Ipsos Views - Slowing down to be faster

IPSOS
VIEWS
SLOWING DOWN
TO BE FASTERWhy it is paramount to invest time at the
front end of the development process
Arnaud Debia and Jiongming Mu | December 2019

Has speed become the ultimate goal for creative
agencies? Is the world set to adopt the Korean motto
of ‘hurry, hurry’. Or is there an alternative to nurture
effectiveness beyond just time efficiencies?
With 20 senior executives and key clients, Ipsos
explores how slowing down might actually help
being faster and more effective.
A ‘HURRY HURRY’ WORLD
The acceleration of web and mobile technology hasn’t
only impacted the digital world. It has profoundly changed
people’s expectations and perceptions of time. Everything
now has to be fast, immediate, instantaneous, even
anticipated. Waiting is over: it’s so 20th century! Looking at
people on public transport, in traffic jams or on the street,
most people’s idle time is dominated with reading screens,
viewing, chatting and/or gaming.
The way we work has completely changed too: thanks to
(or because of) technology, a lot of us now multi-task at the
office, online meetings and instant messaging. Even email is
now seen as not being fast enough.
The innovation and creative development processes have
undergone a similar transformation towards fast and speed.
The rise of insurgent brands, start-up companies, who can
bring new products and services in markets in just a couple
of months, has pushed larger companies to accelerate their
innovation cycles. This is also true for communications where
more and more creative advertising content is produced
across more touchpoints. Traditional advertisers are pushed
to speed up by more agile digital minded agencies and are
pushed to tap into crowdsourcing to develop multiple pieces
of content in record timing. This impacts research too –
instead of testing before launch, clients prefer to launch
and learn in market, removing the products or content
which don’t stick.
However, should marketing, R&D and creative agencies
put all their efforts on time efficiencies? Or, as Will Lion
from BBH questioned, are we just looking at an efficiency
bubble?1
Looking at making processes faster and more
efficient because “it’s cuts, it’s short-term, it’s rational, it’s
targeting, it’s late funnel, it’s low risk. It’s 0 to 0.1. It smells
like fresh laundry.” While, “effectiveness is relatively harder.
It’s investment, it’s focus, it’s long-term, it’s emotional, it’s
fame, it’s ideas, it’s top of funnel, it’s bets, guts and risk. It’s
0 to 1. It has freakish breath”.
Should we somehow take the time and make the effort to
develop innovation and creativity effectiveness?
3SLOWING DOWN TO BE FASTER | IPSOS VIEWS

SPEED AND EFFECTIVENESS COME
FROM TAKING YOUR TIME, EXPERTS SAY
Ipsos contacted more than 20 senior creative agency,
marketing and insights executives, in order to get their
views on the relative value of speed and time vs. creativity
and innovation.
Many of them do recognize the importance of speed in the
world today:
“New technology and limited budgets
means accessibility of data and agility
in service is faster today”
This can be very stimulating for the creative and innovation
development process:
“The reality is that today we have less
time to develop ideas than we had before –
sometimes that actually helps – when the
pressure is on, it can be motivating”
They also point out that what matters most is not the amount
of time, but what you do with it:
“It’s not so much about the time you need
(three weeks) than the focus, the resources
and efforts you put in that matter”
However, there are still calls for making the time within
creative and innovation processes:
“There are two big dangers when we skip
on time. Firstly, that mistakes can be made
(not necessarily in the development process)
but during shoots, trafficking of materials,
etc. The second is that we are often juggling
multiple projects at the same time – the
ability to be agile decreases when too many
projects are “hot” at the same time”
“Speed can save some time, but it is also the
source of making mistakes. It might force
you to decide something without thinking
things to a proper end”
Sometimes, cutting down time is not due to business or
market constraints:
“It is very annoying when we are being given
false deadlines to accommodate agendas”
“Too much time is dedicated to politics
and processes rather than quality”
4 IPSOS VIEWS | SLOWING DOWN TO BE FASTER

