How to Carry a Glass of Water Across a Crowded Dance Floor
By Joe Weil, LAUNCH President/ECD
Recently, when Andrew Robertson, President and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, spoke at our company, LAUNCH, he aptly explained an eye-opening insight about the creative process of advertising.
“A Creative idea,” said Robertson, “starts out like a full glass of water. Then, between the reviews, research, and adjustments, on the agency and client side, the process of getting that original idea actually communicated to consumers is like trying to carry that full glass of water across a crowded dance floor - ideally spilling as little as possible.”
“How you navigate the process (or the dance floor in this example) is as important as the value of the idea to begin with,” Robertson surmised. “It doesn’t matter how good an idea is if no one sees it.”
Robertson’s statement was especially valuable to us at LAUNCH because we play a role in getting that glass of water across a section of the dance floor: we make the materials, in the form of test commercials, that go into market research. Yes, market research, one of the most debated practices in advertising.
The debate about researching commercial ideas is basically divided between two perspectives: One view is that market research squashes the essence of ideas (it spills the glass of water) by imposing rigid, formulaic constraints on creativity. The other perspective is that research provides useful insights that help target consumers based on their proven preferences, needs and habits (it makes sure that the right water is in the glass and that it gets to the right audience).
Ultimately, both sides of the argument are right and wrong; market research is extremely useful in many scenarios and less so in others. In short, there is no universal research rule that can be applied to all ideas. Creative concepts should be looked at individually and tested or not tested based on a variety of criteria (an analysis we’ll save for another time).
Regardless of your position about market research, this article is based on the fact that it is a reality of our industry. Additionally, we believe that the way an idea is expressed in market research is as important as the original idea itself. Finally, this article posits that right now is the time to rethink test commercials overall. A new generation of 3D test commercials is liberating creative ideas for research and destroying old superstitions about animatics. At the same time, these new techniques are demanding greater creative attention from agencies and clients alike.
To overstate the point, recently developed 3D animatic production techniques are like spill-proof glasses that help carry water across the dance floor. In order to get ideas through the market research process intact, creatives and clients alike can benefit by understanding the new 3D techniques available to them.
Old Assumptions Don’t Apply Anymore
For decades, the term animatic has left a bad taste in the mouth of every agency creative - and for some very valid reasons. Namely, animatics made it difficult to get creative ideas across effectively. In many cases, strong, dynamic concepts were impossible to represent with drawings. In turn, good ideas often lost out to simpler ones that came across more clearly through the limited vocabulary of the drawn expressions and scarecrow-like movements of traditional animatics.
But, new 3D animation technologies have changed the game, and in most cases, the old rules about animatics don’t apply anymore. Traditional artwork animatics have been giving way to realistic 3D animatics at a rapid pace because creative ideas that rely on nuanced human emotion, or dynamic film techniques – stories that couldn’t have been told by traditional animatics – can now be effectively represented. (see NewGenAnimatics.com)
Developments in 3D motion capture and real-time rendering, among others technologies are the forces allowing high-end 3D animation to thrive in the short schedules and tight budgets of test commercial production. In so doing, ideas can be expressed more clearly for market research. But, 3D has also raised the stakes of the animatic process for agency creatives as well as clients.
The communication power of the new generation of 3D animatics is increasing the creative responsibilities of agencies, clients, and animatic production studios to create compelling, well executed stories at the test commercial phase. Simply put, 3D can say things more clearly, so messages need to be thought out more thoroughly to maximize the results of the market research process. Now, questions that used to not come up until full-up production are arising much earlier in the process during the creation of the animatic.
In this new environment, a new type of specialty is becoming more critical: the expertise of commercial pre-visualization. Animatic production studios can no longer only be staffed by just artists and editors. Now, 3D animatic production studios, if they’re going to be relevant, need to be led by tiers of directors (much like agencies) who are deeply schooled in filmmaking techniques, advertising history and trends, and supported by a myriad of specialized 3D and graphic artists and software engineers as well.
To help get the glass of water across the dance floor, however, clients and agencies must play their part also. Agencies and clients can get more out of the process if they are willing to adjust old attitudes and processes in order to allow the pre-visualization experts help to craft material that will yield the most success in market research. Our most successful partnerships are based on this model of increased collaboration between us, the agency and the client.
To that end, leaders in the 3D animatic industry need to up their game and be comfortable in higher-level conversations about brand strategies and large-scale creative thinking. Ultimately, and more than ever because of the power of 3D communication, animatic companies need to be able to translate big picture ideas into filmic reality.
It can be said that the role of production in relation to agencies and clients is changing. I, for one, think that the oft overlooked niche of animatics will lead the way of that trend. But that, yet again, is a topic for another time.
Back to our conclusion; many will debate that testing creative ideas is counter-productive, while others fully support the practice. Regardless of your perspective however, testing commercial concepts is a reality. And learning about the new 3D animatic techniques, and how to best leverage them, can only help get that precious glass of water across the turbulent dance floor of market research - and into the hands of your target audience, with the original creative vision not only intact, but thriving.
About LAUNCH:
New York-based LAUNCH is the global leader in test commercial production. By uniting cutting-edge 3D technology with top talent from the advertising and film industries, LAUNCH achieves a level of storytelling that has been impossible with traditional animatics. In addition to producing a better product for agencies and clients and supercharging storytelling for consumer insight, the realism of LAUNCH’s work exposes critical filmmaking challenges that would otherwise go overlooked, streamlining full-up production. With LAUNCH, the animatic process becomes an opportunity to enhance, smooth out, and fully express creative ideas.
