One of the most important and difficult marketing lessons to learn is creative management. I spent many years focused on this specific skill, as I discovered the creative side of strategic communications is the one area in which corporate marketing people make the most mistakes. Unfortunately, creative mistakes can be the most costly (in a myriad of ways) to an organization.

In these fiscally challenging times, a lot of corporate marketing people have been asked to produce programs with less money. Sadly, many in senior management (particularly finance and legal) don’t realize that marketing is always a 1:1 ratio. You can’t do the same number of projects with less money. If you try, you will simply create more projects that don’t work. I believe that this mentality results in a bigger waste of money.

So here are five rules that will enable you to get the most from your creative budget:

Rule #1 Make sure you’ve got the financial resources necessary to do the project well.
Otherwise, kill the project.

Learning to work with creative people is a tremendous skill. I have actually found that brilliant engineers and brilliant creative people are very similar – they just work in different mediums. Therefore, to get the most out of your creative budget, you need to get the most out of your creative people (see Rule #5).

Rule #2: Have all aspects of the project in place and approved before bringing in the creative team.

Typically, the way to ensure your project is ready to roll is by having in place the all-important creative brief. If you don’t know how to write a creative brief, you should not be working with creative people. This is a fact, not a point of debate. Projects will always go over budget if there is no approved creative brief. If your senior management or approval points don’t know how to work with a brief, train them. That is part of your job. Because when the project is over budget, off track, etc., you will take the blame, not the knuckleheads at the top.

Rule #3: Don’t change the project mid-way through.

In the creative world, any time you change the project, you have to start all over. New creative brief, new concepts, etc. It is not possible to stay on budget if the project changes. It’s just a law of marketing.

Rule #4: Always work with the best creative person you can find. (And know that the good ones don’t come cheap.)

Sadly, I see way too many creative projects awarded on lowest price. That should never be the final decision criteria. Good creative people will evaluate the client and will bid according to how much time it will take to complete the job. This is based solely on the client. If it is obvious (and it usually is) that the client doesn’t have a good system in place, doesn’t have experience working with creative people, hasn’t trained their management team, etc., then the bid will be high. It has to be because so many hours will be wasted in meetings, on conference calls, etc. trying to get the creative work done. I recently worked on a project where it took three months just to get the client to explain the product and decide the creative approach for the project!

Rule #5: Do not frustrate the creative team.

Once you’ve frustrated the creative team the project is doomed. For the reasons already discussed above, creative people like to work in a well-organized environment which allows their creativity to flow. If there are too many discussions, too many changes of direction, too much non-creative stuff, they will mentally check out. Sure they will finish the project, but they won’t waste their creative energies giving you their best stuff.

A strong client/creative relationship will produce some amazing work that will improve the bottom line. But, hey, don’t take my word for it. Just ask Steve Jobs.

Posted in Marketing Mentor |

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