You may feel up against the ropes, but I can guarantee you, on the other side of the conference table, there’s a creative that’s feeling just as beat up as you are. Ever pleasing, they are working hard (and staying late) to make sure they give you what you want and what you need. Yet, round after round, their hard work gets poked, punched and pulverized. Then, when the beating is over, they limp away, black eyes and all, and start the process all over again. Suckers.
While you may genuinely have a bad designer or bad copywriter, if poor quality projects are surfacing regularly across your teams, the problem may be bad communication (that’s my nice way of saying “you”). So, before you kick off your next project, make sure you:
1. Have clear, unwavering vision of what you want.
It’s nearly impossible to hit a moving target, especially with creative work. Nothing will drag a project out or condemn it to failure like poor vision from the start.
2. Understand your company’s brand guidelines.
Kick-off projects that work within the existing messaging, voice, tone, look and feel. (I.e. If you work in a place that keeps things positive, don’t ask your creatives to create something negative or if your companies color palette is blue and green and you only use black and white photography, don’t ask for something orange with color photographs)
3. Write separate creative briefs for each deliverable.
If your project has multiple parts, such as a banner, email and web pages, write a separate brief for each part (keeping in mind how each piece will work together and build on each other).
4. Are very specific.
What is the single most important message for each piece? If the project has multiple sections- what are the key messages in each section? What is this deliverable meant to do?
5. State how the piece/pieces will be used/distributed.
If it’s a brochure, will it be used at a sales conference? If it’s a banner, where will it be placed on your website or someone else’s?
6. Explain to whom the work will be going to.
Is it going to prospects or people already familiar with your products? If you don’t talk specifically to your target, messages won’t be effective.
7. Provide supporting information.
Do you have research? Competitive information? Specific differentiators? If you want truly amazing work, provide them with some great proof points to work with. Only include relevant information.
8. Provide a clear call to action (CTA).
If you want your prospects to call, make sure you provide your team with the phone number and whom they will be talking to. If you want prospects to go to a landing page, include the URL and make sure your creatives (and you) know where they are driving traffic to so they can keep everything in context.
9. Provide legal disclosures up front.
Make sure those are included in the brief or attached to it. Not only will they need disclosures to finish the project, but depending on their length, it could affect the design work.
10. Use few words.
Stick to the specifics, wordy briefs are easy to misinterpret.
11. Include digital parameters.
Digital is different. Identify digital considerations such as templates, template word counts, etc. If a banner, denote whether it is static or animated, expanding or peel back, etc.
12. Give them adequate time.
Fast deadlines = mediocre work. Give them a reasonable time for each round and your revisions. Also know that your project is likely one of many in the pipeline. If you really need something done by a certain date, kick-it off earlier.
It’s great to talk to your team about what you want, but make sure everything is in the brief too. A good brief makes it easier for the creative, but it also gives you something to measure the work against when it comes back. If they aren’t adhering to the guidelines in your brief, well, that cattle prod might come in handy.
Elements of a creative-friendly brief:
Project name: (Overall Project)
Job number: (If relevant)
Deliverable: (Which piece-email, banner, etc)
Team members: (Writer, designer, project manager, etc.)
Round: (How many times has it come back to you/the client for official presentation)
Version: (Which stage between official rounds)
Main objective: (Project overview and basic background information)
Project specifics: (Email, banner, brochure, etc. Also where you’d state things like templates to be used, preferred palette and word counts)
How will it be distributed: (handed out, emailed from where, placed on a public website, behind a login, etc.)
Who it will be distributed to: (Prospects, existing customers, other peoples customers)
Key Message: (Above all else, what do you want to communicate?)
Support Points: (Research, differentiators, quotes, product benefits that support the main message)
Call to Action: (What you want the audience to do with URLs, phone numbers, etc.)
Disclosures: (List the legal or professional disclosures do you want to include)
Evaluating work:
Just a quick note on evaluating work as it comes back. Sometimes it may come back exactly the way you want it or better (nice work you awesome communicator!). Many times however, it may not come back exactly how you envisioned it. That doesn’t always mean you missed something, nor does it mean you have an inadequate creative team. That is just the nature of the creative process and flushing out great ideas. Instead of casting judgment too quickly, take the following steps:
1.Match the project creative up to the objectives stated in the brief.
Does it hit your main points? Is it on brand? If so, you may be letting your subjective opinion get in the way. If something is missing, move on to the next step.
2. Identify what is missing.
Does it not convey your message strongly enough? Is it off-brand? Is there a disconnect between the copy and the design? Too many words? Too busy or not a logical hierarchy of information? These are common problems on first rounds when bugs are being worked out. Referring to the brief, go back to the team and communicate your concerns. Make sure there is dialogue with each team member. Then, send them back to work. If you did a good job of communicating with each other, round two should be really close.
3. Problems in round two.
Round two seems to be the round where lack of planning or communication really starts to show itself. By round two, work should be close and require only a few refinements, additions, etc. However, if the creative work is still really off mark, either your creative team does not understand what you want, your original vision may not have been as clear as you wanted it to be, or perhaps there is some dysfunction within the team. Start asking questions, perhaps one person at a time and see if you can identify where the breakdown is starting. One identified, mitigate.
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