Brand onions and other barriers to creativity

Chris Forrest

This article provide the thoughts of an account planner turned researcher following a meeting of the Account Planning Group.

Brand onions and other barriers to creativity

Chris ForrestAdvertising and Brand Communications

THOUGHT 1: MARKETING COMMUNICATION PROCESSES ARE OVERLY REDUCTIVE TO THE POINT OF BECOMING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE

All of us love our big multinational clients despite our reservations over their semi-scientific systems, their brand keys, pyramids, wheels and onions.

And they in turn love their onions. The marketer's job is to enforce message consistency and to develop metrics to answer accountability issues: in other words to try to predict effectiveness and work out which half of the budget is wasted.

It's sensible as an approach but what happens inevitably in...

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