Creative Concepts Built From Returns and Sales Data

Three concepts is the usual output, and each arrives with the same four things: the claim it rests on, the document that claim came from, the way it can be shot, and the number that would retire it. A concept with no way of being wrong is a mood board, and we do not sell those. What we read before writing: Twelve months of returns, warranty claims or support tickets. Win-loss notes where the sale has a salesperson in it. And the review text on whichever marketplace matters to you — Amazon.es, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin, El Corte Inglés, or your own product pages. Reviews are the cheapest access anyone has to the sentence a customer uses when nobody is selling to them, and that sentence is usually the concept. For industrial accounts we also want the spec sheet, the test report, and permission to name the standard. For kids and family we want the parent's real objection, which is almost never the one the brand assumes. What a concept is here: A claim, a reason to believe it, and a form that can be shot for the money you have. We ask for the production number early, because a concept requiring the line stopped for a day, or a mountain location in February, is not a concept, it is a wish. Each route comes with an indicative shot list and a rough cost band, so a route can be killed on money before anybody falls in love with it. Message hierarchy: One claim leads and the others queue. Most briefs handed to us try to carry four claims at once and lose all four. The work of the engagement is deciding which claim goes first and then defending that decision to the people internally who own the other three. We will sit in that meeting. It is usually where the value of this engagement actually sits. Where it ends: A document per route covering the claim and its source, the audience it argues with, the objection it answers, the executions it can produce across paid social, YouTube and trade or retail contexts, the falsifier, and the shot list. Plus the one route we recommend, and why. What we refuse: Territory names and brand platforms with no media behind them. Personas with a stock photograph and a first name. Concepts resting on a claim your legal team has not seen — and in two of our categories that matters more than most: health and performance claims in sports and fitness must sit inside the authorised claims register under EU Regulation 1924/2006, and creative addressed to children in Spain goes through AUTOCONTROL Copy Advice before the shoot, not after it is flagged. We will not write around either. Not for you if: The concept has already been decided upstairs and you need it dressed. You want a large number of routes to present internally so somebody else can pick — picking is our job, and handing over ten routes is how a shop avoids doing it. Or your product has a problem the creative is being asked to hide. We will find that in the returns data inside the first week and say so, and that conversation is not refundable. Also not included: production, casting, media planning and the shoot. We will stay through production as author if you want that, but we are not the producer of record.