All businesses want to drive the right response – and this involves exciting the customer beyond selling that product or service. How do customers emotionally engage with your brand and how does this influence their decision-making? The careful balance between rational direct messaging and emotive brand engagement is where FOTW sit: it’s what we call our sweet spot.
So how do you as the client achieve this sweet spot and feel rest assured that a Creative Agency could work seamlessly with your own team to create the best work? Achieving brand and business success should be a two-way street – client and agency working together, with equal force, to steer the ship in the right direction.
So when it comes to creating effective response-driven work, how can you best collaborate with your Creative Agency to smash every campaign out the ballpark?
It’s a common misconception to think that one campaign – to save both time and money – can combat mixed messages in the one go. This means that agencies can often be tasked with cramming different messages into a single campaign – whilst not overcrowding the creative and confusing the customer.
To save heading into dangerous territory, consider and chat through how the campaign will be managed to a hierarchy, with one simple call to action at its core.
“Do all of these points need to be communicated?
Can we not have a secondary output?
Will that message resonate with the customer?”
Let’s not think about what we want to push on the customer – let’s instead focus on what our audience will want to see to feel compelled enough to respond.
The sense of urgency that comes with most campaigns can often mean that the larger, most important picture, is often forgotten. Time and resource can be spent on creative work that focuses on instant “wins” while overlooking your long-term brand-building goals. At the start of any campaign, your agency’s strategy team should focus on the longevity of any creative work produced. This will enable us to focus on both the short and long-term picture.
“Focusing on the strategic aspect of any campaign will allow creative ideas to be built in a modular format for increased longevity and effectiveness across multiple platforms.”
When you and your agency push one another to continually ask if there’s a better approach, that creative energy is likely to lead to new solutions.
“Be open and brave enough to address issues upfront and work towards a better solution.”
But this can only be done through an open and transparent relationship, where both client and agency become one team that are willing to build trust through raising any concerns as and when they appear – this is a healthy and completely normal part of relating to other people! And while we know it feels good to have someone nod along at something we say, people can also sense when you’re holding back. That affects trust.
Without the ability to truly sit back and listen to other voices in the room, we’re taking the focus away from where it should be – on building your company’s success.
“We can all be guilty of overlooking great ideas that are more often than not placed right in front of us.”
Without hearing the thoughts and ideas of those around you, you can never truly understand a problem or how best to overcome it. So be open-minded, receptive and available. You may then find great creative ideas in the most unexpected of places.
A great production schedule should enable all milestones to run smoothly, with deliverables clearly laid out in order to achieve success… with as little headache as possible.
Unexpected deviations can often end in disaster, and this includes receiving feedback from many different people, with different opinions, at different points during creative production.
“It’s all about working smarter to achieve success at both ends.”
So keep things simple – have one person from your team collate the feedback, factor in a set number of amends, and be clear on when the cut off point for each deliverable should be. This will mean your Creative Agency will meet your expectations and deliver a quality campaign exactly when it’s needed!
At FOTW we embrace the idea of integration between ourselves and our clients; encouraging them to consider us as a true extension of the team. The idea of a partnership will only remain an idea if we’re not willing to take the holistic view of the working relationship and the common goals needing to be achieved.
It’s all about working collaboratively, questioning the brief fully, and exploring the many different ways we, as a team, can achieve the desired balance between driving engagement and generating ROI.
So embrace your client/agency relationship. Be bold, up-spoken, honest and brave with the challenge ahead. We must remain open and willing to explore different ways of driving a response from prospects and clients alike.
If you fancy a chat about what we do drop us a line! Alternatively, give us a call on 01582 881144 or drop us an email hello@falloffthewall.com. We’d love to hear from you!