By Jennifer Wagner, Senior Art Director
Ever attend a creative presentation that was completely off-strategy from what you thought you asked for? Sure, the campaign looked nice, but it just didn’t work—at all. Now it’s back to the drawing board, and you’re looking at expensive revisions, an extended timeline, and maybe even a delay in your product launch. What the heck? What were those creative people thinking?
Just like any other marketing discipline, creative people depend upon input and feedback to produce good work. You can greatly reduce (if not eliminate) frustration, costly delays, and missteps by making sure your agency’s creative department has these three things from the very beginning.
1. Feed us the facts.
The most effective and creative marketing communications, whether print, Web, direct mail, or integrated campaigns, are founded on real-world data and the insights behind them. Essential information includes:
- • Clearly defined marketing and business objectives. Once your agency understands your business and marketing goals, they can recommend the best tactics and strategies to pursue. Do you want to introduce a new product, expand into new markets, grow market share, increase awareness of your brand, cross-sell to existing customers or all of the above? Be sure to define the benchmarks you’ll be using to determine whether the effort has been successful. Is it the number of email opens? An increase in website hits? Or is it the number of prospects who convert?
- • Audience data. Your agency must thoroughly understand your audience’s demographics and mindset. Research, such as interviews and focus groups, will help the agency define personas, which are detailed profiles of people in your target audience. Personas provide the entire marketing team with valuable insights into the type of messaging and offers that will entice a prospect to become a customer. Studying the target audience also allows the creative team to “walk in their shoes” and reach a deeper understanding of the emotional and practical motivations that may influence a purchase or response.
- • Insights into the marketplace. Who are the competitors? How do their products/services compare? What are the barriers to success? How is the product currently positioned? Do you want to change the positioning and how? Research and data from past efforts can be invaluable here.
- • Product details. The more your agency knows about the product or service, the better they can talk about it. Understanding all the features is essential, but it is even more important to narrow those features down to the unique selling point (USP) or competitive differentiator.
When defining the USP, keep in mind the following: the target audience’s priorities and needs, the product’s advantages over the competition and findings from prior efforts. Presenting one powerful benefit is much more compelling than presenting a long list of features, so narrow them down to the one that delivers the most valuable benefit to your audience.
For example, a unique feature of a car might be that it includes safety elements not found on other cars. (Think Volvo.) A benefit—what’s in it for the customer—is that by choosing this car, the owner will have peace of mind knowing his or her family will be safe on the road. This could lead to a unique selling point/positioning: “Volvo makes cars that keep families safe.” Now the creative team can focus on coming up with unique ways to present the safety message. Other features such as the car’s reliability, mileage, etc. become supporting points to the overall message.
- • Budget and timing. Be very, very clear about this. The most amazing creative solution in the world won’t work if it can’t be finished within time, technology or budget requirements. Knowing these things ahead of time can help your creative agency develop an approach that is original but will also work within the confines of the real world.
2. We need the ingredients, not the recipe.
By all means, share ideas and suggestions when giving input. But don't make them requirements. Telling your agency how to solve the problem sets up barriers and hampers creative thought. Give them a chance to look at the big picture, turn it upside down and explore solutions. Some will work, some won’t.
When they have solid information to work with, the agency should be able to sort out the good from the bad before you ever see a comp. Even better, you’ll get more interesting and unique solutions if you give them the freedom to try new things. And it’s much better (and easier) to scale back a fantastic, unique idea than to have to make an OK idea shine.
3. Give us time to digest.
After getting all of these wonderful insights and bouncing around some initial ideas, the agency’s creative team will mix them up, rethink them, cross-examine them, generate new ideas, evaluate them vs. the input, and refine them.
The first idea might be very good—but it’s almost never the “best” idea. Giving creative folks time to re-evaluate ideas a day or two later (sleeping on it) helps them see at solutions from a new perspective. Brainstorming, bouncing ideas off others, and incorporating feedback and constructive criticism helps encourage fresh thinking and improves solutions.
Creativity can't be forced. Just as too many requirements from the beginning can stunt creativity, too much organized, logical thought can be counter-productive. Taking a break by working on something else, or just doing everyday tasks like walking around the block, allows ideas to percolate and grow. Daydreaming and random association are two known methods for coming up with fresh ideas. Both lead the brain to arrive at conclusions in unexpected ways. Einstein was aware of this:
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
It’s how creative people do their best work.
Keep in mind, the more limited the timeline, the fewer options you’ll have to choose from, and they may not be as well thought out as you—or your agency--were hoping. More time and thought invested up front almost always saves time and reduces revisions in the end.
Now that you’ve fed the creative teams with facts and given them the liberty and flexibility to generate new ideas, be prepared to be delighted and surprised (in a good way) by what you see. If you have given your agency the time and information they need, you’ll receive a solid range of on-strategy solutions to choose from. In fact, you may have difficulty choosing, even when the agency has a recommendation (which they should). If budget allows, you could even decide to test the two best approaches to determine which results in the best ROI. A much better situation than having to start over!
