Perhaps the biggest challenge that creative teams have faced in 2020 has been the need to quickly pivot to focus on new priorities. This challenge is not expected to dissipate as we move into 2021. Here are three challenges – and their solutions – for creative team who need to pivot quickly.

Challenge: Increased Requests

“So much has changed in our world, keeping process and procedure seems like a safe way to approach this season.”

Solution: Align

When companies face major changes the creative team feels the impact in the form of increased requests for creative work. In order to keep up creative teams should ensure that they have a robust process that gets them all the information they need to get started working quickly. Additionally, collaborative request intake helps keep project moving quickly by avoiding too many rounds of review.

Challenge: Fast Pivots

“It was interesting to see how quickly we had to pivot. By the time requests get to us we have to turn the work around really quickly because we want to get it out to students.”

Solution: Manage

By having a robust project management process in place creative teams will be able to pivot mor easily when priorities change. It also creates transparency and effective collaboration among team members and with stakeholders. Finally, when creative teams have a robust process for managing their work they can streamline similar types of requests, which tend to happen a lot in a rapidly changing environment.

Challenge: Targeted Creative

“You can’t pretend that it’s business as usual, because it’s not. Messaging just won’t hit the right chords if you don’t target it.”

Solution: Assess

Ensure that your messaging is resonating with your audience by taking the time to assess the effectiveness of creative content. Use reporting to understand how long different types of work takes to complete, and how quickly you can do them as rush projects. Be sure to track everything so that you can report on how the creative and marketing teams supported the university during challenging times.

By focusing on developing a cycle of align, manage, and assess, your creative and marketing teams will be able to pivot quickly during challenging times.

Elise Hauser is a product and content marketer with a passion for telling brand stories. She has produced inMotionNow’s annual Creative Management Report for 4 years, webinars, content sessions for major industry events reaching audiences of 11,000+, and of course, countless blog posts. When Elise isn’t writing about the marketing and creative industry at inMotionNow she is teaching economics and hanging out with her cat, Tucker, at her home in Raleigh, NC.