Michael Kaminsky explores why "brand campaign" has become synonymous with expensive TV ads. Agencies push TV because they earn bigger margins from six-figure productions, and creatives pursue these campaigns for prestige and awards rather than selling products, prioritizing artistic freedom over client results.
Chapters
Sometimes I feel like people say that they want to run a brand campaign and really what they mean by that is they just want to run TV. Is that like a common misconception or like where does that come from? Like what is the difference between TV advertising and brand advertising? I mean, it sounds like it's basically just like, do you feature the product or not?
Yeah. So again, sort of TV advertising has that status. TV is where advertising agencies traditionally made their most money or margins. To create a TV ad, you have to create a film, basically a short film. That's very expensive to do and not anymore, but it used to be. So we're talking like 6, 6 figures or more. And that was a really good premise to get clients to spend more. The more they spend, the more percentage the agency makes. So it's in the interest to create these films. Now, why they would create a brand campaign over something product-based is more around status again and awards. If they can create an ad that doesn't talk about the product, they're less creatively constrained, so they can do things and be a bit more whimsical about it and then submit it for industry awards and win awards. So it's more about the creatives doing the work in the agencies than it is about the effectiveness of of the ad itself for the client brand.
