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In this edition:

• Column: The Art Of Giving Effective Creative Feedback

• Inspiration: British Airways’ 1989 “Club World: Boardroom” Ad of the Decade

• Upcoming: WARC’s “The Future of Strategy”

Column: The Art Of Giving Effective Creative Feedback

Recently, I’ve written a column on how to write effective creative briefs. In it, I unpacked some of the things one should include in those documents and how the creative department is that “3rd customer” that planners must keep in mind.

So, this week I want to say a few words about delivering creative feedback.

It’s a meandering part of the process that follows the briefing, with the aim to help the creative department to get to the best possible idea and execution that delivers on said creative brief.

Yet, delivering creative feedback is one of those skills that very rarely are taught in school, and therefore is seldom done effectively. The average marketer will learn how to deliver creative feedback by word-of-mouth, from a colleague's experience, or base their perspective on a manager's POV on the matter.

But I’m here today to tell you that there is a method to the madness.

What It’s Not

Before we unpack how to deliver great creative feedback, we must first be clear about what it’s not deemed effective creative feedback.

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“Can you make the logo bigger?”

“Can you make it ‘pop’ more?”

“The client won’t go for it.”

These are some of your classic creativity killers. Feedback that doesn’t accomplish much and creates unnecessary tension between planners and creatives.

We could group bad feedback into 3 “flavours”:

1. Reactive Feedback: when the feedback giver says immediately what’s in their mind without much thought to how it relates to the project’s objectives.

2. Emotional Feedback: when the feedback giver relies on how they ‘feel’ about the idea, often in the form of an adverse reaction to novelty.

3. Problem-Solving Feedback: when the feedback giver attempts to solve what’s wrong with the work on the spot.

The core reason behind why these three types of bad feedback are ineffective is because they are directive in nature. They prescribe a solution, they are too vague, often hugely subjective in nature, and disregard what stage in the creative process the work is in.

This typically leads to work that aims to simply gain “approval” by the client as opposed to pushing it to creative effectiveness territory — one in which innovation and a certain degree of risk-taking is required.

And here’s where we enter a critical distinction in feedback mentality that we must be acutely aware off: criticism vs. critique.

Critiques (aka, ‘crits’) always win.

Preparing For Feedback

Creative feedback sessions begin far before the meetings themselves.

It demands that both feedback-seekers and feedback-givers prepare in advance for it in order to make the most out of it.

And above all else, it starts from holding a safe space to be creative.

When creatives put something in front of anyone, they’re sharing something about themselves in a way. It reflects their experiences, interpretation of the world, and to a certain extent their taste. It’s a vulnerable ‘leap of faith’ that requires all those involved to be laser focused on strengthening the WORK.

No one should ever feel threatened, embarrassed, “called-out”, or judged. This environment of empathy is the foundation for effective creative cultures.

Secondly, there should always be objectives tied to the work — be clear about what we are evaluating to work against.

All creativity within an agency aims to solve a problem. This problem should be highlighted in the creative brief and become the North Star for everything that follows.

Sure, sometimes as the creative process rolls on, the creative team might come back to the strategy team and recommend to rethink the problem as they’ve uncovered new insights that could better position the work. In these not-so-rare situations, the planner should be open to re-contextualizing the work. But this should never be done without broad alignment between creatives, account directors, and strategists.

When we evaluate creative relative to its expected effectiveness against a set of goals, it all becomes much easier to discuss the work and move it down the field.

Thirdly, timing is key.

Ideas go through several stages before they come to life. As Darrin Henein describes — there are levels of fidelity that we must be aware of so that creatives seek the right type of feedback and walk away with what they need.

Therefore, creatives can be strategic in how they seek feedback by:

• Showing early, unpolished work to pressure-test ideas relative to the strategy

• Baking in time for iteration and to address the feedback they receive so that they are not rushed to make revisions

• Opening up the work for feedback late in the process that could be useful for future projects

So, before going into that meeting to discuss the work, keep the following in mind:

Feedback Seeker

• Be clear about what type of feedback you’re seeking (also known as ‘framing’)

• Ensure you’re inviting the right people to the room (ideally, 2-6 hand-picked people including yourself)

• Understand what value each invitee can bring based on their background/role

• Tee-up the feedback session with the project’s objectives and strategy to contextualize the work

Feedback Giver

• Read the creative brief ahead of time to understand the context

• Be clear about what stage in the process the work is at

• Be clear about who the work is being designed for (e.g., the audience)

Providing Feedback

Contrary what what many believe, creative feedback is best given in with our ‘analytical’ minds as opposed to our creative minds. There are pros and cons to each mode of thinking, but when seeking for commentary outside of the creative department that’s when creatives can really tap into the “neural network” of critical thinking embedded throughout their agency.

