"You gotta have a concept, man!"

Posted on July 23, 2009 | Permalink

By Lane Casteix

The person who said that demonstrated a clear understanding of what makes advertising work most effectively,

Effective advertising and design are built around a concept. Anyone can throw together some elements and call it an ad, but it takes a solid concept behind that ad for successful message delivery. Sadly, that is lacking in most advertising and graphic design these days.

What is a concept? It is a theme around which all else is built. You may call it a vision of the brand, what that brand strives to be for its consumers, or more importantly, what the brand ought to be for its customers.

The best concepts often result from a team effort. The most effective team is usually made up of art directors who are capable of verbalizing concepts and copywriters who can visualize graphically. In other words, the art director needs to be able to verbalize what he sees in his head, and the copywriter needs to be able to see with his mind’s eye what he is verbalizing. In advertising this is cross-functional teamwork of the highest order. Such a mentally-connected team can explore many solutions very quickly by bouncing ideas off each other then developing the most promising. The end result is a concept that is truly creative, memorable, builds a brand, and sells product. And isn’t that what advertising is all about?

During the golden age of advertising (1960s and ‘70s), this process reached its peak. Art director / copywriter teams turned conceptualizing into a high art form. The Volkswagen ads of this period epitomized this. With two words, “Think small,” and a simple shot of a Volkswagen with TONS of white space, the creative team at Doyle, Dane, and Burnbach conveyed an incredible amount of information with an economy of words and graphics. “Think small,” said many things to many people, even to those not even remotely interested in buying a Volkswagen. That is effective utilization of a concept!

Today, with all the advances in technology and communications, the brand concept is often driven by the customer. A savvy brand owner or manager is listening to what their customers are saying about their brand and participating in that conversation, not to control or manipulate it, but to learn from them and relate to them.

Without an overarching concept, everything attempted by way of promoting a brand becomes discordant and less effective than it could be. It may be selling, but it isn’t brand building. Customers need to make an emotional connection with the products they use. Without the concept, it is difficult if not impossible to make that connection.