Cadbury

I remember it was a brief for Halls Cough drops. It was a TV brief. Our original brief was we want something cool and edgy and we want to speak to young people and hip people and eventually, the brief just kept getting changed and getting changed and the client was soo indecisive and didn't know what they wanted. [1130],[1131],[1132]
I remember it was a brief for Halls Cough drops. It was a TV brief. Our original brief was we want something cool and edgy and we want to speak to young people and hip people and eventually, the brief just kept getting changed and getting changed and the client was soo indecisive and didn't know what they wanted. I think we wrote almost 200 scripts at some point and after a few months, by the end of it we were just burned on it and it was like, okay the client needs to figure out what they really want because in the beginning we were told, hip, cool, fun, exciting work and that's what we presented and now they're saying we want the same ads we had in the '50s. The client told us one thing, our brief was one thing in the beginning and then it completely changed and that's not what they wanted or they got scared or whatever. [1100],[1102],[1101]
We went through 200 scripts and one of our ideas still lived and we had to make an animatic, I don't know if you know what that is, it's horrible. [1103]
No. And they use it for testing purposes, to test the idea. Which I think is not always the best way to find out if people like something or whether it's going to work. So we had to make an animatic for this Hall's thing and it was just ... making the animatic was hell and the fact that we were already burned out on it and we've been through 200 ideas and then making the animatic we were struggling to get what the client wanted in our idea and every time we would change something they'd as for one more thing to be fit into our idea, which we didn't have time for. The finished animatic ended up not being too much like what our original idea was. We were upset about that and then it didn't test well and then it died. [1104],[1105]
So we had to make an animatic for this Hall's thing and it was just ... making the animatic was hell and the fact that we were already burned out on it and we've been through 200 ideas and then making the animatic we were struggling to get what the client wanted in our idea and every time we would change something they'd as for one more thing to be fit into our idea, which we didn't have time for. [1133],[1134],[1135],[1136]
The finished animatic ended up not being too much like what our original idea was. We were upset about that and then it didn't test well and then it died. [1106]
. I don't think that was the main problem, I think the problem was that the client just kept changing their minds about what they wanted. Every time we would go to present to them, they would be like, that's great and then they'd think about it and then they'd be like, we need to communicate this. I found that the best briefs are the ones that stay the same. Once you get that brief, the brief doesn't change. [1109]
He's like, how about this, this is funny. And it would be something that we didn't think it was funny at all. We kind of clashed a little bit with him. [1137]
I don't think that was the main problem, I think the problem was that the client just kept changing their minds about what they wanted. Every time we would go to present to them, they would be like, that's great and then they'd think about it and then they'd be like, we need to communicate this. I found that the best briefs are the ones that stay the same. Once you get that brief, the brief doesn't change. [1110]
I think the problem was that the client just kept changing their minds about what they wanted. Every time we would go to present to them, they would be like, that's great and then they'd think about it and then they'd be like, we need to communicate this. I found that the best briefs are the ones that stay the same. Once you get that brief, the brief doesn't change. [1138],[1139]
We went through a lot of different stuff. We had roadblocks with one of our creative directors at a certain point were we would sit in his office and we felt like he didn't get our sense of humor and then he would suggest something. He's like, how about this, this is funny. And it would be something that we didn't think it was funny at all. We kind of clashed a little bit with him. [1108],[1107]
Like with Boost. Our brief stayed the same the entire time. The client never decided, oh we want to see this instead. Its really hard at that point to try ... sometimes you have to go back to square one and then sometimes you don't and it just sort of mucks things up. [1111]
Yeah there was, on the client side, especially there were a group of three or four people and they would talk amongst themselves and it felt like there were a lot of levels on that project to go through. [1112],[1113]
Yeah. I think that was part of their problem on why the brief kept changing because we'd hear one thing from one client and then one of their cronies would say oh, but we want to talk about this, we can't forget about this. [1116],[1115],[1114]
They took no risks. [1117]
