The right team, but the wrong problem?
Knowing what your teams can do is like knowing your kitchen knives. You might have a go-to chef’s knife that works for most situations, but you probably don’t want to slice bread with it. Do you know which blade to use for each task?
[Knife image credit: Savernake Knives / Neil Rankin]
Following on my article about increasing the ROI of Creative Feedback, my friend and former Starbucks colleague Joy Das Gupta asked how we can ensure that creative teams are solving actual creative problems rather than being tasked with business or strategy-focussed issues. Mis-assigning problems to solve is a surprisingly common issue in creative organizations, which leads to team strife and project delays.
To avoid this mistake we have to understand the what and the how in a creative brief.
The What
The brief articulates what needs to be communicated to customers. Data, insights and a strategy come together to define the customer product/feature/offer that will help achieve a specific business objective.
The How
The assignment in the brief is to determine how to communicate the product/feature/offer. The creative team will deliver through language, visuals, sound and whatever else is needed for the successful expression of the what.
Is it strategy or execution?
Problems occur when the creative team is asked to figure out the what as well as the how during the same exercise. Collaboration between strategic and creative teams is a good thing, but we need to avoid muddying the process by keeping the two phases of strategy and execution separated.
A completed and approved strategy is just as much a deliverable with a fixed deadline as the creative execution. However, we sometimes get rushed or worse, lazy, and don’t fully define the what before briefing the creative team.
If you encounter stakeholders debating strategy during any step of the creative process, it’s a good indication to pause and regroup.
Example 1: Make it meaningful
Creative teams are sometimes briefed to make the what meaningful or exciting to customers. However, meaning and excitement is derived from the uniqueness and value a customer perceives in the product/feature/offer. If the benefit is novel and strong then customers may get enthusiastic about it. However, if the customer senses any kind of deception through overzealous creative because the what feels hollow, the net result is likely a cheapening of the brand and erosion of trust. Just because we say something is important doesn’t make it so.
The cross functional team made up of business, strategy and marketing specialists are ultimately responsible for conceiving a product/feature/offer that is truly meaningful and exciting for customers. Hand that what to the creative team and they’ll figure out how to best communicate and amplify any customer enthusiasm.
Example 2: Make it easy to understand
Many offers or products we develop are complex. The low-hanging fruit was harvested long ago and we are forced to turn to increasingly complicated solutions to deliver value to our customers as well as our business. It’s not uncommon to ask creative or UX teams to untangle the web, but there's bound to be a long list of legal requirements and opinion-based darlings that would complicate any customer message.
If business and strategy teams are wearing customer experience hats from the start they can simplify earlier in the process as the information is created. Once the concept of the message is clear, succinct and approved, the creative team can focus on craft-related topics like storytelling through video and sound to make the what truly sing.
[Image credit: United Airlines]
A strong what: United Airlines Miles Pooling
Joy recently nodded to United Airlines’ new Miles Pooling as an example of the process done right. The loyalty team at the airlines learned through research that travelers didn’t find the mileage program useful before having miles to spend. Working with product and tech, the loyalty team enabled customers to pool miles, making travel more accessible and more affordable, eg. parents pooling miles for their children. Once the idea and technical solution was defined—the what—the creative and PR teams were briefed to explain Miles Pooling in a clear and compelling way—the how.
The pitch: Merge miles with friends and family, without any transfer fees, to help get to your next destination faster.
As a traveler I found the concept of pooling miles to be quite exciting before seeing any creative. The value was immediately apparent and the idea was simple to understand.
It’s likely that collaboration between the strategy and creative teams at United Airlines began early, but the key is that what was clearly defined first, making it relatively easy for the creative teams to define the how in this first-of-its kind loyalty feature for a US-based carrier.
[Image credit: Chuck Hodes / FX]
Bravo chef
Brand and product communications is a careful choreography between cross functional teams. Like a professional kitchen, everyone has speciality skills and roles to play. When these roles are kept clear they help the project run efficiently and with a greater chance of success.
The strategic teams are responsible for defining what the product/feature/offer is. And the creative teams are responsible for defining how that is communicated.
Done well, the execution by the creative team will run smoothly like a hot knife through butter. Done poorly and it will feel like a dull blade on a mushy tomato.
Do you have tips on how to keep your teams focussed on solving the right, role-appropriate problems?