How Brands Can Strike The Right Creative Tone In Times of Crisis with Quirk Creative

While many brands feel pressured to halt advertising, whether due to freezing finances or no longer having a functional product or service, some brands are rising to meet the moment through creative that speaks directly to consumers and offers comfort, reassurance or even a useful service.

Meryl Draper, CEO and co-founder of Quirk Creative, joined us for her second appearance on Simulmedia Live, this time to discuss practical steps brands can take to recycle creatives in order to strike a better tone during this crisis. She’ll address the very first thing marketers need to do in order to take advantage of their footage and provide tips for ways to get around an inability to produce live action shots yet still create an eye-catching ad. Plus, she explains how some brands have nailed the right tone, and why others have failed.

Full Transcript

Matt Collins:
Hey everybody, and welcome to our third Simulmedia Live of the week. My name is Matt Collins, and I'm the senior vice president of marketing here at Simulmedia. I hope all of you are doing well and are healthy and safe wherever you may be watching, whether you're on LinkedIn, you're on Periscope, you're on Zoom. We're so grateful that you take time out to watch these programs and to be with us and to hear from people that we've handpicked to join the show, who I think all have in common a perspective on how brands can proactively navigate the current environment. We've heard from Bob Liodice from the ANA, we heard earlier in the week from Gordon Burrell, from Brian Wieser of Group M, and our guest today is every bit up to the task, and we're going to get into this in just a moment.

It occurs to me that in the onset of any kind of a shock to the economy, or in this case, the economy and the public health, there is a very understandable inclination for brands and agencies to just freeze, because when you freeze, as I like to say, you can't step on something, you can't hurt yourself, and it's quite natural to take a pause and just reassess the new reality, and a lot of brands certainly have done that. Anyone following the trades and seeing what's happening with the changes in advertising spend, especially planned for the month of April, can see that a lot of brands froze, but then as the new reality sets in and gets defined, there's a real opportunity for brands, as we've said many times in this program, to first, and above all other things, find a way to be useful to your customers, and if there's nothing else that, that people take away from these programs, I hope it's that. Be useful to your customers.

Now to be useful to your customers requires a couple of things that you've got to get right, and these aren't easy. The first is you've got to figure out what is that useful thing that you're going to actually do that's authentic to who you are and the unique way in which you can help people? But the second part, which is what we're going to really talk about today, is how do you communicate that to your customers? How do you engage them and meet them where they are in their mind space, in their physical space, to give them that reassurance? Some part of that is a communication strategy, but some big part of it is an advertising strategy.

So I am so grateful to be joined today by Meryl Draper. She is the founder and CEO of Quirk Creative, an award-winning agency that has built some terrific spots, go to findyourquirk.com and you can see a loop of their work. We're going to talk to Meryl all about how brands can meet the moment. I'm also double excited, Meryl, to have you on, because you are the first repeat guest on the show. Welcome back to Simulmedia Live.

Meryl Draper:
Oh, I love that.

Matt Collins:
Wonderful to have you, and I'll point out, obviously, you folks are not seeing Meryl, and that's because Meryl is at a place where there may not be the most stable internet connection for video, so we're going to do audio and know that her advice is the most important thing here. So Meryl, you and I communicated before this a little bit, but first, how's everything going? How are you holding up and how's Quirk holding up?

Meryl Draper:
We are doing well, considering. It's been a really interesting time for agencies, advertising, marketing, production agencies in particular, and we're kind of riding the wave along with our clients, but we're really, I think, fortunate in this time to have a small, agile and really resourceful team. So I think one of the silver linings in all of this is we've been able to pivot quite quickly to a work from home setup, and also pivot alongside our clients who are undergoing massive change in their advertising strategies, and continue helping them in that regard. So I count ourselves as incredibly lucky, but it definitively is an unprecedented time for everyone, people and brands.

Golden rules for brands navigating turbulent times

Matt Collins:
Spot on, and now actually I realize I am seeing her, which is great, but if we lose you, we know we'll keep your audio, but it's great to be able to see you. Meryl, let's get into the questions at hand, and these are all so valuable and so useful for any brand that's trying to figure out right now, how do they engage their customers? I'll start with, in just as a first things principle, are there golden rules that you are prescribing to clients or just generally for brands that are trying to figure out their way through this?