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO INVEST TIME AT THE
FRONT END OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Everyone recognizes that creativity takes time:
“While new processes and methods can help
speed up processes overall, creativity still
needs time to explore, think, reconsider,
push further”
“Creativity needs time and space to flourish
to avoid formulaic work”
“You won’t speed up a creative idea, there’s
no shortcut. You don’t shorten the time
needed to cook a cake or a chicken, right?”
Therefore, how do you marry the need for speed, dictated
by today’s fast-moving world and fierce competition, and
at the same time give creativity and innovation the right
time to grow?
Our panel of senior experts have the answer. They highlight
the importance of investing time at the front end of the
development process – understanding the brief, the
situation, the business question, the target and spending
enough time on the strategy and big idea.
“If you do not take time upfront in
understanding the situation, the stakes,
the business marketing and communication
objectives, the critical things, you lose time
at the end of the day”
“The exploratory phase required is a must
- not a luxury. Once you’ve found a great,
solid idea and worked out the strategic
underpinnings, it actually enables you to
go faster and have more fun developing the
executions. Time well invested”
“Without taking time on the strategic frame
you operate in, there is no way you can make
things efficient”
“With more time within the creative process
the probability to find a genius solution is
higher; investing time in the exploration
phase, to see where the raw diamond can
take you is well invested as it will make the
whole development smoother”
“Time helps to understand the question
and the real challenge is to get faster to
the right answer”

EARLY STAGE RESEARCH HELPS
INCREASE SPEED AND EFFECTIVENESS
These insights from the experts we spoke to are fully
consistent with the research Ipsos has carried out recently.
• Communication campaigns which benefited from early
stage exploration show an above average performance
in terms of potential short-term sales lift (index 138),
much higher than those which didn’t use any early
stage research (index 93)2
.
• Likewise, innovations with early concept exploration
had a trial index of 107 vs. 96 for concepts that
skipped this step3
.
• Looking into the drivers of stronger creative and
innovations which benefited from early stage research,
innovations on average show a 6% increase on
differentiation and 9% increase in relevance. Meanwhile,
creative on average shows a 32% increase in stirring
emotions, 36% in terms of uniqueness. Early exploration
helps build an idea relevance and differentiation.
Our research shows that clients and agencies who take
the time to use our front end, early stage solutions to
explore their early ideas and identify how to make them
best resonate with people, develop much more successful
creative and higher performing innovations.
This is no surprise for us. We have seen time and again
that early, front end creative and innovation research has
not only a limited effect on time, but significantly
impacts effectiveness, by helping teams understand
the strengths of their early ideas they need to focus on
executing, and opportunities to improve before spending
big money on production.

Enrique Arceo de La Pena, Global Marketing Excellence
Lead at Sanofi, very clearly articulates how early stage
research is essential:
“We need to start talking about content instead of
advertising. We have to re-focus our consumer understanding
into the earlier stages of the creative thinking. Judging the
creative power of a multi-touch point campaign based on
the scores of a single execution will only slow us down and
limit creativity. The focus should be on the exploration (not
validation) of the creative idea to make sure we are in the
right creative territory, and then let the creatives go wild.“
This is exactly what ABI did. In 2018, they successfully
developed the Born the Hard Way Superbowl campaign in
just three months, by focusing early on exploration. The
team started at the end of October exploring four different
ideas using Ipsos Labs, which helped build conviction and
confidence on the way forward and understanding how to
make it more seamlessly connect with people. The agency
was equipped with the right insight to finalize the creative,
tapping in qualitative discussions to confirm the direction,
then went into production in December. Creative assessment
results in January confirmed the above average performance
of the execution, which successfully aired at the end of
January. It became the most talked about and celebrated
Superbowl campaign of 2018, going to win an Ogilvy Award
and was a Cannes Silver Lion winner.
This demonstrates perfectly that slowing down helps you go
faster. Early exploration fuelled by the right research helps
you go into the later stages of development faster, aligning
all stakeholders and allowing you to move with confidence.
The old sayings “a stitch in time saves nine” or “the early
bird catches the worm” both back this up.

