Is your creative agency producing crazy stuff? Ads or marketing campaigns that are so “out there” you wonder if the designers are on drugs? Or you suspect they’re giving you stuff they produced for a company in some other industry?
Here’s the thing: you’re PAYING for crazy. By that I mean that you hired a creative agency because you want to stand out, be noticed, generate returns, meet some big goals.
But creative needs to be well managed.
Like children or puppies, creatives need freedom to explore, wander, fall over, get back up, and try again. Its a messy process, so they need a fenced area large enough to safely do all that.
The best way to get amazing, innovative, on-target creative out of a creative agency is to give them a large fenced yard full of inspiration.
If they’re producing crazy stuff for you, you’ve probably made one or more of these mistakes:
- Asked creative to solve a differentiation problem
- Asked creatives to do something that will “get you noticed” without giving them the Essential Story of what you want to be noticed for
- Given the agency a list of great-big goals (ROI) without communicating the essence of what you’re about, what you stand for, what the brand’s voice is
- Hired creative before developing an Essential Story, before having a Corporate Phrasebook™ to guide them
On the flip side, if you’re getting uninspired drivel out of your creative agency, it may be because you’re micro-managing them. Instead of a fenced yard, have you given them a chicken coop? For example:
- You tell or show them exactly what you want
- You show them a similar campaign and tell them you want that but different
- You take their initial ideas and redraw/rewrite them to be more like what you were thinking
Great creative is NOT what you were thinking – it’s way better than anything you could think of. It’s where Essential Story and great creative minds connect. Use your Essential Story to communicate with and inspire creatives – to give them a big yard and to gently keep them from jumping the fence.