Meryl Draper:
I think there's one golden rule that pretty much applies to every single brand out there right now, and it's certainly the one that we've been trying to guide our clients in right now, and that rule is don't be opportunistic. I think it really forces brands to assess, and if you're a brand listening in and you haven't already done this, please do so immediately. Think about, "Do I really have a seat at the table here? Should I have a seat at the table here? Is my brand related to what's happening in the world in any way, shape or form?" Health care brands, finance brands definitively do have a seat at that table right now. They really are quite naturally linked to what's happening, and by the way, when I say seat at the table, I mean seat at the table for consumer attention, versus ...

Let's say you're an underwear brand. Is underwear related to the global pandemic? No, it has pretty much nothing to do with the pandemic. So for those brands, there really is no need to go re-cut a TV spot that has to do with COVID and your underwear. We don't necessarily need to hear from underwear brands during COVID, speaking about COVID specifically. So that, I think, is the first golden rule, is figure out whether you authentically and organically fit into the landscape, and if you do ... I love this word that you used in your opener, Matt. Useful. Usefulness is really critical right now. If you deserve a seat at the table, if you have something genuine to say, think about your content and your message in terms of usefulness.

Usefulness can mean knowledge building, education, really supporting your consumers with building up their knowledge with regards to your space. Usefulness can also mean intentionally creating content and messages that have levity in this dark time, or intentionally entertaining content. A lot of brands that are more in the distraction industries, at home workout brands, language learning apps right now, anything that's keeping our mind off of kind of the horrors that are happening, really also are doing a great job in that space. So number one, determine whether you really deserve a seat at the table, and number two, if you do, make sure you're framing your content and your creative in a way that's going to be useful to your audience.

Modifying messaging to reflect the moment

Matt Collins:
When I dropped off, you were talking about the notion of the usefulness, and you very compellingly kind of drew the line about understanding brands on one side of the line who may not necessarily have really very much to offer right now, you mentioned the example of the underwear brand, and then there are those that have a lot to offer, financial services is a big one right now, and you could argue that there are brands that are considered household staples, some of whom really have to think through their message. Right now, if you're a toilet paper manufacturer, you may be laying low, because any advertising you do only creates demand that you may be unable to fulfill, but if you're a cereal brand, if you're a brand of snack food, it seems to me that you're still a part of the equation, you're still in the household and still something that people are going to be reaching for every single day.

I wonder, how do you think about brands that maybe aren't directly impacted by this or may not be the first brands that come to mind? At this point, if they've got creative that's already done, should they just keep running it? Should they tune it to just simply issue a, "We're thinking of you," kind of a message, or is there some other way that they should sort of acknowledge the moment? Here again, I'm kind of going back to the example of the underwear brand. Is it really as simple as, from a creative standpoint, is it just keep doing what you're doing?

Meryl Draper:
Yeah, I think if you look at it from the lens of, again, "Am I directly related to what's happening?" So cereal brands, toilet paper brands, healthcare, finance, anything that is part of the new normal, I think, in a sound way can make the environment part of their messaging. For brands that are less directly related to what's happening, I think it goes back to this idea of not coming off as opportunistic, and everyone is hurting right now. Every single consumer is hurting deeply right now, and the last thing that people who are hurting want is to be sold something in a really direct fashion. So it's actually a great opportunity for brands that are semi-related to the space to make small tweaks to their existing creative, not necessarily saying open with, "COVID is happening. Buy the cereal." I'm saying a small tweak like fine tuning the script to have a little bit more empathy.

One of the things we're doing right now with one of our clients is we're recutting a TV spot where we're taking out the exterior footage and we're bringing in a lot more of the interior indoor footage that we had shot to make it a little bit more contextually relevant to what our consumers are going through. So small tweaks like that, I think, can go a long way without necessarily shouting from the rooftops, "Hey, there's a pandemic, and don't worry, your cereal brand is here for you." Smaller creative tweaks, I think, will go a lot further, and you should be making those weeks.

One of the pieces of advice I give our clients is if you have creative that doesn't quite fit the mold of the current reality, don't throw it away, don't be too precious with it, be making slight tweaks and voiceover script or end cards, or recutting little bits and pieces of it to make it a little bit more contextually relevant.

