Pushing the creative boundaries

LawtonWare’s HR ad for Brighton & Hove City Council deservedly won the Ri Fiver award for May. But in reality the concept took some time to reach its final form, demonstrating the advantages of a close agency-client relationship in the process. Creative director Martin Flavin explained to Ri5 how the final creative solution was arrived at.First, a bit of context. The subject of a successful repitch last year, B&HCC has been a LawtonWare client for around four years now. Throughout this period it’s been serviced by the same account manager (now director, Claire Jenvey), forging a reputation as a client that’s always willing to try new things. As a result, the council won the diversity category for the last three years running at the PPMA awards, as well as picking up both a RAD and a CIPD award in recognition of its diversity efforts.

“They’re very good at giving us a broad brief,” says Martin, “and because the relationship is strong there’s lots of trust. So you don’t need to worry about negative reactions if you come up with innovative ideas, because that trust comes with success.”

The brief that led to the Ri Fiver award-winning campaign resulted from the need to recruit two senior HR positions. “The majority of HR ads - certainly in the local authority sector - tend to focus on one of two themes: either ‘we’re transforming the council’ or ‘we value our people and HR,’” says Martin. “But our approach demonstrated our preparedness to take risks. Initially we showed them five or six different ideas, but it was the Dullton & Hive concept that they immediately latched on to.”

In its final form, the campaign consisted of a dreary press ad for a spoof council that encouraged inquisitive respondents to visit a web address which, of course, revealed B&HCC’s contrastingly progressive approach. But the initial concept had simply been to juxtapose two half-page press ads one above the other. “The client loved it when it was first presented,” says Martin. “But the more we looked at it ourselves, the more we thought it was too confusing. It was a good concept, but on reflection it wasn’t quite there.” Various devices were tried to link the two contrasting elements - including superimposed ripped pages, patches and stickers - but none of them really worked; there was simply too much going on.

“You have to amuse people if you’re going to do something really different,” says Martin. “And we could only do this if we didn’t mention Brighton & Hove at all initially. Ironically, in order to make the concept less complex, we had to omit all reference to the client. Because it had to be sufficiently intriguing to get people to go to the website. So we went back to them saying ‘We know you’ve approved the concept, but we’ve since pushed it even further. Now it doesn’t mention you at all - it simply shows your direct opposite!’ We also explained how it would work using both the magazine (People Management) and online.

“Inevitably, you’re always going to meet a degree of resistance in these situations, especially if you’re proposing not to include the client’s name or potentially be seen to be ‘negative’ about HR,” continues Martin. “Fortunately we’ve got a couple of strong advocates client-side - Lance Richard, Recruitment Manager, and Shaun Rafferty, Head of HR. We showed them a number of alternatives, and they were persuaded that the final version was the best option. We told them that if they were going to go for this solution, it need to be done full-bloodedly or not at all, and they saw that. The alternative option was always there if they didn’t get the right response!”

However the response has been excellent, with strong shortlists for both positions at the time of writing. “I was really excited to have the opportunity to use such an imaginative campaign to recruit to jobs in local government,” says Shaun Rafferty. “By using such a different approach, we reinforced the message that we wanted people to come and work for us who would be radical and different.”

Martin is quick to stress that the whole exercise was conceived as a properly integrated campaign. “We never push extreme ideas for the sake of our own egos,” he says. “You do see ideas that have evidently been railroaded as potential award-winners. For us, the question is always ‘Is it going to work for the client?’

“One of the hardest things was to create a ‘good, bad ad’ for the Dullton & Hive element,” he adds. “The copy had to be longish, but still readable and interesting, while the setting had to be ‘bad’ but somehow acceptable. Tricky!”

Martin remains sanguine about the prospects of this distinctive campaign picking up a RAD or a CIPD award, recognising that it’s just the kind of concept to polarise opinions. “There’s more to annoy people than your typical beautifully-crafted ad,” he says. “But at least it isn’t a formulaic solution!”

Myself and Mike recently had a meeting with a large local authority about their forthcoming contract and the framework agreement that was going to come with it – i.e. lots of other councils jumping on the massive negotiated discount.

Now, in a previous rant, I dismissed framework agreements as fundamentally flawed because their sole focus is to squeeze as much out of you for as little as possible, meaning that you can’t deliver a quality service and you’re limiting your options to a handful of major players.

But this was different. Firstly, we were actually having a meeting with them. This is unheard of. Most of the time, you get a massive document requesting tonnes of creative but with no hope of a brief or even a conversation about what’s being asked of you.

We talked about how we work, how we think a local authority pitch should be run, and they took notes! Yes, they took notes!! They actually listened to us. They didn’t fling us out the door when we expressed the opinion that maybe the cheapest possible supplier isn’t the most suitable.

Is this the start of something new? Are we looking at a different way of pitching for local authorities where they look closer at the agencies and don’t make their decision based on a mathematical calculation?

Imagine a local authority pitch process that involved in-depth consultation, agency days where you get a full brief on your project. Maybe site visits where they take the time to get to know you.

If this is a new dawn, I for one am very excited.

Finally, small agency and big agency can compete on a level playing field where it’s about the quality of the service and the product. Things are going to get very interesting for all of us, and the ultimate winners will be the local authorities.

I, along with the MDs of most of the UK’s top recruitment marketing agencies, attended a very strenuous RBI Summit for two days last week at Ashford Castle, County Mayo, Ireland. It was pretty tough as you can imagine but in between the socialising, we did receive a detailed analysis of the UK economy over the past three decades or so and, if things carry on as they are, warnings about just how nasty the impending downturn might be, particularly for companies like us who rely on our clients recruiting people! Every time in the past there’s been the merest sniff of a slow down, everyone stops spending and goes in to hibernation. And agencies like us catch a cold.

So, interesting that the UK’s recruitment marketing sector is still so strong. Like many other agencies, we’ve actually had a very good 2008 so far and, whilst there are bound to be clouds ahead - we’re pessimistic by nature - it seems that organisations across the board are defying the doom-mongers and continuing to recruit come what may. Certainly the Association of Graduate Recruiters, for example, are reporting significant growth for the foreseeable future. And 75% of recruitment marketing agencies are predicting growth at least until the end of the year.

As the RBI’s Economist kindly said, either we know something the Chancellor doesn’t, or we’re just rubbish at forecasting. Time will tell!