Should Communicators and Clients Be Involved in an Agency’s Creative Process? Part One

The cooperation between advertising agency and company. How should it really work? We decided to let each side take turn discussing the subject and blog about it. Part One – the marketeer’s perspective. Part two the agency’s perspective.

A blog entry by Charlotte Ulvros, CMO at Mynewsdesk

Should advertising agencies involve their clients during the creative process? This question was asked at the Hyper Island Master Class for Digital Marketing I recently attended in London. Attending the seminar were Europe’s major agencies and marketing managers, many with varied backgrounds. The subject was a hot topic and is definitely of interest to our clients that work with advertising and PR agencies on a daily basis.

The purpose of the 3-day Master Class, hosted by Hyper Island, was to gain a better understanding and overview of the changing media landscape, as well as the new digital marketing world (or “rewiring”, as Hyper Island calls it). I recommend all marketing and communication managers to attend a similar course or seminar – it will give you a valuable insight into the not-so-distant marketing future.

So different… yet same goals
As I said, the creative creams of Europe’s advertising agency crop were in attendance along with us marketers from various companies. It was obvious that we operate along different lines, especially when working in a group. The marketers looked at numbers and facts. The agency people visualized general ideas. Different methods of working, same goal.

Also in attendance was an engineer that had little experience in marketing or advertising. A sobering experience. She asked several questions that got me and other thinking: How do you actually get anything done when working like this? How do you know if your ideas work? Why aren’t the company and the client involved in the process?

Let the client be creative and collaborate
If contemporary marketing is based on getting customers to talk about and interact with your brand, then all the affected parties need to be involved in the creative process. We suggested that the art director and the copywriter should get the usability expert involved or rethink the whole process entirely and include the client’s Marketing Department.

After all, clients are generally already involved in the actual start-up phase of the cooperation or partnership, and will probably have taken part in initial strategy workshops. This is where the process focuses on positioning and branding, where the client is important. But why is the client not involved after this? Why is the door shut for marketers when it’s time for creativity?

The question led to a heated discussion. It seemed clear that agencies and clients often don’t work together. But the client has never really questioned this status quo. I have worked with advertising agencies for 10 years and never before had the thought even crossed my mind that I perhaps should perhaps be part of the creative process. That’s what I paid them for.

So, I asked a question:

“We are involved in the strategy phase – why not in the creative one?”

The answers came quickly:

“If the client were part of the creative phase, we couldn’t possibly justify being paid for that.”

“The involvement of the client will hinder or stop the flow of creativity. They will reject good ideas because they don’t believe that they are realistic. So even if they are good, we’ll not have time to go through the process thoroughly.”

“When we present ideas to the clients, we have to sell them on it anyway.”

As a marketer, I can understand their arguments. As a client, you tend to think within your own framework and find it difficult to think outside the proverbial box. Also, we marketers often impede or inhibit the creative process by insisting on discussing practical or factual arguments, or even purely trivial matters. Even so, surely there is a happy medium somewhere?

The fact is, regardless of how clear the brief is and how well the agency has interpreted that brief, ideas will be revised because the company will have certain unavoidable limitations. And not all can be foreseen either. Isn’t it then better that these come up earlier? These conditions should influence the creative agencies to go down another road, which might be just as good and might save time and money for all.

The solution?
I’m not sure what the solution is, but it would definitely be interesting to explore. Perhaps agencies should let marketers in on the creative brainstorming work and collaborate together. The marketers themselves should also accept certain rules of engagement that will keep the creative flow going.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that a client can actually come up with brave new ideas, ideas that the agency can then build upon. Perhaps they can lift the creativity to a new level?

Also try to involve a colleague from customer services, one that speaks to customers all day long, or even a product developer. After all, they created the product and probably have certain ideas on how to sell it. Or, why not go all the way and invite the end-users in this process? If there were someone out there that knows why they chose to buy the product, it would probably be them. Moreover, this would engage the customers even further and the client company gains natural brand ambassadors.

For some agencies this is pure blasphemy, but if they preach thinking outside the box, they should see the possibilities in this.

But wait. Am I paying for my own ideas?
I am willing to pay for my agency to use my ideas. Guaranteed. I, like all other marketers, know that an idea is always rough around the edges. It needs to be polished, formed, packaged. This requires the time and expertise of dedicated creative agencies. An idea developed from a successful cooperation can only lead to a more effective execution and a happier client.

Hopefully the end result will also be better, with regard to sales or brand awareness.

When I started planning for this blog entry, I saw this tweet from one of the other Master Class attendees:

It seems there are others with the same train of thought. Perhaps Roger Eriksson, Creative Director at NPP, has hatched a plan for it all? Read Part Two, the creative agency’s side of the coin.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Would love to hear!

Ps. Curious about Hyper Island’s course? Read excellent article by Sarah Hartley, journalist at The Guardian in the UK, and also a participant of the Master Class: Media Lessons from the World of Mad Men.

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