Free up time for creatives to be creative!
On March 13, 2018 InSource and inMotionNow released the 2018 In-House Creative Management Report, which compiled survey results from over 400 marketers and creatives, as well as insights from industry, thought leaders.
The report distills the survey results into 5 key findings. The final key finding of the report was that creatives are still spending too much time on non-creative administrative tasks. Most respondents, 48% said that projects are reviewed and completed in 2-3 days, but one third, 29% said it takes a week or longer. Similarly, most creatives admitted to spending between 3-7 hours per week on administrative tasks, while one-third of respondents said they spend 7 or more hours per week. All this adds up to about one full day every week, or 20% of creative time spent annually on administrative tasks.
Interviews with creatives show that many feel that the administrative work they do – chasing creative briefs, consolidating feedback, and obtaining approvals – saps creative energy. This is effectively time where creatives can’t focus on the important work for which they were hired. Brilliant creative doesn’t drive revenue when it’s stuck in review.
In the report, Trish Olives, Manager of the Creative Studio at YETI points out that the job of creative leaders is to make sure that their team has the time and space to create: “Freeing time for creativity requires strong leadership to look after a creative team and stand up for them and the work. This leadership is especially important for smaller teams that may not have the ability to bring on more resources. It also means developing sound creative processes.”
Olives goes on to describe that her first job when joining YETI was bringing on an operations person that could free up time for the creatives on the team to get back to being creative: “The operations person worried about project management and deadlines and that allowed our creatives to just live in the creative space – to ideate, brainstorm, and collaborate. Which is exactly the reason we have creatives in the first place.”
Debbie Kennedy, Founder, and CEO of Write for You provided three key principles to free up time for the creative team:
1. Keep creative roles separate from traffic and account roles
2. Block and protect
3. Keep your process lean
Kennedy summed up with: “If there’s an underlying theme here, it’s that a leader’s role isn’t just about freeing up time for creatives to be creative, it’s really about fostering an environment that promotes creativity.”