Ever wondered why you’re disappointed with the follow-up
album of “that band who were massive last year”. I can vividly remember
Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ selling by the bucket load, but the follow-up ‘In Utero’
falling flat in comparison.
There’s a good chance, if you review the CD sleeve, that the
album might have been ‘produced by the band’. This time around they decided
that they didn’t need the additional creative contribution of the ‘hot shot producer’.
Their success led to over-confidence.
Having worked for a variety of agencies – both large and
small, I’ve found that far too few people are dedicating their time towards being either ‘strategic’ or
‘creative’ in larger agencies and far too many meetings get called to simply
discuss other meetings. Briefs should come from anywhere within an agency to
ensure that they’re full of people who contribute to the creative and strategic
output.
In my experience, you can apply this issue to the ad
industry and successful agencies can fall into this type of trap. Strategic
ideas come from Planners while creative ideas come from Creatives. Each can sometimes
get a little territorial if the other strays on to their turf. This risks
producing half an idea or, at least, one that’s not yet fully formed.
Now, more than ever, ‘Strategy’ and ‘Creative’ need to be
much less department names and much more activities. Here at Clarity, each
carried are out by a small, but rapidly growing collaborative team of smart
people who work together to understand clients’ businesses and customers
irrespective of their job description.
Increasingly, agencies are tasked by clients with “sprinting
the marathon” - being proactive to drive the longer-term innovation while remaining
reactive on the day-to-day. As a result, Creative Directors need to get involved
before the strategy is developed and the Head of Planning needs to stay involved
long after concepts have been sold. After all, there could be an ongoing
optimisation challenge or a potential award submission, which would benefit
both parties.
It is important than agencies don’t let their teams bunch
together in their individual departments. At my previous agency, we mitigated
this issue by coming together ahead of a written brief at (what we call) an ‘Ignition’
session to immerse ourselves in our clients’ problems and ignite our creative
thinking. I hope to carry this idea forward, as well as challenging ourselves
to distil the core of a client’s challenge into really concise briefs - ideally
no more than a single side of A4.
Colin
Gray
Head
of Strategy and Planning, Clarity