Reassessing existing creative within the context of COVID-19

Matt Collins:
So you mentioned the rework that you're doing to bring in more of an interior view, which totally makes sense, because that's that now the world that we see a lot more than we did three weeks ago. Let's imagine a scenario where you are a brand that launched a commercial into a world that was one week pre COVID 19 really entering the public consciousness. What should you do now? What options do you have for making the kind of adjustment that you've described?

Meryl Draper:
So number one is just assess your current spot within the context of COVID. So have someone who's not related to your brand, watch it and give you an honest take on whether there's some problematic areas that you may not be seeing, and then the good news, Matt, is it's relatively easy to take something like a video spot and make small adjustments, like I mentioned.

So recutting a spot from existing footage really takes about two to three days, give or take script writing. So you can continue the media buy that you have using the assets you've already paid for by making really small adjustments. I think in order of priority, what I would say is if you're assessing creative that's currently in market, number one, assess the narrative. Is it offensive to the current reality? If so, rewrite a new voiceover script and rework the footage. Second thing I might look at is tweaking end cards or calls to action to be a little bit more contextually relevant. Maybe there's a new promotional code, or maybe you have a new link to drive users to that's providing more information. Small end card tweaks typically take around 24 hours max, so that's very easy to adjust. So again, don't be precious with the spots or the creative that you have in market, but be really rigorous in assessing those creatives in the current market and determining whether, in their current shape, they're fit for the current reality.

Your ready-made, brand-specific stock footage library

Matt Collins:
You know what, I'm remembering, Meryl, from my own experience having been the executive producer client rep on site for a shoot, I remember times where the director and the producers would get the shots that weren't necessarily in the storyboard, hadn't been approved, but they would see something on the ground and say, "Let's just try this. Let's try this, try this," and I would start looking at my watch or maybe feeling like I could go for another run at the craft services, and I would think to myself, "Why are we doing this?" But actually, in a moment like this is when you really appreciate all the stuff you have in the cutting room floor, because all of those assets could be brought in and used to reconsider or perhaps reposition or nudge a spot to where it needs to be in the moment. All of that stuff is gold, so one of the things you just reminded me of is a real need to really trust the process, including back to when these commercials are produced in the first place, that in the hands of a good director and a good producer with a good creative team at their side, you're not only going to get the materials you need for the finished spots, you're going to get a lot of stuff that, for a moment just like now, can come in so handy.

Meryl Draper:
I love that example, and I think brands sometimes forget that, just how much content they have, because ultimately, what we deliver as agencies is typically like a 30 second or a 15 second or a six second spot, but those edits come from 10 hour, 12 hour shoot days, and there's all that footage sitting in the cloud or in a hard drive somewhere, and that content, that raw footage is now your best tool in the toolkit. It's pretty much your ready-made, brand-specific stock footage library, so I think that's one of the first things that brands should be doing right now as larger shoots are on pause, is revisiting all the raw assets they've ever produced and starting to organize those into a library that potentially can turn into new content.

Alternatives to live-action production

Matt Collins:
I'm joined this afternoon by Meryl Draper, the CEO and founder of Quirk Creative, an award-winning creative agency that makes him some of the best TV commercials you're going to see, and we're talking about how brands can rise to meet the moment creatively with their advertising in a very new and turbulent climate. If you have a question for Meryl about your own brand or about possibly setting direction creatively, feel free to ask it in the LinkedIn, Periscope or Zoom environments, and we will make sure we get those questions funneled to Meryl.

Meryl, let's imagine that you were a brand that was perhaps in the middle of getting ready for a shoot. You were planning out the production, you had a plan that was all set and ready to go. What options are available now for making sure that some message gets produced? Is it really just sort of throw out everything that maybe was done before and start over, or should they be thinking about perhaps tweaking something that was already in the hopper? What do you advise?

Meryl Draper:
So if you can imagine that the average kind of campaign creation timeline is about two to three months, any given project, you can imagine the number of brands that were smack dab in the middle of creating new spots and developing new campaigns when the pandemic started hitting the United States, and that certainly has happened to some of the clients and brands that we work with. There was one brand where we were three days out from their biggest shoot of the year, a brand new campaign for a brand new product, and we had to stop the shoot, because it just wasn't safe anymore to get crew together, and that's the world we're in right now for at least the next couple of months, is larger shoots that required tons of crew and tons of equipment are just on pause. It doesn't mean that content creation has to be on pause, and I would actually argue that brands should be creating content during this time, because they're going to want to be top of mind post-pandemic.

