our team stay relevant, on top of trends and collaborative – we’re made up of ambidextrous specialists from more than one field.
We get that little needs to do everything and more to stand out. Our creatives get it too. So while working to our ‘Natural Strength’ methodology, this is how we make it happen.
Each of our team don’t just do ideas; they own crafts – writing words with meaning, imagining visuals with clarity. Bringing everything to life, a big bit differently.
And when we come together, it just works!
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