Creatives cite the creative briefing process and project intake as the greatest challenges they face in their creative production workflow.
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 fourth key finding of the report is that project intake is the biggest challenge in the creative workflow. When asked to select the biggest challenge in their creative workflow, 42% of creative answered “Creative briefing & project intake”. Moreover, when asked “How easy is it to obtain all the information you need to effectively begin new work?” 66% of creatives surveyed responded with “difficult” or “very difficult”.
These results are interesting in light of the popular discussion in creative circles about project management. These results illustrate that the actual management of creative projects is not where creative teams run into friction. Rather, it’s at project kickoff, and, to a lesser extent, Review & Approval (32%).
Lacey Ford, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at LexisNexis shed some light on how creative teams can improve the briefs they get from marketing.
Ford noted that, generally, marketing views the creative brief as merely an input form they must fill out to get what they need. “This is a very transactional view of creative and the highly skilled team of people behind it. It leads to inefficiencies in marketing and a lower overall quality of work.”
Ford goes on to note that a better way for marketing to interact with creative would be to treat the creative brief as a strategic dialogue, rather than a simple request. “If we – marketing shops and creative teams – treat the creative brief as a checklist, then we are likely to only achieve transactional quality content. If we treat the creative brief as a strategic and collaborative process, our creative assets will be thoughtful and deliberate, and drive more successful outcomes.