Short-term thinking has led to a decline in creative effectiveness.

A long-term view from far away would see at least three seismic shifts in the world of marketing and advertising. 

Declining TV impacts, meaning a greater reliance on other media to build impacts and on the strength of the creative idea. The arrival of AI, with its potential to vastly upset our cosy media and search world. And, arguably, the ‘post-truth’ era of politics we now live in has been matched with the new ‘post-idea’ era in advertising. 

Much of what we see in a TV ad break is orientated towards performing now

, it is mechanistic and low-concept, relying on trickery to suggest craft and care — but where’s the idea?

Facing this battery of challenges, marketers and advertising folk are having to spend more time, on working out how to build effectiveness into their plans. Which is a good thing. In a study based on 5,900 entries to the 

, led by Mark Ritson no less, a list of ten factors in order of importance to effectiveness was drawn up.

, which you might expect but what about smaller brands — how can they level up and become the next big thing? How can they, like Luton Town who managed to climb five leagues in only 9 years, get up the greasy pole? Well, the answer lies in the second factor on the list of effectiveness.

. Exceptional creative work can help brands — big or small — make a real impact. This is one area where the ground is level between big and small brands. It’s attitude, approach, courage, belief that will nurture great creative, not just size.

Despite this finding, evidence from a study by consultant Peter Field suggests 

more short-term thinking has led to a decline in creative effectiveness

, agrees that many TV ads are now aimed narrowly at immediate results, not longer-term growth.

So creativity often takes a back seat to the drum beat of results, results, results now

Which in our view can lead to dull, shouty ads with no lasting power at all. The opportunity to build brand memories and associations with real depth passes yet again. Brands and businesses suffer the inefficiencies of yet another production, instead of playing out a really strong commercial, again and again. Which is a shame, given we have learnt that ‘wear out’ with actual people happens more slowly than it does with us overexcited advertising people.

To back up the Effie study, Ritson also cited research by NCSolutions, which attributed a whopping 47% of the sales contribution from 500 campaigns to… creativity.

In this study the next biggest factor was 

, with 22%. Which brings us gently to our point: all the changes in our world and beyond have not changed a fundamental principle, which I have called 

 Obviously, to find a way to get a brand into people’s lives we need to find a way to connect with them. I say obviously, but on reflection its clear many ads are like salesmen in disguise, thin disguise, just there to deliver a message, however they do it, and forget the viewer.

Scant intention is paid to amuse, entertain and involve the audience

Yet finding effectiveness demands we do this. Effectiveness demands we are hard-headed about our creative strategy. Odd really, when sometimes creativity is seen as ‘the fluffy stuff’.

No — creativity is the bullet in the muzzle.

So that’s why, we run comedy nights at 

. Humour is not the only emotion, but it is we think the most powerful emotion in our business, the best one in the armoury. We see in our comedy nights those wonderful moments of connection, when we all realise something about ourselves at the same time, and laugh together about it. We are all connected in that moment, powerfully.

In our working life, our way in to humour, though, is not as a comedian hoping to find a punchline that gets a laugh. 

We start with the need to find a human story.

 As Orlando Wood says, work that has characters, incident and a setting is very likely to draw the audience in. We want to see who is involved, what happens, where it is set. We want to see if it relates to us.

So our advertising tries very hard to be utterly and thoroughly human, and not mechanistic and obviously self-serving. We’ll try to find an idea based on a trenchant human insight. Based on the way people feel and think and do things. We always work to what our creative director, Rob Fletcher calls, 

. Advertising with humanity writ large, advertising that will surprise and entertain people. coming from a truth of the brand yet not constrained by it. This is not just a natural instinct.

It is a hard-headed realisation that this creative strategy is most likely to work hardest of all potential creative strategies. Because people like people.

‘Post-idea’ advertising

‘Borthball’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as ‘Bazball’. But when it comes to building a fan base, creating entertainment, and brand engagement, Steve Borthwick and Owen Farrell could do with taking a serious look at the new brand of English cricket that Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes have created.

