METRICS MOTIVATE CREATIVES
Here’s an unexpected one: metrics motivate creatives.
And I’ll tell you why. Getting your creative team together and showing them how well your campaigns are doing is akin to having them perform on stage, then be applauded, or not.
Creatives are performers. And performers thrive on connecting with their audience.
I’ve seen creative teams motivated or demotivated by changes in CTRs, conversion rates, and qualified leads. I’ve seen designers walking the extra mile after receiving feedback from their actual audience, animators coming up with fresh campaign ideas and content writers triple tweaking their every sentence to suit a graphic better.
Which leads me to my second point. After an initial briefing, let your team own their product. Make sure they’re aware of what you’re after, on the campaign, and organizational level, and set them free.
I used to make the mistake of wanting to be the creative mastermind behind every campaign we produced. That’s the quickest way to ensure you’ll be getting no additional input from your team, and become a much despised bottlenecker. I’ve learned my lesson.
Nowadays I’m no longer the sole creative heavy lifter. I’m often even humbled realizing how much smarter than I am my team can be. And I love that. My life’s easy. Or rather, I can trust that I’m leaving most day to day activities in capable hands and push forward — planning a year or two ahead. Now that’s a challenge I wouldn’t have been able to take otherwise.
Here’s what we do with campaigns at our marketing practice; after the strategic or tactical requirement has been properly communicated to the team; they’re on their own. Writers, designers and animators are free to work with each other, there’s no linear flow, and so aside from making the deadline it’s all up to them in terms of how they want to work together.
Sometimes an ad will start from an image, instead of traditionally going from text to visual. A line of copy will unexpectedly turn into an animated gif. A team members burst of inspiration will give an unexpected twist.
Then, we eagerly anticipate the metrics. We review them every week and get Into tweaking mode. This is like a little puzzle game we’re all playing. We come up with assumptive psychological justifications for what works and what doesn’t (that’s a whole lot of fun!) — optimize, then wait again. Everybody gets a little restless for the results. That’s how I like it.
When creatives are properly exposed to their audience, they all get a glimpse of the limelight they deserve, and that motivates the hell out of everybody. Trust me, show your creatives some metrics.
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