Our Approach

How we create campaigns

Listening
For us the starting point is the client brief. This details the product sector, competitive positioning, the target market, the client’s objectives (eg: brand building, sales driving, or corporate positioning, short or long term, corporate positioning etc) and how much we have to spend...

Questioning
If our client’s goals are a bit ‘fuzzy’, we visit them and ask a few probing questions. We develop our understanding of what needs to be achieved and to check whether the objectives can be met within the budget. We always give our clients an honest answer. They are often surprised when we tell them that they don’t need to spend as much as they were expecting. We often find that budgets are often as 'over egged' as they are 'under seasoned'.

Thinking
Whatever the product or sector, we always think like a consumer; What is the consumer benefit? Who is the target consumer? How do they consume media? What is the most cost effective method of reaching them to achieve the set objective? What kind of relationship (if any) do they have with the brand and how would they like us to communicate to them?
If we don’t know the answers we’ll go and find out. To date we have interviewed18-24 men on their drinking habits, commuters on why they don’t use the trains at the weekend, the over 50s on their attitudes to marketing communications as well as certain industry sectors, over 60s men on bladder problems, UK, US and Chinese football fans on why they follow their clubs and what they want from them, charity donors on regular giving, car dealers on manufacturer’s support, mobile phone users on fashion versus functionality and thirtysomething women on cars, finances and purchasing power.

Framing
Having established what we need to do, who we have to do it to and how much we can afford, we only have one question left to answer, how? Sometimes this is answered by the time we get to the planning stage; it may be dictated by where our target market is and what the budget is. We develop a simple ROI model to work out which marketing technique and media choice will deliver the best response for the set objectives. Typically this will state what we plan to do, to whom, how often as well as what we believe will be achieved.

The creative answer
The planning, targeting, consumer insight and client objectives all help hone our creative brief and positioning. The key question is how do we want the target market to think and what do we want them to take out from our communication?

We try to get this down to one key phrase or sentence, backed by believable evidence or an amazing insight. If we can’t write it in a sentence how can we expect a creative team to capture it in a headline, visual, subject line or phrase?

Creativity is a collaborative process. There is no magic box or single answer. At WDMP we believe in developing a range of solutions that we can develop with our clients.

Whilst we acknowledge a client will always know their market better than us, we also challenge ourselves to get under the skin of their consumers and become their consumer conscience. This means that we’ll deliver what you expect us to and then a little something that you don’t. That’s what keeps us fresh and exciting.

Measuring
Producing a campaign is only half the story. We strive to be as involved as any client in measuring, monitoring and evaluating campaigns, both during and after. There’s no point sitting back and waiting for results. If it isn’t going well, you need to be doing something about it during the campaign, not after. Has it achieved its results and at what cost? If not, why not? What could we do better? What didn’t work? What worked well? What lessons can we learn for next time? How did the forecast results in the ROI model compare to the actual figures? Did those who we expected to respond, respond or was it a different group all together?