How to Get Showstopping Creative From Your Agency

There really is no magic to getting great creative from your agency partner. (Assuming you picked the right agency in the first place).  All it takes is 20% clarity, 20% courage and 60% restraint.

Having spent my career in both the client’s chair and the agency’s chair, I’ve experienced both the awe-inducing power of magic and the stomach-churning absence of magic. It is true that it helps immensely if you are a client that has sat in the Creative Director’s chair earlier in your career. It gives you two key advantages: 1. You are very good at evaluating the potential of creative ideas and 2. You are Ok with embracing some level of ambiguity because you know that it’s part of the creative process and where the possibility of magic exists.

Conversely, those clients who don’t have creative backgrounds but are responsible for managing creative projects often struggle with evaluating the potential of ideas and focus on executional elements. They also tend to be deeply uncomfortable with ambiguity of any kind and rush to define boundaries, thereby creating a small box in which most ideas will ultimately suffocate.

And related to my last point… a creative project is very different from a non-creative project and if you try to manage the creative project the same way, you’ll get a result, but it probably won’t be a very creative one.

So, let’s start with Clarity.

Achieving clarity is at once very simple and very challenging. It’s simple if you have a clear focus and can articulate it effectively to a five-year old. It’s challenging if your goal is to try to shoehorn as many communication points into the brief as if you are scooping a mountain “M&M’s” into a thimble. Creative Brief. Everyone seems to ignore the second word. Brief. If the brief isn’t brief, there’s no breathing room for a big idea. Challenge yourself to write a great brief – to use not one more word than is absolutely necessary to communicate what you need to achieve.

Courage. Ah yes, often in very short supply.  It’s defined as “the ability to do something that frightens one,” which means you’re scared, but you take action anyway. This is why when it comes to creative projects, it helps to have a strong creative background. It’s not just experience, but it’s also instinct, instinct that comes from experience. And from doing your strategic homework. Spend your time drafting a brilliant creative brief. It will give you the courage to give the agency room to explore truly creative ideas.

And restraint. The most difficult requirement of all. If you trust your brief, if you trust your agency, then don’t try to solve “problems” when they come up. When you give feedback to creative idea, do not, I repeat, do not try to solve the problem. That’s what you pay the agency to do. And it’s highly unlikely you will solve the problem in minutes whether you are in the room on or the phone. If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be a problem. It requires a creative solution which means the answer won’t be at all obvious. Let the agency go back and figure it out. Focus your feedback constructively. First, be very specific about all the things you like. And why. Then, be very specific about the things that you don’t like. And why. Also be very specific about what you feel might be missing. And why. Without the why’s you’ll never be happy with the final creative product. Without the why’s, the agency is left to ponder countless assumptions and this is often where a creative project goes off the rails. Work hard at giving very specific feedback. And give your feedback through the lens of your intended customer and what research has told you about your customer.

The restraint part is very tough for many people.

Remember, you are the client. While you may collaborate with the agency, at some point you need to sit back away from the table, and let the agency own the idea. After all, that’s what you’ll judge them on. And you can take the credit for providing the direction and feedback that created the right conditions for the agency to come up with a big breakthrough idea. Then, you get to be the hero.

The tools may always be changing, but this human algorithm never does: clarity, courage and restraint.