Advertising Compensation and Benchmarking, Contract Compliance and Risk Assessments are vital services for large corporations with tens of millions, if not billions of dollars of marketing spend. Advertising Audit International (AAI) provides exactly these services to a broad range of Fortune 500 brands. Adding BriefLogic’s new “agency input audit” to the mix gives corporations a first-ever 360 degree view of their agency engagements.

In the complex and often confusing world of client-agency transactions, AAI’s standard review techniques are cost-effective methods to ensure the accurate and timely review of advertising costs and expenses. While most financial review firms, auditors and CPA firms typically use sampling techniques, AAI examines each individual invoice and its related line item costs for accuracy and contract compliance.

However, as AAI CEO Michael Lay states, “all of the costs we help recover for our clients, and it is a staggering figure, may be just the tip of the iceberg as we go to market with our new BriefLogic partnership.”

According to some industry analysts, total communications spend worldwide, across all marketing disciplines will exceed one trillion dollars in 2010. Currently, the corporate side of the industry is focused on the outcomes of that spend. Marketers are constantly interrogating the output of their agencies, their creative ideas, or the “stuff that sells.” According to co-founder and CEO, Casey Jones, BriefLogic has proved conclusively that someone has to think more deeply about the quality of the direction that sets these billions of dollars in motion. In a recent survey conducted by Greenberg Brand Strategies, it was determined that 30 percent of all agency time and energy is wasted or made inefficient due to poor input from marketing and brand managers.

Where AAI has experience in making sure that every single dollar that a marketer’s agency spends is accounted for, BriefLogic makes sure that it is directed properly at the front end of the process. AAI provides comprehensive audits of agency spend after-the-fact, and BriefLogic provides briefing tools, audit services, and agency input training to give marketers and agencies confidence that waste and inefficiency don’t occur on the input end.

Nice blog post from Media Asia – http://bit.ly/cuN8GH rating the joint BriefLogic/Microsoft bit at the ANA “one of the most introspective and interesting presentations” of the event. Great response in general from a lot of corporations attending the event, including General Mills, 3M and American Express. Thanks and compliments to co-presenter Bruno Gralpois of Microsoft.

When Dr. Daniel Bonevac and I started Jones&Bonevac with Deon Lewis and a handful of other sharp marketing executives, we did so in response to a growing need for our specialized agency management consulting services. The solutions we developed soon became more than brains for hire. We developed specific products and services aimed at scaling our best thinking, and helping the corporation we serve maximize every marketing dollar. Yet while we have updated our company name to better reflect our DNA, our roots remain the same. We recognize that while the output of marketing agencies is often creative, the input cannot be. Assignment briefs, project briefs and RFPs must make sense. The direction corporations give marketing agencies must be rational, reasonable, sensible . . . in short, logical. Welcome to BriefLogic, and to the BriefLogic Blog.

The January 15, 2010  issue of The Week published an excerpt from a book titled, The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. He is a surgeon by trade and found that in his profession human error would be avoided by a simple solution: checklists. He ends the article by saying medicine isn’t the only field where checklists will help but that: “There may be no field or profession where checklists wouldn’t be tremendously beneficial.”

We at Jones&Bonevac feel the same way, particularly about how checklists can improve marketing efficiency. If you read the article, you’ll notice Dr. Gawande describes the process of building a skyscraper. The 32-story office and apartment complex he visited was being raised by the hands and minds of 250 individuals working at the site. Each person was responsible for tasks that determined whether or not the building would stand or fall. Building a successful marketing campaign is no different than building a skyscraper. Each person, whether on the client side or on the agency side needs to be sure to perform their task the right way at the right time in order for the project to succeed.

With a checklist, one can only imagine how much more efficiently and effectively a marketing communications plan would come together. So much time and effort would be saved, so many dollars and resources would not be wasted, if only marketing and advertising employed the use of  a simple checklist.

Dr. Gawande states a theory in his book. He says: “Under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success.” If you know anything about marketing and advertising you will agree it is absolutely a complex process.

Now put your pen to paper and draw a small box in the upper left hand corner and write next to it, email info@jonesandbonevac to learn how to further improve marketing efficiency.

At Jones&Bonevac, we think there is a phenomenal lack of clarity on this vital issue. After all, how can you have a discussion with your agency (or your client) about brand building, if you don’t share the same definition of the term? If you don’t agree on what it means, how can you commonly agree on the right way to build yours?

