CHAT BACK: Working for the idea

For those that have been screwed on price, squashed for time and creative quality ignored, then it’s your process that may be failing you, not the procurement teams or bean counters. There’s no shortage of good ideas out there so what’s stopping them from getting out?

First we need to accept that great creative isn’t just a fantastic idea. In my 27 years in this business I have never seen a shortage of great ideas that are effective, and I challenge anyone to say that creatives these days just don’t have good ideas in them.

I simply don’t believe it. In my view it’s process that’s 75 per cent responsible for whether a good idea surfaces at all, whether it’s at its best performance, or whether the money is spent where it needs it without wastage.

A great idea can withstand a lot including reduced production values, reduced media spend, or reduced exposure to name a few; but no matter how good the idea, it’s the product of the whole process that supports the work getting made.

It’s the process that dictates how the money is used; it’s either on the screen and in print, or it’s lost in failing process (now that’s on both the client’s side and the agency’s).

It’s the way you allow your work to come in your building and out the other side (either it flows out, is forced out or is spat out). Process includes the way that clients and agency work together, how suppliers are chosen and how much they are allowed to do what they’re best at, how good ideas are discovered and fostered, how time is spent on the job, how the hierarchies are managed… I could go on for days.

So this process, that’s a very delicate balance, is put under extreme stress when the old way of thinking is in place and everyone is just expected to do it cheaper, screwing people along the way, and simply overloaded in order for business to grow.

The key is in really knowing to a deep level where the process hinders the creative and where it supports it. It also requires each participant in the process putting aside their own needs and looking at serving the idea.

In my view that’s something that not a lot of people working in agencies and in client businesses really understand right now.

There are a lot of people that understand how their individual responsibilities work but the real question is – is there a conductor managing how the whole process is working?

Is there someone with a deep understanding of each department’s process really focusing on the whole in a way that fosters creative flow?

I challenge agencies to think carefully about this – is the creative director hands on in the process, is the account manager across the nuances of process in each department in a way that with certainty they know is fostering the creative?

Does traffic understand the effect they have on the work? Over my years in this business I’ve met a few that could claim this actually, but they’re few and far between.

Without this conductor in place then the process needs to stand on it’s own. Does yours? Can your process survive if any one of the people in the chain weren’t there?

Just shifting your focus off the idea alone, off the cash register, off blaming the current environment, and onto your process in terms of serving the idea is a timely necessity in my view.

There are plenty of ideas out there, but are they really being served by your process?

www.annemiles.com.au