Advertising’s a very subjective business.
Especially when it comes to the creative work.
Everyone’s got an opinion. It’s very easy to get stuck in a feedback loop, going round and round, never nailing the idea down and losing the plot about what you’ve even doing.
I worked on a pitch years ago, the agency process was to have a creative review every morning and at the end of every day.
That frequency led to a problem, outside of not giving the creatives much time to actual create, it meant the senior people couldn’t make every meeting. Their diaries were too busy.
In one catch-up you’d have the Exec CD and New Business Lead, the next the Chief Creative Officer and MD, the next a CD and Strategy Director. Or any other combination.
Every meeting would generate completely different feedback from completely different places.
The idea liked and marked for development in the morning was hated and dropped in the afternoon, only for creative to be asked where it was the next morning. Around and around we’d go.
To create great work you need clarity and direction.
A tight team’s far more likely to give you that. Even if they have different opinions they can all hear and work through them as one unit towards one goal.
Make sure to also have defined roles in the team. Give the key voices priority, usually the CD and Strategy Director. But don’t lock it down completely.
And have fresh-eyed experts chip in at set points. They’ll see angles the tight team might have missed.
Everyone will still have their own opinion but they’ll come together in a collaborative manner.
Rather than in a swirling, confusing, subjective madness.
But that’s just my opinion.
