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Campaigning with a creative agency
The document outlines a workshop led by Veera Juvonen of Spinas Civil Voices, focusing on collaborations between creative agencies and nonprofits like Greenpeace. It includes discussions on successful campaign strategies, client-agency relationships, and a group exercise to create a client's checklist for improving efficiency in collaboration. Key topics include briefing documents, timelines, meetings, and budgeting strategies for effective campaign execution.
Campaigning with a creative agency
- 1. Workshop CAMPAIGNING WITH ACREATIVE AGENCY Greenpeace Digital Days 5-9. June 2017 Veera Juvonen, Head of Digital at Spinas Civil Voices Twitter: @veerajuvonen
- 2. AGENDA. • Introduction 5min • Cases: Creative Agency+Nonprofit campaigns of Swiss quality 10 min • Seeing through the eyes of the partner 5 min an exercise to list concerns of the nonprofit and agency side. • Creating a Client’s Checklist group exercise. Topics 30 min Briefing, Meetings, Decision-making, Budgeting, Timing • Presenting and discussing the Client’s Checklist 20 min
- 3. INTRODUCTION. ● Veera Juvonen ●Former Greenpeace Nordic DMM in Finland, Employee in IT&creative agencies, entrepreneur ● Current Head of Digital in a creative agency: ● Spinas Civil Voices ● Creative agency working exclusively for NGOs ● Founded 2000 in Zürich ● Clients in Switzerland and Germany ● ~40 employees
- 5. WHAT WE‘VE DONEWITH GREENPEACE SWITZERLAND „BYE BYE BEZNAU“ AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER Visible from planes landing in Zurich – made it to international news
- 6. WHAT WE‘VE DONEWITH GREENPEACE SWITZERLAND: „BYE BYE BEZNAU“ AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER eBoards and location- based mobile ads for people in a certain radius of the power plant
- 7. WHAT WE‘VE DONEWITH GREENPEACE SWITZERLAND: „ONE PLAN TO RULE THEM ALL“ AGAINST TTIP & CO. Went viral with 2,9 million views and was shown in a national television debate show
- 8. CASES CREATIVE CAMPAIGNS OFSWISS QUALITY, CREATED IN AGENCY+NGO COLLABORATION
- 9. CASE: ETHICAL SMARTPHONERANKING I OEK Media reporting the launch of new iPhone referred to this ethical ranking due to simultaneous launch
- 10. CASE: DEAR GEORGEI SOLIDAR SUISSE Spoof-Commercial with a Clooney doppelgänger was seen by millions
- 11. CASE: DEAR GEORGEI SOLIDAR SUISSE Nestle was eventually persuaded to develop a corresponding FairTrade product
- 12. CASE: EUROVISION SONGCONTEST I SALVATION ARMY A hit song was produced for the Swiss salvation armee to compete in the Eurovision song contest.
- 13. CASE: EUROVISION SONGCONTEST I SALVATION ARMY The band won the national votes and was sent to represent Switzerland in the ESC in Sweden.
- 14. EXERCISE SEEING THROUGH THEEYES OF THE PARTNER
- 15. CLIENT CONCERNS VS.AGENCY CONCERNS ● Confidentiality ● Competing Priorities ● Competence ● Endorsing an agency ● Fees and fares, ROI ● Proactivity ● Egos ● Agility & Delays ● Efficiency ● Consistency & Quality ● Legal repercussions ● Non-compete clauses ● Idea ownership ● Promotional value ● Small budget ● Reactive mode ● Micro management ● Competing Priorities ● High Workload ● Longevity of Partnership
- 16. TO ADDRESS THECONCERNS AND IMPROVE THE COLLABORATION, YOU CAN USE A „CLIENTS CHECKLIST“ ● The checklist is an memory aid for successful collaboration with an external agency. ● It addresses the aching points in mutual collaboration: ● Briefing documents ● Meetings & Decision-making ● Budgeting ● Timeline
- 17. EXERCISE CREATING A CLIENTSCHECKLIST
- 18. EXERCISE CREATING A CLIENTSCHECKLIST 1. Form groups, get a marker and flipchart paper. 2. Select your 1st topic to work on. You‘ll get to work on all. ● Briefing documents ● Timeline ● Meetings & Decision-making ● Budgeting 3. Take 10 minutes to discuss in your group and write down bullet points, how to make the Agency+Greenpeace collaboration more efficient on each given topic. 4. Rotate the papers. Read what the previous group wrote, discuss and add your own group input as bullet points. You‘ve got max 10 minutes for each paper.
