Communication is a Game of CHESS
news
Agency News
Published by
Charles Vallance
Date
19/05/2025
In his latest Campaign column, our Founding Partner and Chairman Charles Vallance reflects on the true building blocks of great communication - and why it’s time the industry went back to basics.
Panel discussions often get a bad rap, but I quite enjoy them - both as participant and spectator.
I understand some of the criticism they receive. They can act as time-fillers between rock star presenters, and there is a danger that the questions are committee-friendly, making it difficult to reply in anything other than platitudes.
In my experience, the other danger is your socks. I become extremely sock-conscious as a panellist on stage due to the lack of anything to put your feet under, and the often tall stools you have to sit on which exaggerate ankle exposure. An injudicious choice of sock can haunt you up there on the dais, ankle level with the settled eye-line of an unforgiving audience.
Every so often, however, you get a question to which you have a full and meaningful answer, socks notwithstanding. When you can talk with confidence on a subject which you are both familiar with and have a clearly defined perspective on.
I was watching one of our planners on a panel the other day and he had a great answer to one of those vague questions you get asked and which can leave you floundering around.
"What do you see as the secret to successful communication?"
"The answer", he said, "is to play CHESS".
I like an acronym, especially one deployed with such alacrity, and I could tell he would quickly hit his stride.
He went on to explain that, in a study of 100 of the UK’s most popular and most enduring ad campaigns, it was found that there are consistently only 5 criteria for success; Character, Humour, Emotion, Signposting and Surprise. Thus the acronym CHESS.
Character is perhaps the most obvious ingredient. Ideally unborrowed (think the Smash Martian or Aleksand'r the Meerkat), these serve as powerful shortcuts to mental availability and brand familiarity.
As an industry, we need to address this shortfall and re-apply ourselves to the simple principles of CHESS. Charles Vallance, VCCP Founding Partner and Chairman
Both of these brand characters also display the second ingredient, namely Humour. If you make someone smile you have succeeded in completing a feedback loop with your prospect, and your reward will not just be affinity but also memorability. Haribo, KitKat and Tango all illustrate the truth of this observation.
“If they’re crying they’re buying” is a phrase that used to be applied to the tear jerking sentimentality of the John Lewis Christmas ad. And Emotion is indeed an immensely potent brand asset. A close emotional connection between your brand and your audience is one of the surest predicators of commercial success, as can be seen with brands such as Cadbury, Coca-Cola and Guinness.
It was when the planner got to ‘Signposting’ that he lost his footing a little, largely because this ‘S’ had clearly been shoe-horned in, so as to get to the CHESS acronym. What he really meant was Distinctive Brand Property - jingle, slogan, mnemonic, visual, verbal or graphic device. However, CHEDBPS wouldn’t have quite the same ring to it, so Signposting would have to do as a catch-all encompassing heuristics such as; Did Somebody Say?, Domin-oh-hoo-hoo, I Just Sold My Car and Raise your Arches.
The second S stands for Surprise, and with this, the planner was back in his stride. Surprising, unexpected twists are undoubtedly powerful shortcuts to memory - not least because, like humour, they require active processing. The mind is misdirected and, in the act of correcting itself, forms much deeper memory structures. Dambusters, Belly's Gonna Get You and Specsavers all prove the point admirably.
A cynical observer might baulk at the simplicity of the CHESS acronym. It is, after all, fairly obvious stuff. He or she might also say that too many of the examples used are old rather than current.
But this is where I'd ask, isn't that the point? How many campaigns running today will we look back on and say they had the blend of ingredients that would endure for decades?
There are some. But there are few, and many of them are mentioned above. As media fragments, so can the core disciplines of brand building. This threat by no means applies to all advertisers or all agencies. But it applies to too many of both.
Not that many years ago, long-running campaigns were the norm, from Stella to Carling, BMW to Audi, Asda to Sainsbury, The Independent to The Guardian, Anchor to Flora, Tetley Tea to PG Tips, Gordon's to Absolut, Levi's to Gap. Now they are the exception.
As an industry, we need to address this shortfall and re-apply ourselves to the simple principles of CHESS.
And to those who doubt or dispute this, I’d say you’re in danger of checkmating yourselves.
