 Whether you’re a creative professional yourself, or someone who needs to employ the services of one, sooner or later, you’ll have to direct a creative person.
“Provide creative direction to a creative person.” Sounds redundant, superfluous, even oxymoronic. Hence this article. This really does happen—depending on who you are, it could happen a lot, or a little—and, importantly, you need to know how to do it right. These articles all have one common theme: Maximizing business impact. Providing creative direction is no exception. Understand the assignment There are two parts to challenge: 1) Understand the assignment, and 2) Understand your creative person. Let’s take them in order. It may sound painfully obvious, but you need to know that creative assignment, inside-out, before you go doling out any of its constituent elements to a creative pro, whether they’re a graphic artist, illustrator, copywriter, voiceover announcer, video editor, etc. This comes back—as it always does—to understanding the target audience and their needs. This assignment—whether it’s a website, landing page, direct mailer, eblast, etc.—should address them. Your challenge: Address them creatively. You want your audience to sit up and take notice. You want your piece to cut through the miasma of competing ads, websites, TV spots, whatever, so that your message—your offer—shines through. Assuming (big assumption!) that your offer properly promises to solve one of your target audience’s most pressing problems, you then need to determine just how, and how much, you’ll delegate among different members of your creative team. Again, this is context-sensitive. If you’re an agency creative director, it’s simply a matter of calling, texting, emailing, or meeting (real or virtual) with your already-established creative team. If you’re in a smaller shop, you may have a trusted stable of freelancers. If you work as “the marketing person” within a company that’s not a marketing firm, you may have a few key people you count on. Generally, the who-does-what is straightforward. You won’t ask your voiceover person to design a Facebook ad. But you do want that voiceover person to deliver the best darned voiceover they’ve ever done, for you and for this assignment. How do you ensure that? Get under their skin If you take away just one thing from this article, let it be this: Creative pros are like athletes, actors, and other star performers. They’re able to channel their innate talents into a profession. They’ve honed them to be the best they can be; face it, just because you’re six-foot-ten, doesn’t mean you’re in the NBA. So they’re really good at what they do. They continually strive to be better. They welcome a challenge. They enjoy performing well. They bore easily. And they have no time for amateurs. None of the above may be obvious. If they’re truly good creative pros, they’re also able to, simultaneously, sublimate all of those intense feelings, desires, and ego, and come across—to you—as buttoned-down professionals. This in itself is one heck of a performance; appreciate it. But now that you know what makes them tick—what’s under their skin—you can use it to your—and frankly, their—advantage. This boils down to some do’s and don’ts:
Similarly, here are some don’ts:
Get help Sometimes, you simply have too many things on your plate to attend to this. Other times, the creative interpretation/direction may fall outside your wheelhouse or your comfort zone. There’s nothing wrong with getting help. From us, for example. We wrangle and direct creative pros all the time. Contact us today and let us help you nail that next assignment.
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