What advertising can learn from a teapot

Bauhaus is an artistic movement from 1920's Germany.

It combined art and function- redesigning everything it could.

The most famous examples of this are Bauhaus buildings: big windows, new materials and open plan designs- this was the beginning of modern architecture.

But the Bauhaus movement also effected more everyday items.

Like teapots.

The designers didn't look at what teapots already existed and how they could adapt them.

They started again- designing every aspect from scratch.

They made the design cleaner, more practical and possible to mass produce.

Why did a teapot need to be that shape?

Why does it need to be made out of china?

The result looked nothing like a normal teapot.

It was seen as revolutionary and modern at the time, chances are you have something similar in your cupboard today- so it was successful.

It is this style thinking that Steve Jobs used.
He didn't seek to reproduce a mobile phone and improve upon it. He saw it as something completely different.
He thought about what it was capable of.
Does there need to be a key pad? Is aluminium better than plastic?

He started from scratch, looking at every part critically.

It is this thinking that creates a great advert.

Analyse the competition, use the same tools as they do, improve on their strategy and you may will probably come up with an OK advert. It might even be good.

But to be great, you have to forget about everything else, you have to empty your mind of all norms.
Don't improve something, but design something fresh.

How research should be used.

Advertising is a delicate business.

It's creative.

But the creativity is for business.

And so a balance must be found:

You need a good idea, but it needs to be the right kind of good idea.

It needs a focus.

Advertising needs to accomplish something.

Leave even the greatest creatives alone with a pen and paper, and they won't create the greatest advertising.

They need guiding: pointing in the right direction.

That's where research comes in:

Research tells you what the advert needs to do.

Finds the problem with a brand.

But research won't solve the problem.

That's what creativity is for.

Of course research is more appealing: you can measure it.

That's where it can stifle.

Especially in the digital age.

The prospect of a shiny website pulling big numbers can be tempting over a new idea which may or may not work.

But just because something is popular, it does not mean it is doing what you want it to.

Fill a website with women in bikini's and you might get a lot of hits, but you haven't accomplished anything.

Numbers will never tell the full story.

It is unlikely that anybody will sum up the situation better than advertising's hero Ogilvy: too many people 'use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.'

Is advertising simply a superficial exercise in making people buy something they don’t actually need?

Everybody knows Listerine.

A few people know it was used as floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhoea before it hit it off big as mouth wash.

Listerine offered a cure for halitosis.

Nobody had heard of halitosis.

But suddenly everybody had it.

They wanted a cure and Listerine offered it.

So surely Listerine created an artificial need?

Of course not.

Listerine did not invent bad breath- they named it.

Bad breath has always been about.

They found a solution.

This is what most advertising does:

identify a problem and solve it.

Of course, there is some advertising which creates a superficial need.

There is advertising which simply panders to an existing need.

And there is advertising which informs.

But the best advertising spots a problem, and solves it.