I love this metaphor from strategist Heidi Hackemer in her class titled Ridiculously Good Creative Feedback. Think of it as if you were building a house. You wouldn’t ask the architect in your first meeting that you wanted a blue living room. You’d first discuss the style of home you’re seeking to live in, how many rooms, bathrooms, etc.

It’s imperative that as feedback-givers we do not hit our creatives with tiny stuff before the big stuff is in place. Because as we fix the big stuff and the overall frame of an idea, the execution of it will naturally morph with it.

There is no single way to deliver great feedback, each person brings their own biases into it (which are not a bad thing when strategically placed in the feedback session) what makes the process of developing creative work ever so exciting.

Remember, creativity by nature is innovative. It’s not formulaic or a concoction of “best practices”. It’s risky and has tremendous upside because of it.

But there are ways to best position the process of creative development to achieve what it aims to achieve. By avoiding the below common pitfalls, we give ourselves a better chance to ship our best work:

1. Don’t lead the audience

   • “What colour of blue should I change this icon to?” Versus…

   • “Is this icon clear and does it accurately represent what it does?”

2. Steer clear of individual preferences

   • We are not the end-users.

3. Resist the urge to offer solutions

   • “Switch this word with this other word.” Versus…

   • “This headline is reading a bit aggressive, it might be this word, can you take another run at it.”

4. Be careful not to overwhelm

   • When there are too many voices giving too many things to fix, we lead the designer to no-man’s land.

5. Know how to articulate your choices

   • When the designer struggles to articulate their design choices, the conversation enters a subjective territory difficult to gain alignment on.

Signs Of A High-Performing Creative Culture

Now that we have some rough do’s and don’ts of creative feedback, how do we know we’re on our way to building a high-performing creative culture within our organizations?

Remember, creativity is not exclusive to creative agencies — across all business types we are faced with challenges to solve. It’s not something reserved just to art directors and copywriters (though the extent to which they leverage this skill to make a living is markedly higher).

Whether we are solving problems or identifying the right ones to go after, becoming laser-focused in fostering a high-performing creative culture will build trust among our teams all the while winning in the market.

Sign #1: Empathy

When creatives put something in front of others, they’re inherently exposing a part of themselves. Vulnerability is hard, specially at work, so have empathy when providing feedback.

Sign #2: Strategic first, creative second

Know which stage of the creative process one is at and provide the appropriate type of feedback based off that.

Sign #3: Problems, not solutions

Never underestimate your creatives’ ability to solve problems. Focus on the problem, not the solution – particularly in the earlier stages of the process.

Sign #4: Remain customer-centric

Customer-centricity is marketer’s superpower. Remember that we’re not the audience and that personal preferences are irrelevant.

Sign #5: Practice emotional intelligence

When coming from a good place, 95% the time great creatives welcome feedback. If the session is getting tense, change the energy in the room. Lead with confident kindness.

As mentioned earlier, creativity is a close cousin to risk-taking. It’s inevitable that sometimes we will miss a shot, but by staying true to effective creative feedback practices we remain on the path to building a winning creative culture that compounds wins over time.

Inspiration: British Airways’ 1989 “Club World: Boardroom” Ad of the Decade

British Airways was doing things in the 80s and 90s that very few other brands were.

One of those things was running international campaigns that had to resonate across various cultures.

This isn’t something easy to do to begin with. But at that time it was even more difficult to accomplish since cultural nuances in a world that was still being captured by wide-ranging globalization were starker.

This campaign for their Club World business offering was widely regarded as one of the “ads of the decade” not only because of its creative effectiveness but also because of how they adapted the idea to be resonant across markets.

For example, in the Middle East, where alcohol was not legalized, they had to swap the glass of wine with a glass of water, whereas in South Africa they had to reshoot the ad locally, and in other parts of the world they changed the line “like a lamb to the slaughter” to align with local views of the animal.

It’s a classic case of an idea “having legs” and being adapted regionally to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Upcoming: WARC’s “The Future of Strategy”

“Grow Your Brain” is an APG Canada initiative in which I interview folks across client, tech, and industry bodies in a relaxed lunch and learn format to gain insights that could be useful for fellow strategists.

If you haven’t had a chance to dive into the findings from WARC's Future of Strategy Report, have no fear. We’ve got you covered.

Join us on Dec 5th via Zoom as Pedro Porto Alegre (yours truly) gets the inside scoop from WARC on what the future of strategy is looking like.

We’ll talk about the challenges that strategy as a discipline is facing, how to cultivate a culture in which it can thrive, and opportunities for it to grow into a healthy future.

Register here!

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • How To Write Effective Creative Briefs

  • How To Make Your Brand Look Like Itself

  • When Your Brand Needs Some Dusting Off

PPA 

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.