The creative brief has always been the mainstay of our industry, but too often it can narrow creative thinking by defining discipline over strategy. Agencies need to address a client’s business problems and drive commercial success through strategic insight brought to life through data, technology and creativity. But before rushing into solution mode, we need to be sure that we have spent time fully understanding the problem.
The fast-track to this is collaboration: agencies working closely with not just clients, but also end users, to think around and define the brief. But collaboration needs to be supported by the right environment to truly succeed. It’s this culture of cooperation that can close the gap between client and agency.
Creating the right culture means recruiting brilliant people, then allowing them to work together freely within an environment that allows them to achieve their potential. It’s about agencies and businesses understanding who they really are and working with like-minded people to achieve their vision effortlessly.
Maintaining creative and collaborative cultures comes down to providing the right tools to put this into practice – tools that harness creativity within proven processes and stay focused on results. Let’s face it, clients expect collaboration.
But to really make it work, it needs a sound framework.
We bring clients into the creative process with us at Jacob Bailey Group through our Science Clubs and Magic Labs. We combinesStrategic and creative thinking in workshop environments to ensure we move from the problem as defined, to the problem as understood.
From developing in-depth messaging matrices and role play to juxtaposition and word games, we use distractive techniques to encourage lateral thinking and define the brief in collaboration with our clients and their customers.
Aligning our culture to client collaboration has consistently enhanced brands and delivered significant ROI.
Roj Whitelock is executive creative director at Jacob Bailey Group
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