- 19. TOPIC: BRIEFING DOCUMENTS ●STRUCTURE A BRIEFING DOCUMENT ● Which information is essential for an creative agency to do its work? List on a headline level. ● Consider... ● which info is not essential, to avoid „the curse of knowledge“ ● How do you measure success? ● How is the briefing delivered to an agency?
- 20. TOPIC: TIMELINE DRAW ACAMPAIGN TIMELINE FROM START TO END ● How long does it take to come up with an creative idea? ● How far in advance before a planned launch of a campaign, should you brief an agency? ● When and how often do you meet with the agency? ● When and how often are the feedback rounds? ● When is the success of the campaign evaluated?
- 21. TOPIC: MEETINGS ANDDECISION-MAKING ● DRAW A MEETING TABLE AND THE PEOPLE AROUND IT. ● Who (=which roles from GP and the agency side) should take part in the meetings? ● Who makes the final decisions? (role) and whom s/he involves in the decision-making? ● Discuss... ● How long does an efficient meeting last? ● Which, and how many meetings are necessary for a successful cooperation with an agency? ● How is a meeting documented? ● How do you give feedback to the agency?
- 22. TOPIC: BUDGETING ALLOCATE ACAMPAIGN BUDGET. Procentually, how much budget should be invested in a creative work vs media budget vs Greenpeace‘s own expenses, like events&actions? 30% - 30% -40% ? ● Consider: ● How much is an idea worth? ● Which makes most sense to you – paying an agency a flat fee or an hourly rate? ● Are there discounts (%) for nonprofits? ● How many rounds of iterations (giving feedback to the agency) are included in your budget?
- 23. LET‘S DISCUSS THEOUTCOME ● ...on how to get rid of the „Curse of Information“ with an aced Briefing document ● ...on how to end the eternal hurry with a considerate timeline ● ...on how to have the right people in collaborative meetings ● ...on how to budget sensibly and openly ● Please write your key learnings on Post Its!
- 24. Leave your emailto receive a copy of the proof-written checklist and a link to this presentation on Slideshare. STAY IN TOUCH. www.spinas-cv.com Twitter: @spinascv @veerajuvonen Facebook: spinascivilvoices
Editor's Notes
- #4 Spinas Strategic team: Founder, Creative Director, Political advisor, Digital Strategist
- #5 Client organizations in Switzerland and Germany
- #6 “Bye Bye Beznau” April 2016 § Awareness campaign § Description: Nuclear campaign to shut down the oldest power plant in the world permanently. § Results: Made it to news due to a crop circle ad, visible from airplanes. The power plant is temporarily closed since 2 years. Greenpeace recently won the right to receive the blacked out documents of the state of the power plant – and evidently this May, the people voted yes for a new energy strategy, which entitles NOT allowing building new nuclear plants. § http://spinas-cv.com/project/greenpeace-schweiz
- #7 “Bye Bye Beznau” April 2016 § Awareness campaign § Description: Nuclear campaign to shut down the oldest power plant in the world permanently. § Results: Made it to news due to a crop circle ad, visible from airplanes. The power plant is temporarily closed since 2 years. Greenpeace recently won the right to receive the blacked out documents of the state of the power plant – and evidently this May, the people voted yes for a new energy strategy, which entitles NOT allowing building new nuclear plants. § http://spinas-cv.com/project/greenpeace-schweiz Budget Crop circle 30 K Campaign site Offline Media Space 180-200K + Free Space 100 K
- #8 “One Plan to rule them all” § Awareness & Mobilisation campaign § Description: Parody of Lord of the Rings, film against dark trade agreements. Subtitles and voiceovers in several languages. § Results: went viral with 2,9 million views. § http://spinas-cv.com/2016/10/06/greenpeace-mobilisiert-weltweit-gegen-ttip-co/ Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI_QnHKqrsk Budget Film CHF 100K Total: 20K Agency, 20K Media, 60K Film
- #10 “Ethical Smartphone ranking” 2014 Slogan„ How much blood sticks into your smartphone?“ § Awareness campaign for consumers § Client: Evangelical organizations Fastenopfer & Brot für alle § Description: An ethical ranking of smart phone producers was published to coincide with the launch of the new iPhone. The mobile campaign site recognized the visitors mobile brand to play a corresponding animation of a talking phone, explaining how ethically it has been produced. § Result: Almost every media outlet reporting on the new iPhone referred to the coinciding ethical ranking. § http://spinas-cv.com/online-kampagnen/
- #11 “Dear George” 2012 § Mobilisation campaign for consumers - Aim: Make the organization more known § Client: Solidar Suisse § Description: In an online campaign to drive Nestle towards fair coffee production, a parody film of Nespresso commercials starring George Clooney was produced with a doppelgänger. An online petition was addressed to Mr. Clooney himself. § Result: The film was watched millions of times, made it to news, and Nestle was eventually persuaded to develop a corresponding Fair Trade product. § http://spinas-cv.com/project/solidar-suisse/ Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G8QljHVn_A Issue: Coffee production Restrictions: No bashing Collaboration: Free hands!
