Why KB49 chose CODAR

KB49 is a new integrated agency who have adopted CODAR as their 'Intel Inside'

King Blackford 49 is a relatively new agency, and the only communication, advertising or design consultancy to appear in the top 10 companies in the Winning with Customers research. The '49' relates to their launch ad, aimed at prospective clients, which encapsulates the ambition to go beyond the traditional constraints of marketing communications: "Next time your agency presents the 48-sheet, demand to see the 49th."

Chris King is the account man – P&G client turned agency MD turned worldwide account director on the Mars Snack foods business. Andy Blacford is an acknowledged champion of integrated communications. He was creative director of Saatchis' Equator, founder of Impact FCA and latterly a Group Creative and Managing Director at Grey. Blackford was also a contemporary of Prof. Jenkinson at Oxford.

Andy Blackford, the creative director, describes their use of CODAR

“ As a small young agency, up against a set of established, powerful competitors, we regard CODAR as a means to adjust the odds a little in our favour: to provide a genuine point of difference from other agencies and to lend our proposals a robust intellectual, even scientific, foundation. CODAR is the kind of tool that we have seen major clients and leading agencies searching for - and indeed that includes ourselves.

We believe that the development of CODAR by Jenkinson and the launch of KB49 share something else in common: both are exasperated by the dislogic of the traditional approach to marketing communications.   

To KB49, CODAR is above all a lens - a means of focusing upon the real issues facing a brand and its communications. It provides a structure around which to create a hierarchy of priorities based on real customer issues.   For example, by 'rationing' the points that can be allotted to every set of objectives, CODAR acknowledges that we work in an imperfect world of scarce resources, where marketers are constantly faced with difficult choices.

And yet, for all its compelling realism, it retains an elegant simplicity. This makes it especially attractive to practically-minded professionals like ourselves, who are not necessarily accustomed to working in the realm of abstract theoretical models.

We find that establishing such formal parameters early in the process constitutes a licence to produce bold, imaginative work.

We are also impressed by CODAR's versatility. It can be applied with equal facility at the planning, implementation and evaluation stages of a project. That project might be the launch of a new brand on a global scale or some small, discrete area of local activity. It is as relevant to internal marketing as it is to customer-related communications.

While it provides accurate 'snapshots' of the marketing communications landscape, it is an innately dynamic tool, reflecting changing circumstances and suggesting appropriate responses.

By the way, if you relish the idea of working with an agency that is intimately involved with this radical new thinking in the field of integrated communications, please contact . (Please forgive this shameless pitch as an expression of CODAR's Sales Activation and Relationship-Forming dimensions.)

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KB49 also use Stellar®.