“By an inch”
Back in April, Rob Campbell (now head of planning at Wieden+Kennedy’s Shanghai office) posted an “assignment” on his blog. He and some other account planning types, including Russell Davies and Gareth Kay, have for awhile now been running what they call the “Account [Planning] School on the Web,” or A[P]SOTW. They more or less take turns posting assignments on their respective blogs and accepting submissions from anyone who’s interested. Then they look at all the submissions, pick a “winner,” and provide useful feedback based on their significant experience in adland.
Having met Rob a few months back in Hong Kong, I check his blog sometimes and I decided I’d give this assignment a shot. The challenge was “How can Head & Shoulders shampoo be seen as the brand men [18-35] should use every day, rather than just on the occasions they think they have a dandruff issue?” I thought about that for awhile and had a few mini-ideas that I thought could form the basis of a decent presentation and recommendation for the brand.
- Head & Shoulders is a dandruff/scalp itch shampoo. Obvious, right? But the most recent campaign I’ve seen (with Troy Polamalu) talks more about beautiful hair than dandruff. From a brand positioning standpoint, this feels like a massive error.
- Dandruff is a little embarrassing. Some people have disagreed with me here, but I think part of the reason guys don’t want to use Head & Shoulders as an every-day shampoo is because it implies they have dandruff every day.
- Guys are more inclined to approach hygiene and grooming reactively than proactively (i.e., “I’ll fix it when it becomes a problem.”). Just callin’ it like I see it.
From these points, I re-framed the challenge as trying to get guys to think of dandruff as something that needed to be treated proactively (after all, we wear deodorant and brush our teeth…so there’s hope). My big idea was to sell guys on the idea of “sleeper cell dandruff,” implying that it’s a condition that lives under your hair 24/7, and can strike at any time. Then I had some creative execution ideas, etc.
When everything was tallied up, Rob and the other judges determined that I’d provided the best submission “by an inch.” They liked the setup, as it’s described above, but hated my creative execution ideas, which were, admittedly, amateurish. But more importantly, I enjoyed it and learned from the experience. Specifically:
- Tape yourself presenting. Watch it. Hate yourself a little bit. Repeat.
- Know your strengths. Highlight them.
- Know your weaknesses. Work on them. If possible, partner with people whose strengths and weaknesses are opposite yours.
- Plan your presentations based on what you want the audience to think, not what you want to say (or at least balance the two).
- Less is (sometimes) more.
Anyway, here’s the PPT I put together to guide my presentation and organize my thoughts. Hope you enjoy it. And keep your eyes open for the next A[P]SOTW assignment.
Thanks to Rob for coming up with the assignment, and to him and the other judges for picking my submission and providing constructive criticism.
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