Week 2: Creative Downloads

The most recognizable deliverable of Account Planning is the Creative Brief: a synthesis of all your research, insights, and creative assignments. I feel horribly unqualified to talk about what makes a good creative brief (at least at this point in my career), but this week the responsibility of writing an inspiring brief was overshadowed by my responsibility to present one.

I won't say that presenting a creative brief is more important than writing one, but I feel really strongly that that aspect was under-served and neglected in my education and career preparation. I feel this way for a number of reasons, but here are the biggest ones:

1. Most agencies use a formatted creative brief. While a lot of effort goes into making the format effective, that also means that your creative team has seen variations of the exact same document again and again and again. The presentation is an opportunity to breathe some life and excitement back into an old process for them.
2. Only half of your creative team prefers to think in language. This isn't a factual observation, but a thinking point. One half of your team is an art director, and, in that position, they're probably trained to respond and be stimulated by art more than words. A well-written brief will probably do a lot of good for a copywriter, but how can you make it inspiring for an art director?
3. Otherwise, it's just another meeting. How many meetings does everybody have everyday in an agency? I think we've all been in enough to say that a meeting can quickly stifle the creative process, and I think it is an account planner's responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.

Now, an important caveat, is I'm a junior planner at a primarily B2B agency. When I'm writing briefs, they aren't for massive branding efforts like the next "Most Interesting Man in the World." To this point, my creative downloads have been for small, execution-based projects like direct mail pieces or digital banners. I have limited time and resources, and creating a ground-breaking, experiential download process might not even be appropriate for meeting a client ask. However, I think it is also the perfect format for me to experiment with my process--a little bit here and there--to develop the tool set that will allow me to captivate and inspire creative audiences when I've earned that opportunity.

Most of my efforts, so far, have been about trying to find ways to introduce the creative team to the target audience, and creating a more sensory experience help put them in the audience's shoes:

• For one brief I was able to find a TV clip on YouTube that perfectly matched the audience's pain point.
• For another, I compared the target audience to personas the creative team would be more familiar with and could possibly relate to (Apu and Dr. Nick from the Simpsons).
• Most recently, I created a target audience music playlist that I left playing throughout the creative brief.

First, the success--the account team has been very vocal that they enjoy my multi-media additions. From their remarks I feel very confident that I'm at least addressing point 3 in making the meeting a relief from the workday. I've also successfully managed to get laughter from the creative teams in each download, which is at least an outward expression that they were engaged.

My biggest success, I think, was on the first tactic. It was my first download and it was, unfortunately, rather dull. I could feel it and it was reflected in the way the creative team was participating. When I introduced the video, however, the art director immediately opened up and began not only began commenting about what he saw in the video, but began asking more engaged questions about the assignment and the audience. I think that was my most effective download because familiarizing the creative team with the audience pain point made them care more about both the audience and the brand's solution to it.

(Also, a plug for the old-time planner maxim to always be observing and absorbing the world around them: I knew where and how to find that YouTube clip because of a show I had seen maybe three times on the Food Network from passive curiosity. You never know where you'll find the information you need to make an audience more relevant.)

Next, the improvements--the most glaring hole I see in my downloads, so far, is that I don't create space for interaction and collaboration. I'm tempted to blame that on the fact that most of the campaigns I write briefs for are fairly prescriptive, and don't demand high-level collaboration, but I know that won't suffice as an excuse in a dynamic, competitive industry like advertising. I have to improve.

As is, I think I've done all right, but I've been depending on the creative team to interact on their own initiative and to ask questions and invite discussion. Frankly, I think I should be more responsible for that as a planner. I hate lectures, and I don't think they inspire creativity, and I think my download process would be much more effective if I can get the creatives talking outside of just asking questions. The easiest solution, obviously, is just to switch that around and to begin asking questions to the creative team instead.

All right, that's enough of an essay for now. To summarize, my next step for becoming better at creative downloads will be to find ways to incorporate questions into my briefing process to encourage more creative engagement; and to combine this interactive aspect into my continuing efforts of creating a multi-sensory experience for the brief. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for how I can make downloads more engaging in the comments!

-Aaron