How much input do you need for that creative assignment?

You’ve been handed a creative assignment to execute. Quick: How much input do you need? 
 
Question: Is that even a valid question? 
 
You bet it is. If you think this is simply a matter of “Well, it depends on what I receive,” then think again. 
 
Creative assignments vary in scope and medium, but they all have one thing in common: Interpretation. Your job, as a creative pro, is to take what is basically un-creative yet factual input, and come up with an enticing, all-new creative spin for it. “Don’t sell the steak; sell the sizzle.” That kind of assignment. 
 
Still, you need to know enough about the product or solution you’re selling—and, even more importantly, the target audience you’re selling it to—before you can begin ideating. 
 
Which begs a very important question that you may not have thought about before, because these things get tossed your way all the time, and they’re on deadline, and you just do them, so why would you think about it? 
 
But the question is the topic of this article: How much input do you need? 
 
Put another way: How much is too much? How much is too little? What, in other words, is the Goldilocks-just-right optimal amount of input for you to nail that creative assignment? 
 
Think big (or small)
 
Not-so-irrelevant digression: We’ve noticed that old people invariably pine to be younger. And kids invariably can’t wait to grow up. Which suggests that there must be one magical age that all people yearn to be. We asked a Generation Z’er. She said, without a moment’s hesitation: “Twenty-three.”
 
As we said, a digression. 
 
But not wholly off the mark. Your optimum-input dilemma follows a similar logic. An easy way to arrive at the answer is to think in terms of wildly exaggerated extremes, and then carve your way back to the sweet-spot middle. 
 
For example: You need to create a two-sided sell sheet. The client input consists of an email that says “Make something exciting about our ABC offering! It’s better than what others offer!" 
 
Clearly, way too little. 
 
You can see where this is going. But you might not see the profitable takeaway quite so easily. 
 
True story: Not long ago, we were assigned a two-sided sell-sheet by a client. The input? They emailed us 100 pages of material. 
 
Obviously, this was way too much. Not quite so obviously, it was also an opportunity. 
 
A time for leverage
 
When we received this 100 pages of input, we immediately told the client, “That’s too much.” They said, “No, we think it’s fine. Send us a bid for the project.” 
 
And so we bid on it, all right. Our bid included the massive amount of time it would take us to pore through all 100 pages of stuff, to cull out what we needed to create two pages. We’re not the greatest mathematicians here at Copel Communications, but even we can tell you that that’s a 50x ratio.
 
This bid was expensive. It had to be. We can’t simply carve out that much time and effort to create what would otherwise be a small, basic assignment, without charging to cover all that extra time. 
 
When they saw the bid, the client was taken aback. “Wow,” they said, “that’s more than what we expected.” 
 
Now comes the fun part. 
 
We were able, at this point, to be generous. “How about we make you a deal?” we offered. “If you can carve the input down to an essential five pages, we’ll knock the price in half.” 
 
Get this: They thanked us for that offer. The next day, five pages arrived. And everyone was happy. 
 
The golden ratio
 
The lesson here is that you need to speak up, and do so immediately. Don’t be shy. And certainly don’t wait until you’re on Page 32 of the input to go griping to the client that you need more time, more money, or both. But do couch it positively: “I’d like to do this for a lower price!” That will get their attention, every time. 
 
It will also condition them, going forward. Here’s another trick: (virtual) Post-It’s. That client probably doesn’t have the time to cull the individual slides from that massive PowerPoint deck, or diagrams from that report, but they can add little “stickies” to point out just the things you need to know... if you ask them to. 
 
And we ask. All the time. It’s not impolite. It’s professional.
 
Finally, to address the ingoing question of this article: Just how much input do you need? Well, the answer will depend on the type of assignment and the type of input, but we find that about a three-to-one ratio is nice. That’s for written input. If it’s visual input, the ratio can go much higher—as high as ten-to-one—because it’s easy to look through images quickly and make snap judgments thereon. 
 
Need help with that next creative assignment? Contact us. We’d love to help. And we won’t be shy when it comes to helping you cull the input. 

---