A lot of agencies think making the creative great is the creatives and CD’s job.
But coming up with ideas is often the easy bit.
Getting them made is hard. Getting them made well is harder.
To do that the whole agency needs to be part of the creative process.
Including all of that ‘business’ stuff.
Budgets, timings, scoping, time-management, worries about hours and costs. Spreadsheets!
The boring stuff (sorry, I mean boring to creatives).
But all these things massively affect the work.
And if managed badly they’ll not just hamper the production of great creative, they’ll actually block most of it from ever happening.
If the timings haven’t been worked out properly, the creatives are under constant pressure.
If the budget isn’t thought out, you end up compromising craft in production.
If the plan hasn’t been fully agreed and signed off, you end up redoing the job.
If the scope’s wrong, you focus effort in the wrong places.
If there’s no time-management, creatives can’t focus properly.
It’s why I’ve always made these areas a priority.
Taking as much time with client services, production and ops as creative. Making sure all these things are nailed down before a creative pen touches paper.
And with multiple restarts and ongoing realignments taken out of the process, it’s also a much, happier, stress-free life.
You don’t just end up with fewer hours on jobs or a better bottom line…
…you end up with better creative.