We’re on the eve of the Men’s Rugby World Cup. Taking place once every four years, it’s the pinnacle of the Men’s rugby calendar, and a unique chance to grow the rugby brand and audience. But, unfortunately, unlike England Football and particularly England Cricket, England Rugby’s brand is in massive trouble.

As a team, the England Men’s Rugby team have underperformed for years. Under Australian Eddie Jones, they got to the final of the 2019 World Cup in Japan, but since that point, have only taken backward steps.

And under new coach Steve Borthwick, things have gone from bad to worse, losing 5 of their last 6 games, playing an increasingly dull, slow, defensive, and many would say, turgid brand of rugby. Last Saturday England lost to Fiji in their final World Cup warm up game, at a half full, subdued, and underwhelmed Twickenham. Ironically, the day before, ‘England’s HQ’ hosted a raucous sell out between South Africa and New Zealand, which drew crowds and excitement that currently, England just can’t match.

After a particularly dismal display in Dublin the weekend before, Ex-England playmaker and misfit, Danny Cipriani, tweeted that “English rugby is digging its own grave, led by people that do not understand the art of the game…It’s steeped in tradition and heritage, which is outdated and the very thing shackling the game.”

It’s a view shared by many rugby pundits and fans. England are playing an outdated brand of rugby, whilst the rest of the world has moved on.

Sport is a competitive business in this country. Every sport competes against each other for eyeballs, for interest, for corporate sponsors, column inches, TV rights, engagement and ultimately, brand love. The rapid and brilliant explosion of Women’s Football has made this landscape as competitive as ever in this country. If the product isn’t entertaining, people won’t tune in.

And with these metrics in mind, the people in charge at Twickenham need to take a look at the success story over at Lords.

After a disappointing Ashes tour in 2021/22, the England cricket brand needed a re-boot and a new direction, and that came with the leadership of New Zealand coach Brendan McCullum and swashbuckling captain Ben Stokes.

McCullum and Stokes wanted to do things differently, for the good of the game. They brought a huge injection of optimism, energy, vibrancy and out of the box thinking. Bold exciting selections were made. Traditional test match conventions were abandoned. And a new ultra-attacking and aggressive style of play was found, that often risked defeat in pursuit of victory. Winning matters for the England Cricket team, but not as much as winning in style. For the England cricket team, it’s now all about entertainment.

And crucially, for the game of cricket, fans were captivated.

This new brand of cricket, known affectionally as “bazball”, has transformed Test Match cricket in the country overnight (which many thought was a doomed format), gained a whole new following for the sport, sold out stadiums, and engaged cricket fans in a way many thought not possible.

This World Cup may already be gone for England. They are so far behind the highly tuned juggernauts of Ireland and South Africa, and their style of play feels so utterly bland and boring when compared to the fast paced, attacking and entertaining teams like France, New Zealand, and (as English fans have to admit), Scotland.

But short-term results aside, Borthwick, Farrell, and those in charge of England Rugby should genuinely be worried. With so many sports competing for attention in this country, a boring and bland England Men’s rugby team that fans can’t engage with won’t be good business for the RFU. They need to see the sport as a brand, that needs a vision, a mission, an attitude, and a personality, with all those responsible for the brand working in harmony. And importantly, entertainment and genuine fan-engagement must be central to this. (Can you imagine McCullum and Stokes devising a game plan which essentially equals keeping it tight and kicking the ball at almost every opportunity?).

I’m an England fan, and I genuinely wish England all the best in the World Cup. Who knows, form might go out the window, and the bookies might be wrong. Plus, they have been blessed by a freakishly fortunate draw, that might see them through to the semi-finals without having to face one of the big guns. But, if they come back from France after a tournament full of uninspiring dull rugby, and a fan base that’s tuned out, they should sit down with McCullum and Stokes pronto, absorb everything they have to offer, and start plotting a new era and a brand of exciting entertaining English Rugby.

England Rugby needs a ‘Bazball’ lesson

isobel motion designer on being inspired by product design, challenging yourself and learning new tricks.

LBB> How did you fall in love with animation?