- #12 “Dear George” 2012 § Awareness/Mobilisation campaign for consumers - Aim: Make the organization more known. Issue: Coffee production § Client: Solidar Suisse § Description: In an online campaign to drive Nestle towards fair coffee production, a parody film of Nespresso commercials starring George Clooney was produced with a doppelgänger. An online petition was addressed to Mr. Clooney himself. § Result: The film was watched millions of times, made it to news, and Nestle was eventually persuaded to develop a corresponding Fair Trade product. § http://spinas-cv.com/project/solidar-suisse/ Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G8QljHVn_A Restrictions: No bashing Collaboration: Free hands!
- #13 “Eurovision Song Contest” 2013 § Client: Salvation Army § Awareness Campaign § Description: To create awareness of the Salvation Army, a song was composed with a hit factory Hitmill, and Salvation Army was sent to compete with it in the Eurovision song contest § Result: The band won the national votes and was sent to represent Switzerland in Eurovision Song contest in Malmö, Sweden. They were 13th on the semifinal with 41 points. This was the PR Stunt of the year 2013, as the Salvation Army made it to the Eurovision, producing news headlines through months! § http://spinas-cv.com/project/heilsarmee-eurovision/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_and_Me_(Takasa_song) Takasa = The artist formerly known as Heilsarmee Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKbzOIab0yM „was haben sie von Heilsarmee wahrgenommen?“ 65% vs. topfi (topf Kollekten) 20% PR value bei 2 Millionen Die jungen haben es eher wahrgenommen
- #14 “Eurovision Song Contest” 2013 § Client: Salvation Army § Awareness Campaign § Description: To create awareness of the Salvation Army, a song was composed with a hit factory Hitmill, and Salvation Army was sent to compete with it in the Eurovision song contest § Result: The band won the national votes and was sent to represent Switzerland in Eurovision Song contest in Malmö, Sweden. They were 13th on the semifinal with 41 points. This was the PR Stunt of the year 2013, as the Salvation Army made it to the Eurovision, producing news headlines through months! § http://spinas-cv.com/project/heilsarmee-eurovision/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_and_Me_(Takasa_song) Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKbzOIab0yM
- #16 Promotional value: Permission to mention the client on agency’s own marketing materials, to publish a case study, join an industry competition, publishing a recommendation Micromanagement = Master/Slave relationship
- #17 Topics are identified aching points in collaboration between Greenpeace and an creative agency. Why would these topics be the problematic ones? Any guesses? Briefing documents and curse of knowledge Briefing documents tend to be just that - a plural. Greenpeace suffers from a curse of knowledge, easily sending the agency several dozens pages of clarifications with links to several hundred pages long documents like reports, followed up by follow-up emails linking to further news stories. Reading all these would blow up the campaign budget before the ad agency gets from the research phase into the creative phase, and might propably educate the reader to the level of a greenpeace campaigner. Agencies tend to rewrite an own internal briefing document after receiving Greenpeace‘s, to brief the creatives. Timeline and the eternal hurry Agencies work at a much slower pace than Greenpeace, handling other clients and projects simultaneously and prioritizing differently from Greenpeace. Greenpeace often approaches an agency at the last minute and requires urgent attention over other on-going projects. GP rarely reserves time to evaluate the success of the project after the campaign or for building lasting relationships with the collaborating agency. Meetings and decision-making Greenpeace tends to invite an impressive crowd of internal people in meetings with external partners, but yet fail to bring everyone involved in the decision-making, and often the decision-maker him/herself is missing. Mutual meetings tend to last long and the decisions are made elsewhere. Agencies tend to suffer from not understanding the GP hierarchies or lack of them, and might fail in keeping the meetings efficient. Meetings should be attended not just by people who can say no, but people who can says Yes. Budgeting in a blackbox The main problem with budgets isn‘t that they are comparatively small – which they are – but how they are allocated. The agency tends to make a creative proposal that includes the concept, the strategy to implement it, and designs for every feasible channel, like a campaign website, hashtag, social media content ect. Greenpeace tends to receive this information with a thank you – and an announcement, that „we will do it ourselves“, failing to communicate in the briefing stage which (human) resources they have at their disposal and what is expected from the agency, resulting into extra billable hours (when the agency works unnecessarily on layouts, for example). The remaining budget and its use might remain a blackbox for the agency, who will struggle to make an evaluation of the campaign success, not knowing how much was invested in spreading the campaign. Agencies give non-profits discounts and they want to use the goodwill in case studies and even competitions – which is impossible without knowledge of other investments and efforts to promote the campaign.
