Why did I make a different choice?

In the summer of 2017, when I participated as a judge at an advertising festival held in Busan, I met many experienced Creative directors from various countries. The scale of the event was larger than I expected, and the energy of the diverse participants from Dubai, Thailand, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Mongolia, etc., was intriguing. During the three-day schedule, networking parties were held every night. As I drank and danced with them, I started to feel comfortable talking to them even though I am an introvert.

"What's it like to work at an advertising agency?"

In a moment when I stepped out for fresh air, I asked a question to those who had been working for over 15 years. Their answer was "You know... staying up all night, revising every day, persuading clients... this is the routine." They all had very similar experiences, even more than I expected. And from then on, I couldn't shake the feeling of being 'alone' there.

What is the best idea?

At first, I tried to keep it to myself as a very personal, limited thought within my own experiences. I just didn't understand. Even though I stayed up all night with my team members struggling to come up with advertising ideas to propose to companies, the criteria for the final selected ideas remained ambiguous over time. My colleagues didn't know, and the company's managers didn't have any criteria for which idea was the best.

Here is one of the video advertisements I directly participated in creating.

It was a parody of a telecommunication company advertisement that was popular in Korea.

https://vimeo.com/90600306

Originally, our team's idea was to prepare two concepts (the British drama 'Sherlock' and 'Alice in Wonderland') that involved a mysterious incident that happens in a room, and use the features of that TV set-top box to solve it. However, after the presentation, it was changed and ultimately decided to be produced based on the client's impromptu idea.

I remember everyone saying something about their regrets on the way back to the company in a taxi. And I realized then. In fact, no one had any grounds to be confident or persuasive that their idea was the best.

Why? Because everyone's attention was focused on quick execution and immediate results.

'Value' clarity makes good advertising.

For a company, advertising is one of the materials used in marketing activities. And in my opinion, marketing is 'all business activities that continuously identify, discover, and promote the 'value' that a product/service contains and conveys to customers.' In other words, to create efficient advertising, or to get good ideas, it comes down to the 'clarity' of the value that the product/service delivers to the customer.

I remember that the drug pillow advertisement video that shook Facebook a while back recorded tens of millions of views for domestic audiences alone. There was no celebrity in it, just an emphasis on how the product solved the uncomfortable points of existing pillows, designed to support the space behind the neck. But people's reactions were overwhelming.

Also, remember Apple's iPhone outdoor advertising, which featured only a single photo with the copy 'shot on iPhone 6.' Apple headquarters invested the most manpower and budget in enhancing camera features, but they don't mention anything about that internal effort. They simply focus on showing that anyone can take pictures with an iPhone and get amazing results.

However, there is no process of exploring this 'value.'

After the realization in the taxi, I tried to confirm what value a product or service has for customers before making advertisements, but the starting point of idea meetings was always the brand guidelines and the results that the person in charge had compiled in the PPT. (Most of them are similar, like brand awareness and social engagement rate increase) And my questions about 'value' were easily buried by the enthusiastic introductions of references and new technologies that came pouring out.

After experiencing this in the field for a few more years, the conclusion I reached is

Within the current system, this 'value' is actually a moot point.

I just didn't accept or ignore this fact. I later chose to quietly step out of this field.

In this process, the existing perceptions related to advertising that made it difficult for me to focus on the 'clarity' of value are as follows.

A. 'Expose' it. Exposure creates awareness, leading to a favorable attitude towards the product.

The era of consuming the images of celebrities in advertisements through limited media channels has passed. People who live in the present, who have reached the stage of interaction beyond two-way communication through the Internet and mobile, now agree that traditional 'advertising that targets awareness based on exposure' has become less effective than before. However, the belief that this one-way exposure to the public is effective is still strong.

B. 'Content', advertising that is clever and interesting.

An executive at an advertising agency once told me, "Bring me ideas that are fun and funny. Emotional codes don't fit." However, for me, such an expression is appropriate when evaluating the 'content' format of the outcome, but I understood that it is not appropriate to discuss it as a benchmark in the planning stage of advertising.

Simply put, TV programs and movies produced by broadcasting stations and the film industry become 'products', that is, 'commodities' that make money in their own right when they are completed. This product generates profits the more it is exposed to the public, so it produces results that perfectly suit the production purpose. Therefore, it is correct for such content to have discussions before production about codes that are interesting, funny, or moving, which the public likes and pays to watch.

However, since advertising is about revealing and promoting the value of products/services, the focus should be on the discussion of why buying this product is good before focusing on the evaluation as content. It was a very difficult experience for me, at least, to structure and persuade people about ideas for production in a situation where the value was unclear. Think about it. Our imagination is boundless, but if we don't stop and harmonize, isn't it natural?

C. Brainstorming conducted by various 'experts.'

On a weekend afternoon, advertising professionals gather for a long meeting. Someone presents a topic, a concept is presented through discussion, and they utilize each other's expertise to come up with the best big idea.

The only part here that I felt needed a different approach is that these professional discussions go on for hours based on insufficient or distorted information about the recipients to whom the ideas are conveyed in the form of advertising. The information about people's daily lives is limited to the experiences of those who sit at the meeting and the stories they have heard, and customers are perceived as a stereotyped existence that only exists at the moment of purchase.

Above all, due to the expertise and authority of the participants, it was easy to make it difficult to bring up the 'value' that the product or service embodies.

Part 2 is in the link below.