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Myles Younger is cofounder of Canned Banners, where he likes to act as if he knows something about marketing and biz dev. Day in and day out, he thinks of ways to convince the world that the process of creating banner ads has to be a total no-brainer before display will be widely adopted among small-to-medium businesses. Prior to founding Canned Banners, Myles held several corporate marketing positions where he learned first-hand just how much time and money can be required to develop even a simple banner ad. When Myles isn't working, he likes to take very long walks around his home town of San Francisco. He can be reached at myles@cannedbanners.com.

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Passing the Creative Baton to Clients

Written on
Jun 30, 2010 
Author
Myles Younger  |
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Passing the Creative Baton to Clients

baton_smallADOTAS – If you’re on the agency side, it’s not your imagination; client attention spans really have shrunk to such minuscule proportions that they can now be measured only by subatomic particle research equipment.

If you’re on the client side, it’s not your imagination either; superfluous layers of agency bureaucracy — the smug multitudes of managers, directors and functionaries — really do just get in the way and make it harder for you to meet your deadlines.

The tools of modern business (smartphones that are never off, or those red email exclamation points) cause pretty much everyone on the client side to behave like bipolar amphetamine junkies. Clients pay lip service to “strategy,” but in practice they’re slaves to crisis, reprioritizing objectives on-the-fly as events unfold.

Agencies must scramble to keep up, especially in the agonizing final stages of many projects, when the client suddenly introduces dozens of trivial changes at the 11th hour (“You know what? I liked the smaller polka dots. Can we change the polka dots back to small? But not too small.”).

This puts agencies in a difficult position, since they tend to deliver the most value when clients keep their cool, exhibit patience and think strategically. But clients control the purse strings, so it would seemingly behoove agencies to figure out a way to match the client’s pace and thus remain relevant and valuable.

So I’ll posit a potentially heretical question: when creative is mostly finished and the client wants to hem and haw over the size of a few polka dots, do agency staff really need or want to be involved?

If you could build an intelligent system that would put the client in the driver’s seat for the final stages of a project, the answer might be yes.

Why Is Creative Still Hard-Coded?

Presently, creative is, in software development terms, “hard-coded.” Agency designers work behind the scenes and the client only ever sees creative in fully baked form. This approach ensures the integrity of the creative, but it also necessitates that every subsequent change, no matter how simple, be a manual exercise that chews up agency resources.

Imagine if websites were still hard-coded like this; posting a short update to Facebook would require 20 minutes of HTML updates. Forget about sharing things across social media with the click of a button; Twitter, LinkedIn, etc would each have to be painstakingly updated one by one. When all was said and done, you could easily spend a few hours pollinating the web with your most recent brain fart on the awesomeness of “Glee.”

No wonder clients get frustrated. Making lots of small updates is not where agencies add value, and it’s not what they’re currently built to support. Mistakes happen. Delays creep into the process. Everyone drowns in email.

This is bad for business. Over the long run, clients could lose enthusiasm for the agency model and take their dollars elsewhere.

Invite the Client Into the Sandbox

If one were to build a system that would hand over at least some control to the client after the high-level creative direction has been developed, how could it be built?

First, transform every element of every creative project into a variable that can be modified on-the-fly. Then, write computer programs that codify the creative process. Many layout, typographic, and color principles can be mathematically defined, which means they can be programmed.

Clients’ brand guidelines are largely rules-based, which makes them programmable. Ditto all the artistic techniques that have been digitized by tools like Photoshop.

Consider that companies are already building taxonomies for abstract creative concepts. At GettyImages.com, type “cool” into the search box. You’ll be given a choice of three interpretations of what “cool” could mean, along with an array of conceptual, compositional, and technical filters.

Once you have a dynamic, programmable, environment for the client to play around in, establish rules and creative boundaries. If the campaign concept is “cool,” don’t let the client apply a hot pink color scheme. If the concept is “sophisticated,” don’t let them use a photo of a circus clown (unless, of course, it’s a particularly dapper circus clown).

Parts of what I’m suggesting are already feasible (my own company Canned Banners is a narrowly focused example of rules-based banner ad design). Agencies ought to consider the benefits of divesting themselves of the agonizing final steps of many creative projects.

There’s a big risk to not at least entertaining this concept; clients will eventually choose the path of least resistance, and if clients perceive agencies as being unable or unwilling to conform to the way they do business, they will find more suitable means of building their marketing messages.





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