- #20 Our recommendations: Agencies exist for a singular purpose: to solve specific problems their clients are facing. Define the problem in your brief. Measuring success: Have a well-thought-out vision on what the campaign wants to achieve – not just the specific marketing campaign, but the overall campaign. Be crystal clear about the assignment. KPIs - Setting Realistic And Measurable Goals. Define what success means. Let your agency know how many new leads or conversions or impressions you’re shooting for. Provide benchmarks and key learnings from previous efforts, and establish how you’ll track goals to ensure you’re all on the same page. Not essential: Remember the “Curse of knowledge”. Provide necessary resources only, like your brand guidelines, list of your internal vocabulary (lingo), insight to your audience and previous creative of the campaign, when you’d like to stay on the same course. Essential: Timing / on air date Briefing document template from the agency Include the budget Target groups CI / International CI Benchmarks / results from previous campaigns CTA Language versions needed Image data base How is the briefing delivered to an agency: - Brief document written – using an agency-provided template if the GP‘s own is considered inadequate or too extensive - Presented in person in a meeting
- #21 Consider enough time for feedback rounds Bigger campaigns (some months advance time), smaller (one month) Reporting (daily for online projects, not possible for offline stuff) post test for offlien projects Feedback after concept presentation, after design and content creation, and a final round for approval Take into consideration time needed for language versions
- #22 Meeting length: Not longer than 2 hours (meeting) Meetings with the agency: 1 Briefing meeting 2 Budget meeting 3 Agency Organizes a kickoff. 4 Creative meeting (presenting the ideas) 5 Schedule visits to stay up to day both ways. Status meeting weekly, between 1 Project manager from agency and Greenpeace side. 6 debriefing meeting. Arrange an evaluation meeting. You could also give the agency a formal review and have them give one on you + USP Spinas: shoulder view (preview of the creative ideas, if the agency is on the right way) Decision-making While you may not be able to respond promptly to every email you receive, responding within a few business days is ideal. Make sure to identify who is responsible for making final decisions and who is accountable for implementing the agreed-upon strategy. To add clarity, one person needs to be accountable. When fracturing takes place, the agency is often forced to `follow the loudest gun. People involved in the key decision making process need to be those who can say `yes’ and not just `no. Giving feedback - Give feedback in a written document, that has been collected internally at GP, summarised and edited not to have conflicting opinions, and approved by the decision-maker. - Give descriptive, direct feedback. Marketing managers tend to provide prescriptive feedback (i.e., do this, not that) instead of descriptive feedback that explains why things do or don’t work. Be sure to always dig deep: try to find the why behind your feedback, and be direct in how you communicate. - Include positive feedback in addition to negative, you’ll create an environment of constructive criticism. How is the meeting documented? - Create a Meeting Agenda. Start with a simple agenda to make sure everyone knows what to expect out of the meeting. - Write a Protocol (notes) Roles present in a meeting: GP: GP Decision-maker (Campaigner?) PM GP, PM Agency + Agency creatives in Briefing and Presentation Decision-making: 1 Decision-maker Alternative way of presenting your work: Draw a meeting table from the air, and add seats of participants around the table. Name the participant roles and an point out the decision-maker.
- #23 How much is an idea worth: Invest in creative ideas, get media budget for free (Freespace for ads) GP communicates the budget and the agency presents what they can do with that How much price reduction? For example Spinas prices are 1/3 below industry players, and the salaries of staff are to the scale. Collaborators should offer a lowered price for NGOs Procentual division of budget Rule of thumb 15-20% of the budget to a creative agency Is vat included? Which makes most sense to you – paying an agency a flat fee or an hourly rate? Hourly rate is transparent and fair for the agency and the customer, when the spend is reported regularly Flat fee is good for knowing the exact amount of budget that‘s available, with no suprises Feedback rounds Every feedback round that causes any changes, adds costs. If a change isn‘t absolutely necessary, the rule of thumb is, that do not create extra work. 4. Be sure that feedback rounds are included once for the first creative meeting (presenting the ideas), approving desing, approving content and approving the final product. Visualisation: Play money. Give the participants a stack of post-its, that resemble money, and ask them to allocate this budget to creative campaigning with an agency, to invest in advertising, organizing a public event and an action.
- #24 A lack of strategy is akin to not having boundaries, borders, and curfews for kids---all hell can and often does break loose.
- #25 Recommended reading: https://theoutsideviewblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/advertising-agency-client-relationships-best-practice-at-theoutsideviewblog-com-by-mercer-island-group.pdf