Yeah. Which I didn't understand that they said that they wanted it to be targeted towards young people and then they changed their minds later. It would seem like they would've had research that young people are the kind of people they wanted to target ut after they changed the brief, they decided to just go with a broad target. [1140],[1118]
have no idea. I think at the end it was probably like, we are speaking to everyone in the world ... [1141]
Yeah, and it was for this product called Halls Bursts which are like these little tiny candy-like things that come in a tic tac box sort of thing and so they're just supposed to be for if you have a little scratchy throat or a little sore throat. Not a full on cough drop, a little bit less than that. The target was everyone in the end and they wanted to say that it soothes scratchy throats and it wasn't for people who had a full blown cough. They just wanted to get very specific with it and really didn't want to do too much branding. [1119]
I think the budget was kind of small because they only wanted to do one TV spot. I don't really remember, this was a while ago. I know what we kept going through round, after round, after round so I'm sure that somebody's calendars had to change at some point. [1120]
We were writing soo many scripts. We would write 20 in a day or whatever, we would write a lot of them and it consumed our lives. [1121]
It was. We laughed at it at one point. It was just like, look how many scripts we've written, this is crazy. It's insane. We were like, okay we will keep coming up with ideas, we'll keep doing this and we did. We did what we had to do. We just kept coming up with more and more ideas. [1122],[1142]
At first it was fun. We always try to write scripts that ... well in the beginning, we really tried to write scripts that we thought was funny, that we liked and we had fun writing and stuff that we thought would entertain us. There's still some of those scripts now, I think back on them and I think they could be funny for another product or something. Or there could be a funny idea in it somewhere. I think by the end, we were soo burned out and frustrated with the whole process and we felt like our idea, the one that went into testing, that that one, that script changed considerably from where we had originally written it that there were just soo many product features and things about the product that were trying to be injected into this idea that just didn't fit in there. [1124],[1123]
I think by the end, we were soo burned out and frustrated with the whole process and we felt like our idea, the one that went into testing, that that one, that script changed considerably from where we had originally written it that there were just soo many product features and things about the product that were trying to be injected into this idea that just didn't fit in there. PROJECT ID [1143]
It was a guru type of guy sitting on a mountain and we were inspired by Tim Robbins character in High Fidelity. He plays this guy, Ian, and he's spiritual and kind of wacky and weird, he doesn't really know what's going on. He claims to but he doesn't. He was the inspiration for one of our characters. The other character was, we had a guy dressed up as a Halls Burst in a costume that made him look like this candy, cough drop thing and as far as where that idea came from, I have no idea. [1125]
No, just phone. A few times in person. It was kind of weird. They would say something different to us in person than they would say later after they'd talked about our ideas. They weren't that great. I heard that now there's a different client there. I've heard that it's better now. [1126]
Above us was the creative director and above him were the executive creative directors, so it was the one executive creative director that we kind of clashed with a little bit. The one creative director, he was pretty much on our side the whole time and he was like okay, here's how we can try to make this work and he was trying to work with us trying to get an idea sold and trying to get something through. I think internally, it was okay. There weren't too many issues. It was more with the client and the fact that they kept changing their minds. [1129],[1127],[1128]
It was more with the client and the fact that they kept changing their minds. [1144],[1145]
Reference Tags
[1130] Alignment,[1131] Communication issues,[1132] Indecisive leadership,[1100] Insufficient Feedback,[1102] Scope creep,[1101] Vague goals,[1103] Yielding conflict about ideas,[1104] Insufficient Feedback,[1105] Reactance,[1133] Alignment,[1134] Indecisive leadership,[1135] Irreconcilable differences,[1136] Vague goals,[1106] Reactive devaluation,[1109] Vague goals,[1137] Alignment,[1110] Insufficient Feedback,[1138] Indecisive leadership,[1139] Vague goals,[1108] Lack of organizational encouragement,[1107] Resilience,[1111] Resilience,[1112] Indecisive leadership,[1113] Insufficient Feedback,[1116] Indecisive leadership,[1115] Insufficient Feedback,[1114] Vague goals,[1117] Risk compensation,[1140] Alignment,[1118] Scope creep,[1141] Vague goals,[1119] Scope creep,[1120] Lack of resources,[1121] Unbalanced workload pressure,[1122] Resilience,[1142] Vague goals,[1124] Resilience,[1123] Unbalanced workload pressure,[1143] Reactance,[1125] Reactive devaluation,[1126] Insufficient Feedback,[1129] Compromising conflict about ideas,[1127] Insufficient Feedback,[1128] Vague goals,[1144] Indecisive leadership,[1145] Vague goals