So there's several opportunities for brand new content creation. The first is stock footage, so really leveraging, ready-made, royalty-free assets, and I think the Facebook ad that just came out, which leveraged stock footage and also user-generated content, is a great example of a powerful ad that can just use some pretty rudimentary creative tools. The second is user-generated content style campaigns. We actually just completed a shoot with the same beauty brand I was talking about earlier where we shipped out the latest grade iPhones and also lighting equipment to influencer and talents' houses, and patched in our director and just did a remote shoot with them. The end result of that is something that feels really authentic, it's much more testimonial style, and it's very relevant given the current reality that we're all living in.

Then the third is animation. So the best thing about animation is that it requires no crew or equipment or shoot days. We actually just helped get a refresh brand new TV spot for a language translation app out the door from start to finish in about seven business days that was purely animated. So a huge advantage for animated content right now. That, again, one is a lot more cost effective and that can be really edited and produced in a timely fashion. So if you're thinking about content creation and you think all hope is lost because there is no big shoots, just know that there are avenues to create content, and a lot of these, by the way, you can do in house as a brand. If you have great influencer relationships, you can coordinate with them. Nothing's stopping you to get content from them directly.

Matt Collins:
That's amazing, and I can't help but think about the impact this has had in terms of managing your company, Meryl Draper, and thinking about Quirk, one, of course, the advantages of animation is that I presume you can task animators from working from wherever they are, and maybe some of them already were working in a largely home-based environment, as long as they have a workstation that's got the processing power to pull it off, animation can be done, to your point, without bringing large groups of people together. So I'm guessing that Quirk has pivoted here to enable this kind of work to happen in a relatively unimpeded way. Is that right?

Meryl Draper:
That is right. We're super lucky to have a great team of animators and designers and illustrators on our team already. It just means that we're focusing more on animated assets now, and their plates are a little bit more full with end-to-end animated spots than previous, where it was more of having live action spots with spots of animation throughout. So luckily we have those resources in house, and we've been able to pivot quite seamlessly, but this is the new reality for content creation for, I would say, the next couple of months, is it's going to be a lot more UGC, a lot more stock-based assets or previous footage based assets, and a lot more animated assets that are coming out.

What can brands be doing now to prepare for the other side of COVID

Matt Collins:
One more question for me, Meryl, and the questions are piling up here from our audience, which is great. Thank you so much, audience, for chiming in with your questions. Keep them coming, and we will get them to Meryl. Last one for me, Meryl, and you alluded to it a bit earlier. Let's think now about what will happen, and is that we will get through the other side of this. None of us knows exactly when that will be or what it will look like, but what should brands start doing now to prepare for that new reality, especially when it comes to refining their message and making sure their brand is putting its best foot forward?

Meryl Draper:
What an interesting question to grapple with. It almost feels a little bit sacrilegious in a way to think about a post-COVID world, because we're all in this reality right now and there's so much confusion about, when are things going to get back to normal? When is it going to end? But I do think it's imperative that brands start thinking about what happens when we are on the other side of this, whenever that happens. My prediction is that it is going to be a performance driven world more than ever in the aftermath of COVID. we've already been seeing this trend in marketing across the board, certainly with the emergence of brand response ads where marketers are requesting spots that both sustain the brand in the longterm, but have a performance ROI. I think we're just going to continue to see that post-COVID where brands, they're hurting and they're going to need to see a bottom line, and more than ever, every marketing dollar they spend from their slashed budgets, there's going to be an expectation of getting a return on that spend. So I anticipate a lot more performance assets, ROI driving creatives and campaigns in the aftermath of COVID.

Matt Collins:
So does that mean, then, if you're a brand and you're starting to do the right thing ... By the way, I agree with you about planning for coming out of this, because while none of us can know exactly the timing of it, you're so much better off having a plan and changing the plan later than not having a plan at all and then becoming reactive. Are you recommending to brands that they think about embracing a creative immediate strategy that, as we've talked about before, Meryl, doesn't require a reduction of impact when it comes to brand, but does start to add elements that can lead to better performance?