James> Animation wasn’t the first thing I thought I’d do. A long list of ideas led me through studying product design, graphic design, then eventually teaching myself motion design. I think it really clicked when I was in the early days of my degree, back when Tumblr was super popular and I’d spend hours every week glued to hypnotic GIFs created by mysterious, anonymous artists with varying levels of Cool Online Persona. It felt like an underground world of people making art, and I wanted to be a part of it too. What started as an obsession with sci-fi HUD animation quickly grew across all of motion, realising how huge a pathway it really was.

LBB> Tell us about the animation project that kick started your career?

James> In 2018, there was a student competition for RSA; a great brief to create a film which supports a TED talk on false truths (which was hugely trending at the time). This is where I really pushed my creative and technical abilities in animation – stop motion, rotoscoping, infographic design and kinetic type. This piece was shortlisted and then was my headline act at our degree show, which ultimately landed my first job.

LBB> How would you describe your art style and what are your biggest inspirations that developed it?

James> I wouldn’t say I have a specific art style at the moment, but for a while I really focussed on brutalist sci-fi designs. Burning bright neon HUD lines on a black background, pushed into 3D space with plenty of glow and chromatic aberration poured on was my home. Nowadays, I’m working more with CGI, adding to the already monumental pile of ‘satisfying’ animations out there.

LBB> From your perspective, what’s the key to animation that really lives?

James> The most important thing to animation is clarity. Often this is helped by your source artwork, but knowing when to stop is important. Thinking in terms of primary and secondary animation is something I always have to remind myself to do; what will audiences perceive actively vs passively. Primary gets your information across, secondary is how they’ll remember feeling, which is just as important.

LBB> Show us your favourite or most impactful project that you’ve worked on - tell us, what is it that makes it special and what were the memorable moments or challenges?

James> The POV scene from Girlfriend Deluxe was a great one to work on. I remember Steve Moss (the director) showing me the scene and going through the full range of curiosity, horror, then finally bursting out laughing. The main challenge with that piece was creating a display that looked futuristic and full of information, but without distracting the audience from the actor’s great reactions. We solved this by just making all the elements as fine as possible, layering them in 3D and pushing them back a touch with blurs and chromatic aberration, which helped cement it being a POV shot.

More recently, we’ve started a new series of animations for JET. Their brand line is “Keep On Moving” which leads us really naturally to creating infinite looping animations, satisfying renders and that sort of thing. I set up a core set of rules to create consistency, but within that the freedom has been really fun. So long as it relates back to the brand, the space is completely open to create some fun art. I’ve been playing a lot with physics simulation in Blender, setting objects up like dominoes, or using the cloth simulation tools. Really cathartic stuff once it goes right and I can just watch it loop seamlessly in the viewport.

LBB> Tell us more about observation and movement - what is the process you go through to study movement of characters?

James> Observing movement is useful to me in thinking about how things are linked. Often a complex motion can be broken down into arcs and orbits. Imagining invisible anchor points where something moves around can save headaches later, and is also just an interesting fun way to look at the world.

LBB> We all know of some ever-green adult animations, but lately they have definitely been on the rise, from Rick and Morty to Arcane. What sort of opportunities does this open for animators, both within and outside the advertising industry?

James> Variety is the key difference. Shows like Love Death & Robots are a real highlight that people getting started in animation can get into it in so many different ways now, through different styles, different software’s or skills. The boundaries are being pushed by huge productions like Spiderverse, but equally by smaller, even solo projects like Astartes or Dynamo Dream. There’s no expectation that animators have to be able to draw, or be VFX experts or create photoreal renders. Of course these things are highly sought after, but the key thing is a good eye and creative vision.

LBB> How does one figure out what kind of animation style or styles fits a particular story or project?

James> Choosing a specific style is never simple as picking the name of a style and going with it. Plus it usually comes out of larger conversations with your creative team. Research is really important here - knowing what’s been done successfully in the past can help make it intuitively obvious what style will match certain kinds of story. Once you have that base it’s important to develop your visuals into something new where you can pull in ideas from unexpected places that have nothing to do with what you’re making!

