Before looking at a single word of copy or a single pixel of design, evaluate the brief. The most brilliant creative execution of the wrong strategy is still a failure.

Ask: • Is the target audience specific enough to be real? • Is the single-minded proposition actually single-minded? (Most have four propositions masquerading as one) • Is the desired consumer action clearly defined? • Does this campaign ladder up to the brand's long-term positioning?

If the strategy fails these questions, stop. The creative review is irrelevant until the strategy is fixed.

Advertising has one second — often less — to earn attention. Your critique must assess whether the campaign earns that attention honestly.

The attention test: • Cover the brand logo. Does the ad still feel distinctive, or could it be any competitor? • Would this stop a thumb mid-scroll? (For digital campaigns) • Is the entry point of the ad emotionally or intellectually interesting — or is it explaining?

Ads that start by explaining have already lost. The best ads create a question in the viewer's mind that the rest of the ad answers.

The cruelest — and most useful — critique exercise: compress the campaign to its single most important message in 6 words or fewer. If you can't do it, the campaign can't either.

Great campaigns compress cleanly: • Nike: Just Do It • Apple: Think Different • Volkswagen: Think Small • Dove: Real Beauty

If your 6-word summary sounds generic, the campaign is generic. Specificity is the enemy of forgettability.

Every category has visual and verbal conventions that most brands follow unconsciously. A professional critique identifies which conventions the campaign is following — and whether it's doing so intentionally.

Conventions exist for a reason (they signal category membership to consumers), but the most memorable campaigns break at least one convention deliberately. The critique question is: 'Which conventions does this break, and does breaking them serve the brand's differentiation strategy?'

Read the campaign from the consumer's perspective and ask 'so what?' after every sentence, claim, and visual choice. If 'so what?' is unanswerable — if the claim or image has no relevance to the consumer's life — cut it.

Most briefs fail the 'so what?' test on their second bullet point. Most finished ads fail it on their third sentence. This is the most reliable proxy for predicting whether a campaign will be ignored.

AdLegends Mentor applies this professional framework — filtered through the specific philosophies of Ogilvy, Bernbach, Dru, and Wells — to give you a scored, actionable critique of your campaign in under a minute.