Systematising Creativity

A oxymoronic-sounding glimpse at how you can give yourself the best shot at landing great creative

Sep 23, 2024

A few days ago, I was reflecting on a presentation I’d been part of, to our client Johnson’s baby. (Till date, the favourite clients I’ve ever worked with while on the agency side.)

There we were. Four clients, including their GM Marketing. And about eight of us from the agency.

I remember Account Management taking about a thirty minutes to set up the business context in great detail, demonstrating their understanding of the category, competition and brand. Planning took over, going into qualitative and quantitative research, leading up to the core consumer insight. That took an hour. A coffee break, and then my boss took over for over an hour, leading the client through a creative presentation spanning the Big Idea, TV, print, OOH, radio and guerilla. Throwing to my art partner and myself at key moments.

I remember enacting the film using the GM and his baby-bald head as my canvas. He was a sport, and much laughter ensued.

And then the discussion and dissection began. Continuing over a working lunch. Until we arrived at clear alignment, feedback and next steps.

That five-hour meeting led to one of my favourite pieces of work (built on the principle that when a benefit wasn’t claimable, distinctiveness was what mattered, but I digress) and yet another highly successful campaign for Johnson’s baby by Lowe Lintas.

Back in the day, such meetings weren’t unusual. We’d do this for almost every campaign, for almost every client. Spending the better part of a day working towards marketing success.

And that got me thinking - are we doing enough of this today?

Over the weekend, I posted a straw poll on LinkedIn, asking folks who work at agencies a simple question:

How much time do you generally get with your clients for a a campaign/event presentation (creative, strategy or media)?

The (not surprising) response:

8% said they get between 15 and 30 minutes.
78% said they get between 30 and 60 minutes.
Only 14% of said they get more than 60 minutes.

Now, here’s a fact to put this into context.

Depending upon which study you read, you’ll realise that 55-70% of your campaign’s creative success depends upon the…creative work itself.

Not product.
Not pricing.
Not distribution.
Just.
Sheer.
Fucking.
Creative.

Sit back and let that sink in a minute.

The creative work you and your agency will produce will drive the lion’s share of your campaign’s success. And, increasingly, Marketers are spending less and less time on this critical aspect.

From what I’ve gathered from other conversations, this goes beyond just the time spent on presentations. But into writing strong briefs as well.

Has marketing lost some of its rigour?

The world has changed significantly since 2007, when I gave my client a head massage to sell him an ad. Speed-to-market has become more important. CMOs are spending more and more time trying to justify Marketing to CFOs. Budgets have tightened up. Stakeholder management, influencing and leadership in a fast-changing world are taking up more and more bandwidth.

Separately, to use a quote from R. Balki: “Everyone’s in Account Management.” The lines between who handles client relationships have blurred, resulting in less bureaucracy - with some potential for broken information flow on the agency side.

So, in the absence of time and in the face of change, what does it take to enable Marketing success?

A strong system: Built around the right people, on a foundation of mutual trust, enabling fast information flow, designed to reduce red tape.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

A System of People

Advertising is a people business.

It’s easy to trust an institution. No one person is greater than the whole, right?

Well…not always.

Picking your agency partner is similar to picking your life partner, in that it all comes down to…chemistry.

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💡 Chemistry: The intense feelings of connection, passion and romance that people in relationships share. A complex mix of feelings, interests and interactions that can make people feel drawn to each other.
</aside>

You can’t have that chemistry with all the thirty-odd people who’ll end up servicing a reasonably large account. Three to four at best, in my experience.

So your first job is to find the three or four people you can have chemistry with. There are a few personas I look for:

The Fixer: Your go-to person to solve anything - from clogged pipes to creaky systems. The one who gets you, your business and your personal goals…and organises the agency to deliver. This could be your VP of Account Management…but I’ve also had this relationship with my agencies’ CCOs and Deputy CEOs.
The Muse: Ideally the senior creative leader - think CCO or ECD. This is the person who you can inspire with your vision for the brand (for fuck’s sake, have a vision for the brand!), and who will inspire their teams in turn. When 💩 has hit the fan, they’re the ones who step in and deliver that bit of genius, saving your butt and delivering the work you needed.
The Partner-In-Crime: The CD or ECD working on your brief. The one you pick up the phone on to bounce harebrained ideas off. The one who calls you to sense-check an idea their team has come up with. With complete trust in each other, and a shared purpose.

