Ok, so I am looking for a little interaction on the blog. I have a question. The best answer by the end of the day today on the blogspot will win a copy of "Secret Formulas Of The Wizard Of Ads", by Roy H. Williams, a gold star AND your response will be posted on the blog tomorrow morning! Just log in to the blog and respond on the site. Answer the question and support it with WHY. It's not a trick question.
Which works better in advertising, excellent execution of a weak strategy or poor execution of an excellent strategy?
Feel free to support your answer with quotes and sources. Creativity is encouraged. (deadline is midnight tonight 6/22/09)
I would have to go with excellent execution of a weak strategy. I feel it is more important for a client to see that we are professional and knowledgeable when it comes to executing strategy. When you are competent and confident in what you are doing - I think that strengthens even the weakest of strategies and makes us more memorable to the client. I found an excellent quote that ultimately cemented my answer: "Bottomline - Products and services come and go - but the core competence of how to clearly define and execute strategy is forver." (sixdiciplines.blogspot - 2005)
ReplyDeleteI would much rather have an excellent execution of a weak strategy. If you produce an excellent execution, the outcome will result in a satisfied client. Our clients look to us to be the creative input and to market them in a way that will result in the ROI that they are expecting. If we put forth an execution that is creative and professional, this might be the first exposure to the client and their product or services.
ReplyDeleteI have always lived by "Hard work overcomes all obstacles" so I have to by default choose an excellent execution of a weak strategy. I believe that if you over-deliver even with a weak idea it has to far outweigh a half-assed effort. "Poor execution" isn't in my vocabulary!
ReplyDeleteI'll go for the "poor execution of an excellent strategy." If we've got the right message and an excellent strategy to deliver it, we'll get the customers. No matter how good we deliver a poor strategy, the product or service will not succeed. We must focus on the strategy. And focus on the message. If people don't understand what the product does, they won't buy it. If they don't see how a service benefits them, they're not going to use it. Unfortunately delivering a weak message with excellent execution only emphasizes the weakness. As Roy Williams writes, "Give me average writing, bland colors, no pictures, the wrong people and a strong strategy and I'll have to rent a trailer to haul my money to the bank.....It's hard to tell a powerful story badly."
ReplyDeletei would normally say a excellent execution however to be devils advocate (cause most everone is choosing that) i am going to say poor execution of an excellent stategy. because strategy is key when defining your product or service. how, when, what and why are important in our everyday lifes. even if you have a terrible means of getting out your message or a real dummy for an ad rep your strategy will still come through. some examples of terrible executions but good stategies are below and were created by me in about 15 minutes so it isnt a really good novel just a novel.
ReplyDeleteWHY? 2 examples
1. say you have a piece of furniture that is one of a kind worth 1 million bucks. you decide to advertise it in a circulation of only 5 households in the world. however those households are the biggest collectors in the world of furniture. The stategy is to sell it in one day. how? to offer it at 500k. i dont care if you have a picture of a kid standing on a piece of furniture those guys are gonna take a look and one will buy it. 1 of those 5 guys will have to have it. your radio ad says "hey mom look im dancing on this nice piece of furniture with a coke in my hand", but its only 500k and worth million at auction. one of these five guys will be on it like fly's on well??? what flys get on... anyways the example i have just stated shows a particular item.
2. Now lets look at an item that is simple, say a new brand of a cell phone. i mean this phone will do anything from jump start your car to give you a foot massage. then your execution of a promotion is to place 2000 phones in a horsetrack that when after the horses race everyone gets to go down and pick up a phone. well nearly all will be broken but a few wont be and those 2000 goofy tech people that like great technology has the opportunity to have this nice new phone. then the other people watching and wanting, but got a broken one, will probably go and at least look at the item even if its priced more than they make in a month. so the strategy was to build up a chance of winning these awesome phones and giving people a lesson before the race on what that phone could do. Then the execution is the horses trampling on it in a race, terrible right, or is it????? you created monsters in your store or business place people have to have their technology. "and thats my story and im sticking to it" quote from jimmy buffet
I guess i would go with 'poor execution of an excellent strategy'. I used to tour around the country in a band.... There would be times when we were really tired and didn't want to play the show but i would always write a set list to cater to the particular crowd. We may have been too tired and hungover to play but we always had a plan. Sometimes, however, i din't have time to make a set list and we would just "wing it". Nobody in the band knew what song we were going to play next and we ended up looking like idiots on stage. As long as we knew what we were doing and everyone was on the same page, we got our message across..maybe not as well as we'd hoped but at least we had our shit together. And a lot of the time people didn't even notice that we played like crap!! I'm a big believer in "it's all about the message!!"
ReplyDeleteI think there are advantages and disadvantages of both. Of course we strive to execute powerful and excellent presentations, but with a weak strategy, how are our clients going to find value in it? If we have poor execution with an excellent strategy, we may be doing our clients a disservice by not providing them with enough information or we may not be showing them that we're confident in the strategy. I know this isn't a "real" answer, but there's good and bad to both situations.
ReplyDelete