
Marketing essentials: Time is creative.
Time is money. It’s one of business’ best-known and most irrefutable proverbs. In the marketing world, time – and how it is managed – can also be the difference between mediocre creative and breakthrough campaigns.
For marketers, on the agency side especially, time is creative.
Think of this familiar scenario: You’re rolling out a big campaign. You and your agency are spending round after round revising a project, evolving the objectives as the project moves forward, and getting surprise feedback from stakeholders even as the campaign goes to market.
While you and your agency were investing so much time getting that project out the door, what other gardens were being left untended? Researching a consumer insight to nail the strategy for the next campaign? Dreaming up a great idea around how your business could use a new media channel? Diving into competitive research to a flush out a ripe communication opportunity?
Think about it: the more time you and your agency spend working through rounds of revision, the less time you and your agency have at breaking through big creative ideas that will truly move your business forward. There is a cost to this time, and it’s measured in big creative opportunities lost.
For your consideration, here are five ways you (the client) can get campaign breakthroughs (from your agency) more often:
1. Involve all key stakeholders in the brief.
Before engaging the agency on creative development, bring in all stakeholders at the brief creation stage and have them sign off – sales, retail partners, research, R&D, third-party sponsors, etc. Get everyone’s input, flag potential pitfalls, and sign off on the brief up front before a single agency brainstorm has started. This may seem like a massive undertaking, but truth be told, time invested here saves exponential amounts of time (and money) later on in the process. It minimizes or eliminates feedback and changes near project completion, reducing the number of rounds of revisions required, and giving you a written document that can be used to help defend the creative you’ve approved (and love).
2. Brief early.
Not always easy (and in some circumstances, impossible), but when a known project is briefed in well in advance there are myriad benefits:
• Safer timelines.
Allows for workbacks that can insulate projects against late-coming changes, keeping projects on the rails.
• Better work.
With more time, more value-adding steps can be integrated. These are the elements that, when a project is rushed, are often the first to fall by the wayside. For example: consumer research, insight testing, creative testing, competitive production bidding, detailed QA testing of a microsite, etc.
• Better decisions.
Dozens of tests have shown that people tend to do better work and make better decisions when they are not under undue time pressure.
• More options.
The agency can present more detailed and refined creative options versus a compressed creative development phase.
• Increased co-promo potential.
Extra time to negotiate the intricate details of co-promo opportunities that enhance the perceived value of your promotion and allow you to leverage the strength of another brand.
3. Treat the first campaign presentation like the final ad.
So you’ve chosen a big idea to move against and the agency has just presented a detailed creative recommendation on how to execute against that. Though you’re not seeing every execution, review the creative with a fine-toothed comb against the backdrop of the brief – take at least a day or two to really think over every detail. Take time to get the opinion of other stakeholders, and compile the first round of feedback in one consolidated document or meeting delivered back to the agency.
This step alone can drastically reduce rounds of revisions, and avoid running or trickling feedback that can spiral a project well past its timelines.
4. Give clear, actionable feedback.
Avoid guessing games as much as possible. Clarity is king. So, feedback such as, “I don’t like this, can you come back with a few options at fixing it?” means that whomever is addressing it has to take shots in the dark at answering it. And the more rounds this goes on for, the more time and money gets burned (though a seasoned account person should never let it come to this). Alternatively, feedback such as, “This copy is not hitting objective X in the brief. Can you dial Y up to deliver more strongly against that objective?” is infinitely more actionable for the agency – you identify exactly what was missed, along with a suggestion of how to get there, all related back to the brief. The brief is the blueprint. Use it to make your feedback clearly understandable and get to the results you want faster.
5. Stick to the brief.
If you’ve looped in all stakeholders at the brief creation stage and found out that, “this product is all about X,” then you’d better fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn’t become, “well actually, this product is actually about Y and Z” after production has started (or worse, nearing completion). If stakeholder feedback late in the game is changing your brief, be prepared for the worst – in time and money. Late changes equal blown timelines and increased costs.
These five simple strategies can have a tremendous positive impact on the quality of your marketing efforts – with the goal of maximizing opportunities for spending time on what really matters: unlocking great innovative ideas.
Looking for even more ways to tilt the innovation scales in your favour? Check out Seth Godin’s How to be a great client.
What else is in your arsenal for getting to great ideas faster?