When I started as a junior creative over a decade ago, the Big Idea was always my starting point. 100+ creative projects later, I know that big ideas and bold visions are abstract and unspoiled dreams – that haven't met the realities of budgets, deadlines, stakeholders and resourcing.

So the question I now ask myself before every project is: how can we get the best possible outcome in these circumstances? It’s not cynicism, just pragmatism. And pragmatism is the life force of effective creativity.

 

Avoid The Void

 

In my experience, one of the best predictors of successful work is a phenomenon I call The Void. The Void is that gap between a great idea and its successful execution; between brief and delivery, strategy and implementation. 

Well managed, it will remain a minor fissure but when neglected, it can grow into an infinite, destructive chasm. Whichever hat I’m wearing, creative director, copywriter or brand consultant, I always keep a watchful eye on it – it tends to widen.

Of course, the Void is never completely avoidable. But with a resilient process – built around communication, clarifying expectations and understanding limitations, listening and leadership, confidence and adaptability – it can be minimised.

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Drill into the circumstances

 

My Dad had a mantra he never tired of repeating. ‘Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted’. He was a man full of curiosity, who loved nothing more than spending a couple of hours in the company of someone he’d only just met. He wasn’t particularly driven though, and this expression always seemed like a wise-cracking way to justify his bon-vivant lifestyle.

But years later, I see the deeper wisdom in it. Whenever I spend more time gathering information – understanding every limitation of the creative brief, the resources available and the potential pitfalls coming down the road – I'm always able to shape the outcome of a project for the better.

Many will argue there isn’t always time for this level of preparation. However, efficient information gathering is about asking the right questions, having the experience to interpret the answers quickly and using smart processes to quickly adapt if necessary, when new information crops up.
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​​Collaborate and communicate
 

Everyone knows how important it is, but good communication and collaboration often fails to materialise. Partly because of a fear of being totally transparent, and partly due to the mistaken assumption that we all know what we're talking about. Much of my energy during a project cycle goes into creating shared understanding among my teams and my clients. It helps us all work more productively together and maintain clear expectations as a project progresses.

  
Having said that, I’m not a proponent of crowdsourced collaboration, or the get-it-out-fast-and-iterate approach to creating content. A pure collaborative production can lead to creative by committee, which nearly always produces bland, unoriginal and not especially effective outputs. A fast, iterative approach often leads to turd polishing. I've seen plenty of agencies follow one or both of these, because they are shortcuts to getting approval from clients and mean they can turnover contracts quickly. But they rarely get good results. 

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Critique everything from
your audience's POV
 

It’s obvious, but also amazing how often this straightforward insight gets lost in the back and forth over how to best present a business or product.

It is absolutely critical to put yourself in the shoes of whoever you’re talking to and ask, why would they give you the time of day? Before adapting your content approach accordingly. If this mindset isn’t front and centre at all times, you might as well be sending your message out in a bottle. 

A simple formula I use to help guide more effective content development is to pair the ‘crowd - follower - buyer’ audience journey with ‘brand - expertise - service’ content production. This straightforward model for content strategy would be applied in the following way: dial up the brand creativity to attract the crowd, keep them engaged with informative, interesting content, and hyper-target your service or product to those who are ready to buy what you’re selling. Married up with a paid - organic - paid approach to media spend, it's a powerful and easy-to-implement, brand-building, lead-generating, sales-boosting strategy.