{"id":492,"date":"2019-10-22T11:30:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T15:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/?p=492"},"modified":"2019-10-22T11:30:58","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T15:30:58","slug":"the-evolution-of-the-creative-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/?p=492","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of the Creative Team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Have\nyou seen this print ad? It became famous in the late 1970s when there was an\noil embargo and the price of gasoline shot through the roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas created by the legendary creative team of writer Bob Levenson and designer Helmut\nKrone, working at the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DDB\nturned the advertising world on its head by revolutionizing the way advertising\ncampaigns were created. Bill Bernbach, the agency\u2019s president, had the novel\nidea of putting a writer and a designer in the same room to come up with\ncampaign ideas from scratch.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before\nthen, it had been the copywriter\u2019s job to come up with the big idea, write the ad,\nthen hand the copy over to a designer for a layout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernbach\u2019s\nbreakthrough led to many of the most famous and successful campaigns of the\n1960s and 1970s.  His approach to using\ntwo-person creative teams caught on at other agencies and spawned a slew of\nbrilliant ads.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nwas fortunate to work in a big New York ad agency when I started my copywriting\ncareer that used this approach to generating ideas. My art director partner and\nI would lock ourselves in a room for hours. My partner would sit with a big magic\nmarker and a drawing pad while I had my yellow pad and we\u2019d kick ideas back and\nforth. Any idea worth considering would have to be simple enough to sketch on a\npad with a single headline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure,\nmost of the ideas sucked. We\u2019d crumple them up and fire them at an empty\nwastebasket in the corner. A productive day was when we had an overflowing pail\nof discarded ideas\u2014and a few nuggets worth chasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\ndid it work so well? It turns out, when at least two people<\/em> get excited\nabout an idea, it\u2019s likely that 80% of the people who see it will too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very\noften, as freelance copywriters, we spend too much of our time behind our\ncomputers, researching and coming up with ideas that get us excited\u2026but fall\nflat when we show them to other people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nthat\u2019s why today, more and more companies are evolving to use teams of writers\nand idea generators in new and creative ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare experienced copywriters who work with \u201ccopy chiefs\u201d on their projects.\nThese are successful writers with many years of experience who nevertheless\nhire A-list writers to review and critique their copy to make it even stronger.\nIn return, the copy chief receives an upfront fee and often a percentage of the\nroyalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare peer review groups within some organizations who pitch in to review copy in\nan organized and systematic way.  Using\nthe C.U.B. system invented by Agora (marking up copy sections that are\nConfusing, Unbelievable or Boring), can make this process work smoothly, especially\nwhen you have people who aren\u2019t copywriters yet bring a valuable point of view\nto the copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then\nthere is the Writer\u2019s Room approach used by comedy shows such as Saturday\nNight Live<\/em> or The Daily Show<\/em>. This is where a bunch of writers (SNL\nhas 27!) get together and pitch their best ideas to the group.  It\u2019s a brutal, high-pressure situation but\nthe best ideas rise to the top. Several divisions within the Agora group of\ncompanies use this approach to jump-start their promotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nbottom line is this: in today\u2019s hypercompetitive and crowded markets, you need\nextra brainpower to come up with the best ideas and to make them even better in\nthe final presentation.  As Bill Bernbach\ndiscovered, two heads are better than one. \nThree heads or more are even better. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What steps are you taking to build your creative teams?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you seen this print ad? It became famous in the late 1970s when there was an oil embargo and the price of gasoline shot through the roof. It was created by the legendary creative team of writer Bob Levenson and designer Helmut Krone, working at the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) in New […] more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494,"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reliancemarketing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}