In an advertising shoot, we often hear someone say, “we’ll fix it in post”. It can be comforting to hear (particularly at the end of a long day), but it’s often a cop out.
Marketers learn the hard way that there’s only so much that we can actually fix in post-production. Our source footage limits how much we can do later. It’s often worth the extra inconvenient effort to reshoot it to make sure we get it right.
In a similar way, advertising can’t fix a bad marketing strategy or an unfocused brief. It can’t make up for lousy products or a mediocre brand experience. Yet advertising is sometimes treated like a magic cure all, tacked on at the end.
Agency creatives work with the source material they have. The better that source material, the better the ideas. There’s only so much we can fix in post.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
“How to Write a Creative Brief” August 2017
“The Creative Brief” May 2011
“It’s Called Advertising” April 2015
HQ says
Did you write this cartoon for Brexit? Seems like it’s BOJO strategy as well!
As you highlight, it doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked since 2016 in fact! Apologies for political nature of comment but I couldn’t think of anything more acutely similar to the cartoon than Brexit!