Exploring Campaign Brief
I worked in creative agencies for more than a decade.
Almost everyone in the (Australian) industry religiously checks Campaign Brief.
It is a wonderful example of a subculture manifest in an online space. Namely, the Australian Advertising Agency industry. Particularly the creative side of it.
If you wanted to get an idea of what that industry cares about, what it talks about, and where it’s going - Campaign Brief would be a good place to start.
With permission, we extracted ~4,500 campaign brief articles over the last 3 years and their comments (~14,000 of them).
This report covers two key themes:
What are the key themes and trends of interest
What can we learn from the notorious comment section
The themes of campaign brief articles
Most themes are relatively flat. Health and Social Good peaked at the beginning of Covid. This was when brands and agencies alike were all trying to demonstrate that they were helping.
It’s a good thing that they’re flat. Campaign Brief’s editorial system is consistent.
Within each of the themes, we dig in to trend the most important terms and phrases. What’s up, what’s down, etc.
I’ll spare you the graphs.
Here’s the summary:
Growth, growth, growth; mostly through expanded remits and capabilities. The industry appears to be chasing it wherever and however it can.
Departures are also being referenced less. Whether this is owing to lack of publicising or a lack of happening is not possible to say, but the trend exists.
Perhaps the two most interesting trends are in the tactical end; OOH (particularly digi) appears to be booming at the expense of TVC, and in the digital world there is a lot of focus on games for fans and reports justifying the importance of the industry.
The shift from TVC to OOH suggests that, potentially, perceived (or actual) efficacy of salience channels is moving towards the latter.
The focus on games in the digital space suggests a residual belief that digital is good for engagement over and above salience. The focus on reports in the digital space shows a persistent need to justify the utility and growth of the space.
Let’s get to why you’re really here…
The comment analysis. We focused on the Campaign Launches topic because that’s where most of the action is. It’s 25% of articles, and more than 50% of comments.
First up - comments are net positive.
Comments on ‘work’ articles are no where near as nice as, say, announcements of hires, but they’re still net positive overall.
Articles are effusive. Intensely so.
These aren’t showing any major trends up or down. Although the Health and Social Good topic saw a recent bump, owing to a few campaigns that resonated particularly strongly with people.
At this point its worth noting that there are two themes within articles that predict negative commentary in work; certain agencies and certain categories. These tend to be non-mutually exclusive. E.g. agencies that work on gambling clients. But, aside from that, there aren’t any themes within the articles themselves that predict negative backlash.
Looking at this in a slightly different way, we can group comments as positive (>0), neutral (0), or negative (<0). As such, we see that most agencies have more than 50% of their comments as positive.
Most agencies have between one in five and one in four comments on their work being negative.
The question; is this bad?
Well, that depends (insert Peter Capaldi/Dr Who meme). Pennies in a pound? No. Commentary on your work, that you poured a piece of your soul in to? Probably.
The long and short is that the Campaign Brief comment section, in the context of work, isn’t negative. However, it probably feels that way to the creators.
This is a classic case of negativity bias. We are more likely to remember the bad than the good.
Further considering the Pollyanna principle, whereby we’re more likely to accurately remember positive information, it’s easy to appreciate why we a) remember the bad and, b), overstate the veracity of the bad.
While there’s nothing within articles (barring agencies and categories) that predict negative commentary, we can still identify the defining features of positive versus negative comments. I’ve spared you all the angles of analysis, and will just give you some lovely word clouds (boooo word clouds) that summarise the point.
Here are the defining terms and phrases of negative comments.
(Not) funny, boring, and lame.
The client and the agency get blamed, and they lament over the state of the industry.
Now, here are the defining features of positive comments.
Simple, funny, clever, well written.
Creatives get kudos, as do the agency and the clients.
According to commentators, the key to a good ad is simple, funny, and/or well written. Bad ads are diametrically opposed to this. If its bad, there is a recognition that outside forces are likely at play; client or internal failures/interference, but it is not the fault of the creators.
To Summarise
The commentary is net positive, but given the context (putting your labour of love out into the world), we focus on the negative and tend to overstate the contextual negativity. The received ‘criticism’ will likely have added emotional charge, also. (It’s shit versus It’s SHIT)
I’m not here to state what should or shouldn’t be done systemically. Individually, though, perhaps we could keep negativity bias in mind when reading the comments or creating them. If you are reading negative comments on your work, hopefully it will help with your resillience. If you are posting something that could possibly be perceived as negative, perhaps you could be more constructive with your feedback and not fuel the bias of a reader.
Thanks for reading and thanks to the good folk at Campaign Brief for allowing me to undertake this analysis. I had a lot of fun doing it. See their coverage here.
Also, to be clear, I went in not expecting these results. I, too, was well on the negative bias train.
Follow the evidence, consider it, and challenge your pre-conceived suppositions.
Critical Truth.
