How many marketing campaigns could exist without creative? Banner ads, catalogs, point-of-purchase displays, landing pages, end caps … the vast majority of marketing assets couldn’t be produced without the work of creative leaders and designers. Marketing depends on quality creative in order to engage with consumers and generate sales.
But creative teams have a workflow problem – one that’s only gotten bigger as retail marketing has become more personalized across more channels. Creative teams struggle to maintain control and visibility into their work while rushing to get everything done and keep quality high. They’re hampered by inefficient processes for managing incoming project requests and getting work approved. Managing workflow is taking the creative team’s valuable time away from revenue-generating work.
Unfortunately, when creative leaders advocate for a solution to manage creative workflow, they’re often met with resistance from their marketing counterparts.
So how can marketers be convinced to care about creative workflow?
Below, we’ll outline the argument creative leaders should make when they advocate for a workflow management solution. This argument should help to convince marketers of the business value of creative and shine a light on how inefficiencies in the creative process translate to less impressive marketing results.
Here’s why marketing leadership should care about creative workflow:
Reason 1: High-quality creative makes marketing more effective
In a world of increasing competition for consumers’ attention, good design is a critical component of a successful retail marketing campaign. 68% of U.S. consumers like to purchase from companies that have creativity in their marketing and 71% of U.S. consumers will choose a product or service over its competitors because of good design. Quality creative has business value.
Reason 2: Marketing demands for creative work continue to increase
It’s no secret to retail marketers that their need for advertising and promotional content has increased exponentially and shows no signs of slowing down. 56% of marketers say personalization increases engagement rates – which in turn increases the need for more assets. 75% of marketers plan to produce more content this year than last. That means that 71% of creative teams are creating over 10x more assets today to support the increasing variety of marketing channels.
Reason 3: Creative teams are overwhelmed
85% of creative teams are under pressure to create more assets and deliver more campaigns, more quickly. Faced with marketing demands for more volume, more speed, and more quality, creative teams are forced to choose – and it’s often quality that gets sacrificed. 77% of creatives feel under increased pressure to be productive rather than creative.
The three reasons listed above should help convince marketing that creative workflow is their problem too.
It’s clear that creative teams are struggling to keep up with marketing’s complex and busy promotional calendar, often supporting multiple brands, and requiring constantly refreshed creative to stay top of mind and grab attention. If marketing wants to continue driving ROI while keeping creative quality high, then they’re going to need to advocate for and invest in a workflow management solution for their creative partners – or risk failing to properly fuel the go-to-market machine