Meryl Draper:
Certainly. I think performance is going to matter more than ever when performance becomes a reality again. The minute that consumer spending shifts, brands are going to be vying for that attention and vying for that business. So I just think there's going to be a huge pressure from marketing teams internally to justify spend and see an ROI on that spend.

Now, to your point, Matt, that doesn't mean it has to come at the sacrifice of brand. I would actually argue that right now, when consumer spend is down, when performance is a little bit of a pipe dream, this is actually a great time for brands to do brand-building, especially the ones that are actually able to walk the talk, that have serious CSR programs in place, that are giving back to their consumers, that, again, have something to say and a seat at the table, and are keeping their consumers informed. These are actually some great moments right now to build a brand without expectation of sales or performance, and save that for later. Focus on the brand now and start weaving in performance when we start seeing that we're on the other side of the pandemic.

Matt Collins:
I could not agree with you more on that. I think you're spot on. The value now of coming to the market with the right kind of message, it gets back to the thing we talked about earlier about being useful, however, whatever that means for your brand, now is the time to do that, and there are case studies galore to be read out there about brands that made key decisions during other times of crisis, whether you want to go back to the Great Depression of the 1930s, or to war times, to the oil embargo, to the Gulf War, to 9/11, to the great recession of 2008, each one of these moments, as I've said many times on the show over the last couple of weeks, we faced conditions that made us all think, "Wow, we've never seen anything like this before," and that's true, but there are other things that are consistent from crisis to crisis, and one of those things that seems to be consistent is that brands that rise to meet the moment, that take a posture of being genuinely, authentically helpful, you mentioned corporate social responsibility, and it doesn't necessarily have to be to fit into a CSR program. It could just be a moment where a brand says, "You know what? We've got something else that can fit that we can do that will be genuinely helpful to customers."

You look at the auto manufacturers who are giving interest breaks on loans that they've extended, or are offering interest-free loans for longer term periods, or are offering loan forgiveness in the event that a customer is displaced by or affected by unemployment. Those things, they don't have to be wrapped in a social responsibility blanket or program in order to be effective. They just are useful, and brands that are useful at this time and let their customers know significantly outperform the brands that simply just say, "Well, we're just going to wait it out. We're going to hunker down and wait it out." Not only during the crisis itself, but also getting to the other side of it, and that's what's really so important. Be useful now, and I love the notion of now's a great time for brand building, and then start thinking about evolving your creative and your message to bring in elements or performance, knowing that every media dollar is going to count for even more when some spending starts coming back.

Meryl Draper:
Yeah, that's exactly right.

The importance of the end card

Matt Collins:
All right, we've got questions coming in, and I've been sneaking a peek at these questions, Meryl. There's a common theme. They all have some version of, "Tell us about a time when you've seen a ..." So the first one comes from Eric, and Eric, thanks so much for this question. Meryl, what's an example of a brand that's done a good job of quickly turning around an overlay or end card change, and what are you seeing in terms of engagement or response with that creative?

Meryl Draper:
End cards are kind of the neglected child in creative cause, because there's such a small portion of an ad, typically it's about the last five seconds of a 30 second ad is when you see that end card, and for those who aren't familiar with the term end card, all it means is the card at the end of the spot. It's also arguably the most important part of your spot, because it's the spot that tells your audience what it is you want them to do. So we're working with a number of clients that had spots in market right now, and they are either unrolling new promotions. So for example, apps that are free for 90 days due to the current environment that weren't free previously, or they have dedicated URLs where they'd like to send their audience. One in particular had a URL that now was a knowledge center and a resource center for their customers, versus the previous URL, which was driving to somewhere else.

So those little swaps, which basically are swaps in what action your audience is taking, are really important right now. If you have a timely promotion, if you have a new dedicated URL, this is the time to just quickly edit it into your current creative and get it back into market. We've been going through this, I think this is the third week that we're working from home in this new reality, I'm also losing track of time, so it could be the seventh week and I wouldn't know, so correct me if I'm wrong. Performance wise, anything that is more contextually relevant is going to perform better. So definitely performance is going to be on the rise with these small tweaks.