One of our favourite jobs collectively where this was particularly powerful was for Reed – they’re all about making people rethink careers and become excited about work rather than dreading it, so we went into a fantastical realm where a row of dogs took the shape of the word ‘Monday’. Smashing together the happiness of Pomeranians with the dread of Mondays meant we could change people’s associations really quickly. I elevated this by animating the dogs to pant and smile, wagging tails and moving about a little to give them their full personalities without breaking the illusion of the type. Also, a great part of this was doing the Corgi version for the Queens’ Jubilee, which ran as part of the first set of ads on the freshly opened Elizabeth line.

LBB> What is your favourite piece of technology or software that you use and how does it help your creative process?

James> I do all my 3D animation work in Blender, I’m too lazy to learn anything else now. There’s so much knowledge online that any time I hit a wall, 15 minutes on YouTube and I’m moving again. It’s grown so much in recent years that it has more power than anyone could really need tool-wise, and lets you crank out respectable renders even on underpowered hardware! It lets me quickly model things scrappily, animate a camera through some action and get a rough idea moving in front of people’s eyes in minutes so we can start making decisions.

LBB> What sort of briefs or projects do you find more personally satisfying to work on?

James> The most satisfying projects are ones where you get to challenge yourself and learn new tricks. Of course that means added pressure to learn and get it right the first try, but at the end of it, with a little guidance, those projects tend to be the most memorable. Outside of that I really enjoy branding projects where I can explode a brand’s identity out and create a whole suite of animations with only very limited assets, thinking about where they can live and how to inject life into something that can be quite flat.

LBB> What recent projects have really stood out for you and why?

James> A recent project that stood out was the Monster film we did for PlayOJO, a bit of a win for our internal production. I got to really have a play with stop frame animation, creating lightning for our Frankenstein monster as he’s woken from hibernation by the excitement of the casino games. Also meant being very particular with motion tracking, which is something I normally hate!

LBB> Who is your animation hero and what is it about their work that inspires you? What example of their work particularly stands out?

James> My animation hero hasn’t changed for a long time, and that’s Ash Thorp. Probably one of the most multi-skilled people out there, his eye for art direction takes the craft into fine art levels, spanning 3D photography, graphic design, cinematography and colour design. His work is usually somewhere in the sci-fi genre which happens to be my favourite, but his executions vary greatly, aiming to put out a unique short film at least once or twice a year. I sometimes wish I were even half as prolific!

LBB> Outside of the field of animation, what really inspires you?

James> Outside animation, I’m really inspired by product design. It’s something I almost went into and as my 3D skills progress I’m increasingly tempted to step back into it. The hard surface work of artists like Maciej Kuciara and Ben Bolton, and the cinematic scale of Pascal Blanche constantly blow my mind and inspire me to aim higher.

LBB> What do you think are the misconceptions about animation throughout the industry?

James> I think a misconception about animation will always be that it’s solely one thing; either only hand drawn old school Disney animation, or completely CGI. There are so many ways to animate now, and you could specialise in any of those paths and never even think about the rest! With new software tools popping up seemingly every few months, there’s more to learn than ever, and more ways to put your stamp on the craft.

LBB> What are the biggest changes to animation and challenges facing animators at the moment and what are your thoughts on them?

James> The biggest challenge is probably education. It’s hard to articulate every possible thing that animation can achieve, so sometimes techniques get overlooked, or estimates are way off. Thankfully most times, because the process is so collaborative, it just takes a quick conversation to fix this!

LBB> Any advice you would like to give to aspiring artists?

James> To any aspiring artists, I’ll repeat well-trodden ground and say: Just make stuff. Make lots of stuff. Study what you like, try to copy it. Steal while you’re learning and pay it back later. I spent a year making animations every day, often copying things I’d seen the previous day on Instagram or Tumblr just to work out if I could do it. You most likely don’t know exactly what you’ll be good at or enjoy, so start somewhere and you might be surprised.

All about animation with James

Steve’s in the Evening Standard this week talking about diversity and the changing scene in Ad Land.

Steve in the Standard

‘Post-idea’ advertising

England Rugby needs a ‘Bazball’ lesson

All about animation with James