“A Golden Age for Effectiveness” Is Embraced at Lucky Generals

Effectiveness was at the forefront of Andy Nairn’s mind when he, along with Helen Calcraft Danny Brooke-Taylor, co-founded Lucky Generals in 2013. Andy, the strategist of the trio, recalls that the agency’s genesis was built “off the back of a run of highly effective work at our previous agency (MCBD). We'd won the IPA Effectiveness Agency of the Year and IPA Grand Prix in 2010 among many other awards for the likes of Hovis, Waitrose, Met Police and Department of Health so it was already in our DNA.” The three went as far as to embed the notion of delivering tangible results into the nascent agency’s name, opting for an elegant reference to the “Napoleon quote about the importance of achieving results,” says Andy.

Post founding, the Lucky Generals the team put all that they had learned into practice all the while guided by what brands that matter must look like at every step of the process. “A wise person once said that brands are created in the minds of their customers and prospects. So by definition, brands that matter know what matters to their customers and prospects,” Andy explains.

Perhaps that’s why Lucky Generals is less of an agency in the traditional sense and more of a creative company that thinks in unorthodox ways about what brands need to do and how they should be showing up to enter the minds of consumers. In 11 years, Lucky Generals has delivered design projects, PR stunts, social media campaigns and brand behaviours. And why not? Modern brands need modern solutions, even if that sometimes means sticking with tradition and delivering a really, really memorable TVC campaign.  

Since founding Lucky Generals, Andy has been heartened to see the industry metabolise the principles of effectiveness, saying that there is “a huge improvement in the industry's understanding” of it, though he contrasts with a less rosy observation, noting an arguable “fall in the application of all this amazing knowledge we now have.”

That’s obviously not true at Lucky Generals where Andy and the team’s understanding and application of effectiveness measures have evolved, necessarily, since the start to become embedded in how the agency operates. Measuring success, for example, is not an esoteric exercise. “We're not one of those agencies that has some silly proprietary, trade-marked model,” Andy says, adding that “success comes in many forms, always related to the business challenge.” He continues: “Ultimately, we're in business, so we like to look at hard financial measures, rather than flaky comms ones (although they can be good for diagnosing problems and opportunities).” 

Data plays an important role though not without a strong, expert-led point of view. “The key is to use data up front, not just as a rear-view mirror. Because of this, we find that it's more useful at the strategic stage rather than later on. Pre-testing, for instance, can be positively misleading,” he explains. 

“It all goes back to the business objectives,” says Andy on the subject of measuring and analysing the meaningful impact that Lucky Generals delivers for its clients. “We find it helps to define a model up front, about how we think the activity will work, then choose our metrics and methodologies accordingly.” Taking a holistic rather than a fragmented view of performance is vital to ensuring that the view of performance isn’t skewered in any one direction.

Andy states it’s “usually best to look at performance through lots of different lenses, so you can see how performance is doing. The other thing is to be sensible with time-frames. You can't jump to conclusions too early, but neither can you sit on a bunch of completely flat data, wishfully thinking that it will magically improve in some mythical long-term!” Perhaps then it’s action – not reaction – that’s at the heart of effectiveness-oriented thinking. 

Leading with exceptional creative is one thing Lucky Generals does really well. The agency has delivered multiple times (a real feat) on numerous ‘water cooler moment’ Super Bowl ads for Amazon starting with 2018’s ‘Alexa Lost Her Voice’, which earned an Emmy nomination, through to 2022’s ‘Mind Reader’ - that year’s most viewed Super Bowl ad according to YouTube. Then there’s the ‘See The World Differently’ campaign for Virgin Atlantic and the highly memorable ‘Meet Oblivia Coalmine’ for Make My Money Matter. Plus, the agency worked on the Labour Party’s winning election strategy.

So whose responsibility is it to think about effectiveness versus impactful creativity? “We take joint responsibility for effectiveness at this agency (that was another thing about our name, it was designed to show that we're a collective),” Andy says. “It's not just the planner's job, so I don't like to see this as a departmental thing or power play. It's about encouraging everybody to have pride in what they do and the impact it is having.”

With data and awards to back it up, Andy is proud of the work Lucky Generals is delivering for Yorkshire Tea. “Yorkshire Tea is the current holder of the UK's Grand Effie, and shortlisted for an IPA Effectiveness Award this year, I can't see past that. It's us at our best: great creative work, based on a big brand platform, that a fantastic client has stuck with for eight years. They've gone from a distant number three to a runaway number one brand leader in the process, and grown in a shrinking market,” he says. “‘Proper effective’, as they might say up in Harrogate,” he adds with a laugh. 

Andy’s, and by extension Lucky General’s, attitude is that effectiveness matters. And because it matters it should be everyone’s ‘problem’, so it’s an inextricable part of everyone’s approach to how they work – no siloes between the ‘numbers’ and the ‘arty’ folk. “It all goes back to encouraging the whole agency to embrace it and see it as a forwards-looking lens, not a backwards-looking one. About creating a genuine impact in the real world, not just winning awards (although they are also nice).” 

“Increasingly, it's also about embracing all the new data about how brands really go, while questioning methodologies and orthodoxies at the same time. I genuinely think this should be a golden age for effectiveness and there's no excuse for us if we don't make it so.”