ADVERTISING’S KICK SERVE

Working Paper No. 3

Flat strokes were big in tennis in the 1970s and in 1980s, into the early 1990s, then a new, terrible style came in – kick serve. It probably had to do with the new rackets and new grips. It changed everything. With those new grips, it was easy to put a lot of spin on the ball. Too easy. The spin gets on there even when you don’t want it to. There’s a lower margin of error with all that topspin, therefore, a lot of players switched to it immediately.

Robert Lansdorp, American tennis coach, who’s known by his contribution to the careers of such world’s tennis stars as Lindsay Davenport and Mariya Sharapova, called it an Academy Ball.

“It’s all about averages.” – he said. “Cause anytime you go to an academy, I don’t care whose academy it is, when you hit the ball hard and low or make an error they’ll tell you to hit high over the net with a lot of topspin”.

The kids who thrive on that can be hard to beat, but when they get to be fifteen or sixteen, they hit a wall, because now they have to hit the ball harder and suddenly they can’t control the spin.

Landsdorp was a firm believer of a good hard, flat stroke.

It is not easy to do. A flat serve can yield a straight ace or force an error. Therefore, the coach required high accuracy and continuous repetition. He would spend almost all the training time making player to hit flat stroke over and over again. Once they’d acquired what Robert considered a suitably hard, flat stroke – it was all about getting into nirvanalike hitting groove – placing ball where you need it at the time and strategy. There was nothing high-tech or modern about his method, it was hard and tireless, but it is something that was helping to create a player’s muscle memory, to make them stronger, distinctive and effective in the long run.

Hovewer, as usual, a lot of the players went after the new and popular thing time after time. And, as Lansdrop said, they “hit the wall”, because they couldn’t create their own strength (assets) first.

Those of us who live in the advertising world can spot the similarity. We also live in a kind of an “Academy world”. Where they teach us that a new technology/approach/methodology would save us from mistakes or improve the results.

On top of that, nowadays we become bored too fast. We all (creatives, strategist, clients) sometimes give in to the temptation of trying something new: technology, positioning, design, messaging etc. It is a tiresome pursuit of being the first and different, even though it doesn’t help to be distinctive. It creates averageness. Because being distinctive is all about strength, reinforcing memory structures in the brain and associating them with brand/person’s assets. Which is why the best definition of distinctiveness is very simple, to quote Byron Sharp, “a brand looking like itself”.

But do we really create sustained memory structures and brand assets nowadays, or we just follow every new and shiny kick serve?

Too often we are. Either the agency do not have enough time to carry on the strategy (because they have to go in tender every year and show quick results) or good ideas fail to become real assets because they’re not used for long enough or consistently enough (we all know the stories of campaigns that have been killed because the client and/or an agency got bored and felt it was

time to move on), or we get excited about doing something new but fail to create a sufficiently strong link between the new idea and brand’s existing assets, so it fails to “stick”.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against novelty, and it is not an argument in favour of being boring, uncreative or resisting change when it’s needed. Originality, creativity and novelty are absolutely critical in advertising/marketing/business. Though, it should be based on your own assets and has to help you to become even stronger and distinctive. Not an average kick serve player.

So, what we can practically do in order to make a difference and not just ranting about it?

Getting back to tennis and Robert Lansdorp’s teaching practices, we can determine where the root of the problem lies. Everything starts from the basics – training your muscle memory and learning what will be effective in the long run, not what’s easier and brings fast results.

I strongly believe that there are significant flaws with complex and systematic education programs in advertising. Young people usually chase ready-to-go solutions rather than methodologies and reasons behind everything. That is the reason probably why case-study based advertising courses, lectures and schools are so popular right now. A lot of young planners skip Smith’s Porter’s, King’s, Kahneman’s and even sometimes Sharp’s work and go straight to the brand building and purpose creation. In ad schools they hear a lot of interesting and even theoretically based information from the well-known and practicing professionals, unfortunately most of the time the lectures are logically and structurally unrelated.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant or to be a grumpy old lady, but I do believe that in order to change the industry we initially need to change the education approaches/system/the way junior strategist are trained. Only when you have a good ground, strong muscle memory and the broader view, you will be able to determine when the novelty is effective and when it’s destructive. When well established asset is presented originally it is better than a new shiny technology. It is like with the children – what goes around, comes around.

It’s utterly important for strategists. Because we are the ones withing the agency, who is responsible for the brands long term effectiveness not only efficiency.

So, guys, let’s learn “flat strokes” first.