Ad Making Is Not Manufacturing, It’s A Discovery Process

Martin Weigel has been Head of Planning at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam since 2009. He has some sharp ideas to share about the business.

Like this one:

When we succumb to the fantasy that we can professionalise creativity, that we can extract the play, unpredictability, and human element out of the process, that it can be treated like the manufacturing process, repeatable and reliable in its methods, and predictable in its outputs and outcomes, then things will always take a turn for the turd-like.

In other words, the makers of advertising are not machines and the audience for the ads are not automatons lining up to fill a funnel.

There’s much more Weigel where this came from.

He has little time for marketing charlatans.

MBA courses pretend that culture does not exist and offer little schooling in the psychology of human and consumer decision-making.

Another thing you do not learn in business school is humility or compassion for the customer. You don’t learn to ask, “Why would anyone be interested?” You learn to presume interest, instead of asking the most basic question of all: “What is the basis for this conversation?”