THE NEW CREATIVITY EQUATION
Another interesting finding from our exchanges with
our panel of experts is related to how the equation of
creativity has evolved.
Those of us working at ad agencies in the 2000s were
told by their strategic planner director:
CREATIVITY = TALENT X MONEY X TIME
It does make intuitive sense that you need the right minds
and creatives, sufficient investment and enough time to
come up with ideas.
When asked about the key ingredients to creativity, most
of our experts mentioned talent – in creativity, but also in
strategic thinking and production.
Yet to our surprise, ‘time’ was missing. In the context
of ‘hurry hurry’, this isn’t surprising, as marketers and
communication agencies can’t ask for more time to make
efficient creative. Time will be scarce and cannot be a driver.
It can drag down creativity if not efficiently managed, using
it where it matters: early on, and speeding up in the later
stages of development as much as possible.
Figure 1 Please select the three elements that matter most to come up with breakthrough ideas and creative
Source: Interviews with 20 senior creative agency, marketing and insights executives
Creative talent
People insights, consumer knowledge
Strategic planning expertise
A great client brief
Close agency/client relationship
Production talent, Excellence in craft
Touchpoints, Media, Receptivity
Time
Internal politics
External politics
Money
Something else
15
9
8
5
4
3
2
1
0
0
0
0
Number of mentions

“Time will be scarce
and cannot be a
driver. It can drag
down creativity if not
efficiently managed”

The same happens to money: many YouTubers and
zero-budget campaigns have proven that strong ideas
and disruptive content can make up for a lack of investment.
However, Peter Field, in his last creativity report for the
IPA, demonstrates that an erosion of advertising budgets is
certainly correlated with the erosion in creative effectiveness.4
Brands need to maintain a minimum level of investment on
average, to ensure their campaigns get the chance to grab
people’s attention and influence brand choice.
The other surprise to us was to see that ‘insights’ was the
second most mentioned ingredient right after ‘talent’. Most
professionals recognize the importance of in-depth insights
about people and how they engage with ideas, to ensure
their creative and innovation ideas will effectively get their
attention and interest.
This is a relief for us, reinforcing our intimate belief that the
right research, at the right moment, done by the right people,
can be a catalyst to creative and innovation excellence if it
brings the right knowledge as early as possible. This is what
Ipsos strives for: supporting the creative talents and their
clients in developing breakthrough creative and innovations,
slowing down early on to learn, to accelerate execution and
develop more effective ideas.
Not sure mathematicians will agree with our algebra, but this
somehow indicates we should rewrite the creativity equation
for the 21st
century:
CREATIVITY = EARLY EXPLORATION X TALENT X INSIGHTS
+ THE RIGHT LEVEL OF TIME & MONEY
Arnaud Debia has worked for more than 24 years as a brand, communications and research expert combining client,
advertising and research agency experience. He is dedicated to driving clients, researchers and agencies to bond
together earlier in the creative development process, in order to spark stronger and bolder business building campaigns.
Jiongming Mu has over 15 years of experience advising clients on innovation screening, optimizing, and
forecasting across categories and industries. He is an avid advocator of new research approaches that better
reflects the ever-changing realities of how consumers discover and adopt new innovations today.

REFERENCES
1. http://bbh-labs.com/we-are-in-an-efficiency-bubble/
2. Average Creative Effect Index of ads without any
early exploration vs. average Creative Effect Index
of ads which underwent early creative exploration /
Ipsos global database – the Creative Effect Index is a
measure combining Attention and Brand desire metrics,
strongly correlated to in market ad performance
3. Average Trial Potential Index in final Designor tests,
comparing innovations with prior early stage concept
tests vs. those without. Ipsos Trial Potential Index is a
validated measure of in market innovation performance
4. https://ipa.co.uk/media/7699/ipa_crisis_in_creative_
effectiveness_2019.pdf

Arnaud Debia Global Creative Development Director, Ipsos
Jiongming Mu Global lead for innovation testing, Ipsos
The Ipsos Views white
papers are produced by the
Ipsos Knowledge Centre.
www.ipsos.com
@Ipsos
SLOWING DOWN
TO BE FASTER

Ipsos Views - Slowing down to be faster

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