If you’ve found these people and cultivated them, then, more often than not, information will be shared; problems will be solved; things will move faster.

But when one or more of them up and leave, things break. Often affecting the overall relationship. It’s (sadly) happened to me more times than I can count.

So if I’ve learned one thing from all of that, it is to follow good people.

A System of Teams

Your work is only as good as the team that comes together to do it.

It’s easy for an agency to promise 20 people on your brief. Much harder for them to promise the right people on your brief.

An example: If you’re doing a Social campaign, do you need a traditional account planner on the team?

Having three people with the wrong skills just makes it three times tougher to get great work out.

So, what I’ve learned to do is focus on casting. Ensuring the right skills and experience are staffed against our projects.

A System For Partnership

If a team were responsible for 70% of your business objectives, you’d probably want to treat them well, right?

Unfortunately, client-agency relationships have (largely) shifted to treating agencies like vendors. A vendor mindset fosters a transactional relationship. It’s all about giving out a brief, receiving some assets, and paying a fee.

The outcome? A disengaged agency, and steadily declining long-term effectiveness.

A good agency has a vested interest in your success. Our longest-serving and most trusted agency partners grew their reputation and Google business with every win they delivered for us. And won significant external new business on the back of the work they did for us.

The core of our relationship has been mutual respect and trust. I choose to be open and transparent with them from the start. They know (almost) as much as we do about the business context; and everything about the constraints we face.

We treat our agencies as an extension of my team. So, we try to be tough, yet fair with them; credit them when we win; and take the bullets when we lose.

We’ve built systems to enable this. An annual Agency Day at the start of the year, to bring our partners up-to-speed on annual marketing plans. A cadence of scheduled catch-ups with senior leaders. An office hours intended exclusively for partners to get time with me when they wish, for an agenda of their choosing. Regular business discussions. A close partnership with our central Agency Management team to keep our agencies up-to-speed on all things Google. And the (less frequent than I’d like) celebrations of good work.

Our best partners have grown to be part of our team, and give more than 100% every time we turn to them.

A System For Getting Things Done

Research suggests that traffic moves faster through traffic circles than traffic lights.

The problem is that systems - client and agency-side - are designed to serve as traffic lights. Hierarchical and risk-averse.

I’ve lost track of the number of days we’ve lost when, after weeks of work, a senior leader at one side has asked for the work to be changed, or completely scrapped, because they weren’t on-board.

So, part of the Brand Manager’s job is to build systems (on the client side) and adapt systems (on the agency side) to maximise the time available.

The simple solve on the agency side is to staff the working team with the appropriate level of leadership time. And empower this “C-Level minus 1 or 2” team to make decisions, with all the accountability that brings.

Let’s face it, you’re not going to need your CCO on every brief. Just the biggest ones. At those times, you’ll be grateful for the additional scrutiny. But not when all you need is a couple of Reels explaining the new feature that just launched yesterday.

The solve on the client side is tougher.

Identify your key decision-maker(s) early on. Ideally no more than two people. Best case, one. This is going to be an incredibly hard battle to fight - but the most critical.
Build a team-wide workflow for creative approval. Break down campaign reviews into smaller pieces to accommodate busy calendars. Make it clear at what stage work needs to come in, to whom, in what form, with what context. Set those meetings up with a regular cadence, making sure your decision-makers are in the room.
Review work upstream, and early, at every stage. From Marketing strategy to brief to idea to assets. This (seemingly) high investment in upstream checks will deliver returns as you get closer to the launch date.
Break the norms of the client-agency relationship. Collaborate. Serve as thought partners to your agencies, run working sessions and occasionally organise a hothouse to brainstorm ideas together.

You’ll find that your work won’t get progressively worse and risk-averse; that you and your team, as well as your agencies, won’t get burnt out; and that you can save money on agency hours over the medium-to-long term.

It’s easy to believe that a Brand Manager’s job is about brand custodianship and creativity.

The secret superpower, however - the one that nobody thinks about or talks about ever - is the ability to organise.

That is the insight.

Samit