Recognising the individual need

At the recent IPA Business Weekend in Cambridge, attendees were presented with a brief to work on throughout the weekend.

It was a giant among briefs. The aims were clear. The audience was defined. And, unusually for business-to-business advertising, we were told of the attitudes of our target audience – their concerns, their fears, their ambitions.

All too often in business advertising, the audience is treated as a kind of amorphous mass – there only to absorb the client’s message (gratefully, of course). This breeds a situation where the focus rests solely on what the client wishes to say. In the real world, however, this is not appropriate. To put it brutally – the audience wants to hear what the audience wants to hear, and it is important to remember it is made up of individuals.

Computer advertising hit £200m last year yet eight out of ten computer advertisements became wallpaper through relentlessly pushing technology itself over the benefits of the technology to the individual.

All agencies want to create outstanding work for their clients. And if we are given briefs which go beyond the basics of two-word target audiences and a solely client-focused message, we will be that much better-equipped to do so. More’s the pity then that no client personnel attended the weekend. How about an open course IPA?

Kingsley Reed

Account manager

Dowell & Associates Advertising

Teddington

Middlesex