Reflects the agency. Is this campaign up to our exacting standards? Would we be proud to share it on our social feeds? Does it help to build our reputation?
Me
I prefer it when other people do the work.
That sounds bad right? But hear me out.
Whether you're a CCO or ECD, your primary responsibility remains the same: making sure that a never ending torrent of extraordinary work is constantly being delivered.
This is best achieved when every team member feels that they carry the authority and responsibility for delivering that.
How do I empower my departments
to consistently deliver?
Alignment around three simple ingredients.
The work must be extraordinary. Fresh, evocative, persuasive and category defining.
We must always drive value from our work. Financial value ideally. But also value in how it helps make us better and enhance our reputation.
We must constantly help to create the climate that we want to work in. In short, there’s no space or excuse for assholes.
Sounds too good to be true. Tell me more.
The trouble with Creative work is that every idea starts from a scribble.
And a scribble is incredibly vulnerable. Or, as my first Creative Director used to tell me, ‘any idiot can kill an idea.’
My (not so) secret way to getting great Creative work comes from breaking it down into three areas: diagnosis, development, delivery.
The diagnosis phase is the briefing. This needs to be tighter than spandex on a glam rock band. I’ve been so frustrated with poor briefing practices throughout my career that I have developed my own briefing workshop, the presentation for which you can download here.
Aside from time, the second most important part of the development stage is making sure everyone understands how to assimilate the work. For that, I use the ‘We, Me, Them and It’ principle:
We
Reflects the individual. Would they put this in their personal portfolio? Are they proud of the work? This is arguably the hardest metric.
Them
Reflects the brand for whom the work is being done. Does it enhance their place in the category? Does it adhere to their brand values?
It
Reflects the product. Are we truly bringing it to life in a way that will resonate with consumers and become naturally contagious as a campaign?
When every Creative knows exactly how work is judged internally, the overall quality of thinking and innovation instinctively improves.
Once you’ve had the idea, it’s time to get to work.
The delivery phase is the final execution and the point at which everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Clients get nervy, especially if it’s provocative work, as the deadline gets nearer. Other projects come in and steal attention from this critical final phase. You have to entrust producers and third parties with your precious work. And the most fateful of all possibilities: your campaign might be subjected to consumer testing.
There is no substitute for experience here. Having steered countless campaigns through production for over two decades, I have both the institutional knowledge to anticipate problems before they arise, and the scars to remind me of how to deal with any obstacle in a mutually beneficial way.