Examples of COVID-specific creatives that worked well

Matt Collins:
Yeah, and my clock validates your clock. I think that this is the end of our third week. By the way, I would argue, too, just as I mentioned in my upfront, that brand's freeze, so too do consumers. When something like this happens, it's very natural for consumers to take a moment and pause and assess where they are, and figure out what their new spending reality is going to be. My sense is that over time, whatever the new norm is will emerge, and that will then start to give the brands who are changing the creative, whether it's an end card or something else, a better, clearer view of exactly what's the new performance norm while we navigate what's largely a sequestered work environment and living environment. Eric, thank you for that question.

We've got a question from anonymous. Anonymous wants to know, again, in the spirit of, "Have you seen ...", have you seen any COVID specific creatives in recent days that you thought worked well for the brand who created it?

Meryl Draper:
It's a fine line, because I've seen a lot of bad ones, and no, I won't name names on the bad ones. I think the one that has really resonated in market that I've seen a lot of positive response to is the Facebook ad that just rolled out. It struck a really beautiful tone. The voiceover was perfect, and it leveraged stock footage and UGC, and it was a really emotional spot, and I thought it hit the nail on the head, given everything we're going through as consumers. The other spot that comes to mind is Trade Coffee, which is a direct-to-consumer coffee delivery service, I believe. They put together this really fun spot that was entirely user-generated content, and it's really fun and it kind of celebrates the new normal of working from home, and I love that spot as well. There's varying degrees between those two on how directly they call out COVID. I don't think either of them actually say the word COVID, but they're hinting at it in a genuine way, in a genuine way for their brand, so that's why I think it works.

Matt Collins:
Those are good ones. I actually haven't seen the Facebook spot, but you've inspired me to go do that when we're done here. I'll throw in, I really liked what Burger King has done, and they're emphasizing that they're still open for drive-thru and possibly, I think, free delivery, but they show footage during the spot of their new hygiene practices, not only for food preparation, but also for payment, and so they show that they're reducing, if I'm not mistaken, the contact needed for payment to actually happen. So if you do go through the drive-thru, it creates more of an assurance that your hygiene isn't at risk, and I just thought that's spot on, because first of all, they're signaling, "Hey, we're still open for you," and looking in tough economic times, quick service restaurants become a go to for families that are wanting a bit of a treat, but can't afford even a more sort of mid-scale type of restaurant experience. I think they're not only selling, but in a very soft way, but they're also reassuring their customers, and I really appreciated that work. Thank you for that question.

We've got one more, and then we'll let you go, Meryl. This comes from Victor. Victor wants to know, have you seen examples of overly opportunistic creative, and you mentioned some bad ones that you don't want to name names. My sense is the answer to this question is that you have, but we may not be putting names up on the wall.

Meryl Draper:
Yeah. You can just Google this, there'll be so many examples. I certainly have seen my fair share, but I think it boils down to, and I'm not saying ... I'm sure these spots were not created in a mean spirit. Everyone wants to be there for consumers right now, and don't forget, the people creating the creatives are also humans, and they're working from home just like you and I, so I think it just misses the mark when it feels disingenuine. Remember, not every brand needs to comment about the pandemic. We don't need to hear a COVID commentary from every single brand in the world. We have to make sure it feels really genuine when there is a tie there. So that's what I would say about that.

Matt Collins:
Well look, Meryl, this has been so helpful, and it caps off a fantastic week of hearing from people who have a really strong perspective, and I'd put this right up at the very top of all of them, because this gets to really where the rubber hits the road for so many brands. Of course, here at Simulmedia, we think an awful lot about media strategy, but we know that media strategy is only as good as the power of the creative behind it, and that creative challenge has gotten harder in this moment, but it's very evident that you're thinking this stuff through, and your advice today has been so valuable. So I really appreciate you joining. Meryl, I know you've told us this before, but if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do it?

Meryl Draper:
Yeah, thank you so much, Matt. The best way to get in touch with me personally is just at my email, which is Meryl@quirkcreative.com, or you can visit our website, it's findyourquirk.com, and Matt, thank you so much for having me. Creative is only as strong as the media plan you know that it's working with. So I think the synergy of media and creative is really critical during this time. Thank you so much for having me.

Matt Collins:
Oh, it's my pleasure. I never tire of these conversations, so I'm confident we'll get you on a third time, hopefully when things are a bit clearer and happier. For all of the rest of you, I want to thank you for joining. So thanks again for joining, and take care, everybody. Bye bye.