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A case of analysis paralysis --
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:53
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Mike Barnwell, Executive Creative Director of creative agency FCB in Cape Town believes that marketing professionals and their agencies need to stop thinking and start doing when it comes to brands.
Barnwell explains, Each presentation normally consists of two or three big ideas . And each big idea has a number of through-the-line creative expressions, demonstrating the various ways in which that particular idea can be brought to life.
The process of over-thinking and under-doing means that the likelihood of a marketing team taking any form of action at all becomes less and less a reality. Instead, they develop an acute case of analysis paralysis. And no matter how much they d love to get closure on the situation, they simply cannot make a decision.
Formed by his years of experience in dealing with clients who leave briefs in the system for too long, Barnwell contends that too much analysing, interrogating and strategising can increase the chances of a brand becoming obscure.
Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing, involving too many reverts to mention, it s often revealed that a clever piece of analysis has taken place and the initial brief and strategy are all kinds of wrong.
You re then sent back to square one and asked to carefully reword the single- minded proposition. This is okay though, because through the process of exploring various routes, you ve helped steer things in the direction they now need to go.
Unfortunately, round two pretty much ends the same way. More presentations, more reverts and yet another epiphany, sending you back to the start again. And so it goes, week after week, month after month. Once we even got all the way to actually producing a big budget TV commercial only for it to be canned due to yet another rethink .
Of course, while all this wheel-spinning and money wasting, is taking place, the product in question is all alone in the wilderness with nothing and no-one to give it any support whatsoever. As a result, it slowly dies a horrible death. No one knows what it stands for anymore and, quite frankly, no one cares.
Fortunately, there are some people that know more often than not the best answer to most problems is the simplest one, and that doing nothing will usually result in doing damage.
They have the ability to trust their gut and realise that the only way of knowing if something will work is to try it. If only the rest would take a leaf out of their book and stop thinking and act.
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