Simon Veksner: “But it’s not ownable”
December 22 2014, 9:50 am | | 3 Comments
By Simon Veksner
Creative Partner, DDB Sydney
One of the most common criticisms we Creatives get thrown is that an idea we’ve had is “not ownable.”
And that’s a very hard bomb to defuse.
Obviously an idea should be ownable, shouldn’t it? So, oh dear, it looks like we’ve failed, and we’ll have to start again. Bad creative.
Unless… could it be that this criticism is completely bullshit? READ ON…
3 Comments
You are dead right, as usual Simon. I agree with your analysis and your 3 choices. Combank ‘Can’ is a fine example and particularly irksome for the following reason… In the early 90’s a genius adman created a widely seen and highly successful campaign for Westpac. The line was ‘Westpac Can’. A generic line in just about any service category, but as we now see courtesy of Combank, the claim ‘Can’ is totally generic, not to say interchangeable in the banking sector. I must say I was gobsmacked when Combank released this campaign a couple of years ago. It proves that not only client marketing personnel are incredibly young to have no memory of earlier work in the same category and to not reject ‘Can’ on the basis of being identical to their competitor, but so too are people in creative departments who only 20 years ago were running around in nappies and are oblivious to what’s gone before. I prefer that theory to a more sinister one…
Agree in spades.
Great article and attachments. Seems too many overlook the generic benefit of a category in their hunger for differentiation. Positioning yourself as the generic fills the consumer need and forces your competition to scurry around trying to find a position that can only appeal to a smaller slice of the market.