Advertising creatives are a notoriously fickle bunch. We spoke to several to come up with the surefire ways to land on their bad sides.
1. Make them work on banners.
2. Start talking about metrics and analytics.
3. Go into excruciating detail about RTB, DSPs, SSPs and DMPs.
4. Show them a media plan spreadsheet.
5. Let them know that the client cancelled the campaign after they spent a full holiday weekend working on it and now there is new one to get started on ASAP.
6. Ask them to make the logo bigger.
7. Have them push around at least one ad element by two pixels after “final client approval.” Do that four times.
8. Proclaim metaphors are for sissies.
9. Tell them that media is more important to performance than creative and then show them empirically.
10. Take away their Mac and make them work on a PC.
11. Insult their black-rimmed glasses.
12. Tell them that the concept is too derivative of previous advertising concepts or executions.
13. Put them on the phone with a client.
14. Shoulder surf.
15. Critique their work in front of them to a client.
16. Defend the client.
17. Ask if they work in PowerPoint.
18. Put them on a B2B account.
19. Tell them they’d be better off crossing over to the brand side.
20. Change the office dress policy to “business casual.”
Image via Shutterstock
More in Marketing
Ad execs hope quarterly earnings reform can ease short-termism, but it’s no silver bullet
Short-term thinking can hold marketers back, but SEC changes won’t easily unpick culture of quick wins.
Marketers warm to AI, but creative challenges and legal risks still loom
Marketers are testing generative AI in campaigns more than ever — but copyright lawsuits and uncanny visuals keep some from going all in.
Pitch deck: How Google is responding to advertisers’ concerns about AI Max
Google’s first pitch deck on the AI-powered suite of ad tools left advertisers concerned. This updated deck aims to reassure them.