A great deal has been written and said on this subject. For the moment, let’s simply ask “what contemporary definition should the lexicographers at Oxford or Cambridge put in dictionaries under the noun “brand?”

Here are some starting points. Some are definitions. Some are simply commentary. Vote for any you agree with below as comments. If you have a better suggestion, POST it.

“What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.” - Al Ries

“A house of brands is like a family, each needs a role and a relationship to others.” - Jeffrey Sinclair, Brand Strategist

“Long-term brand equity and growth depends on our ability to successfully integrate and implement all elements of a comprehensive marketing program.” - Timm F Crull, Chairman & CEO of Nestle

“The primary focus of your brand message must be on how special you are, not how cheap you are.  The goal must be to sell the distinctive quality of the brand.” - Kerry Light, Brand Strategist

“Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.” - David Ogilvy

“Well-managed brands live on – only bad brand managers die.” - George Bull

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.” - Warren Buffett

“Brand value is very much like an onion. It has layers and a core. The core is the user who will stick with you until the very end.” - Edwin Artzt

“I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance. I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW. I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I pour an extra strong lager, I am handsome, I say, as I put on my Levi jeans.” -John Kay

“A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.” - Michael Eisner, CEO Disney

“Brand is the “f” word of marketing. People swear by it, no one quite understands its significance and everybody would like to think they do it more often than they do.” - Mark di Soma, Audacity Group

“Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you.” - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Chairman, EasyGroup

“We view the experience of a Krispy Kreme store (where customers watch their donuts being baked behind glass) as the defining element of the brand.” - Scott Livengood, CEO, Krispy Kreme

“One of the biggest responsibilities of management is to look after the corporate DNA.” - Andrew Rolfe, CEO, Pret A Manger

“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” - John Russell, President, Harley-Davidson

“Brand equity is the sum of all the hearts and minds of every single person that comes into contact with your company.” - Christopher Betzter

“In a fast-paced world, today’s popular brand could be tomorrow’s trivia question.” - Wayne Calloway, American Industrialist, Chairman Of Pepsico Annual Report, 1989

“A brand name is more than a word. It is the beginning of a conversation.” -Lexicon

“Customers must recognize that you stand for something.” - Howard Schultz, Starbucks

“Brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed.” - Brandweek

“Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.” -Walter Landor

“The customer is the appreciating asset.” - Federal Express

“Every status has its symbol.” - Advertising Slogan

“Companies have to wake up to the fact that they are more than a product on a shelf. They”re behavior as well.” - Robert Haas Of Levi Strauss

“In the context of Living the Brand, purposes and values are not created, they exist – the issue is how well they are articulated and embedded.” - Nicholas Ind, Living the Brand (2001)

“A brand that captures your mind gains behavior. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment.” - Scott Talgo, Brand Strategist

“A brand is a set of differentiating promises that link a product to its customers.” - Stuart Agres, Young & Rubicam

“The three key rules of marketing are brand recognition, brand recognition, brand recognition.” - Anon

“A trademark is a symbol of a corporation. It is not a sign of quality … It is a sign of the quality.” - Paul Rand

“We are no doubt in the Great Age of the Brand.” - Tom Peters

“A global brand-building strategy is, in reality, a local plan for every market.” - Martin Lindstrom, Clicks, Bricks & Brands

“You”re just anybody without your identity.” - Grenville Main, DNA Design

“A brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, rational and cultural image that you associate with a company or product.” - Charles R. Pettis Iii, Brand Solutions

“A brand is an image seared into your mind of how YOU BELIEVE others will perceive you if you own a certain product or service. It is seared into your mind through branding, which, thank god, is no longer achieved the old fashioned way with a hot poker.” – Jeff Shattuck, Copywriter

There have been many requests for the 2009 Client Input study referenced in the AdAge article written by Rupal Parekh titled, “Want More Out of Your Agencies? Write Better Briefs.” The report is now available here and will soon be available on our website at jonesandbonevac.com. Feel free to contribute to the conversation regarding the report in the comments section.

The State of Creative Briefs: Improving the way assignments are initiated in a $310 billion industry

That which we can create and then market or communicate to others may be called products, services, ideas, ideologies, religions, or concepts. This category includes anything that can be created and to which we can attach a label. We can define these things universally as “objects.” They are different from and not to be confused with the concept of “brands” which are how each of these objects is perceived by its intended target audience. Brands are subjective. Objects are, naturally, objective.  -From the upcoming “Jones&Bonevac on Advocacy”