Managing Unicorns: Giving Feedback and Developing Creatives on Your Team
As a creative with a brain that is equally right and left, I have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to being analytical and strategic to the creative in the room who sees projects with a different lens. The unicorn in corporate America: a mythical creature that often stumps non creatives in the workforce when it comes to talent development and most importantly giving feedback.
First things first. Operations and sales are areas that depend on marketing and public relations but too often when you mix these together it is invariably oil and water. I offer one piece of advice and that is to never have your marketing team report to operations. It will never work. This is because fundamentally creatives see the world around them in a different manner and produce projects with that very different worldview.
Secondly, marketing, design, and public relations are all very unique positions that require a very unique and often highly developed skillset. In the inner circles, we marketers often bang our collective heads because the field of marketing is the one field that everyone feels they can do. I once worked in marketing research- a fascinating position- however, it was a terrible match for me. I found it incredibly interesting to process data, but I can recall sitting in meetings and reviewing my reports with the group and struggling not to say, "No! That's not the best use of the data. Stop". It felt like I was handing my baby to ill-equipped parents.
There's the rub. That analogy describes the day-to-day work of a creative. Whether the person is a graphic designer, marketer, public relations expert or communications specialist their work is their baby. They have poured hours and creative energy into the things that matter, but many do not see. Fonts, colors, imagery, design, copy, and with every keystroke or InDesign design element a little piece of that creative person goes into it. It's personal and when one puts it out there for all to see and critique it's an invitation for feedback that if not constructive can cause a creative to become less productive and frustrated.
To be clear, we creatives aren't delicate creatures who have to be treated with kid gloves and temerity, however, there's a reason, a methodology, and a proven method to what we do so the need for feedback that incorporates an understanding of these aspects is always going to land well vs. the "I don't like it- can you .......". In short, you've just told us our baby is ugly.
So how should it work?
1. Ask instead of tell. Ask us why ? There's a reason why we chose a font, a color palette and an image to create messaging- we didn't choose red because we like the color it's because we know it is used in marketing campaigns that need to evoke strong emotions. Red is associated with passion and love but its strong intensity also signifies excitement, determination, and courage. (source: https://www.newdesigngroup.ca/graphic-design/psychology-colour-advertising). It has been proven that colors influence consumer behavior- 93% focus on the color before making a purchase. I have repeated this info for a decade and often it falls on deaf ears and then get asked
2. Understand that the technology we use has its own complexity and when you ask for a change in a word or a graphic on page one it can have a domino effect. As a former process improvement expert, I learned very early on the more you touch a project, the more likely the error ratio will go up. This doesn't mean eschewing providing feedback. However, providing feedback in one email saves a great deal of time, effort, and frustration. Revisiting ad nauseum is the death knell of a perfect project. Endless tweaks that are rooted in personal preference instead of professional acumen eat up cycle time. It may sound harsh but the project is more often being created for the masses, your followers, and customers, not you the requestor. My most frustrating project went through 47 revisions. It became a sport for me to keep count. I learned at the end of the project, when it was finally approved, that my manager had never read the revisions but kept going back to the original submission, changing his mind on what he wanted in an annual report -the answer? He wanted it to look like another division's report which had a completely different mission, work, and goal.
3. Listen to the subject matter experts. There's a reason for everything we do. Social media marketing has a completely different set of rules than email marketing. If you don't understand the why be inquisitive- one thing most marketers have in common is we are passionate about the work so getting us to talk about it will not be an issue!
4. Acknowledge the work. I have worked on projects for weeks- laying out magazines- making sure the bleed is correct for the printer, specifically placing graphics to draw the reader through the publication, etc. only to submit it and receive zero feedback. We just gave you our baby and you laid it down in its crib and walked away. Creatives are a special breed, we don't need a party thrown every time we finish a project but acknowledgment of the work that went into it goes a long way and actually increases productivity.
5. Trust. When I worked in the financial services industry, at one point in my career, my leg of the organization was shifted to report to the COO. Operations + Marketing = Oil + Water. I remember working with an ad agency I had hired for a mortgage campaign and I was thrilled with the visuals and the copy- under my direction they had presented a well executed series of ads. Showing it to my COO, his first response was "I want more white space". <insert awkward silence on my part> As I looked at the ad it had three components: a graphic, a tagline and our logo/website url. More white space? Other than handing in a blank sheet of paper with our website url and logo sitting in the middle, there couldn't have realistically been more white space. White space is the lack of content in areas allowing the reader to rest their eyes as they go from section to section which is exactly what this ad did. I was baffled and frustrated. I'm sure he was too because he could not illustrate what he wanted instead "how would know it when he saw it".
6. The Street is a Two Way One When giving feedback, base it on observations, the audience, the goal of the project not "I just don't like it" or "XYZ Company did it this way why can't we?"
Make it a safe space for the creative to share their process and the why behind their decisions. A good marketer has covered numerous details and embraced the minutiae of a project, it can be physically and mentally exhausting because creative energy is being used daily, hourly and complex projects have a thousand moving pieces in the background that no one ever sees. What appears to be simple on the surface is rarely just that. The good news is creative teams can work within guidelines, frameworks, and the achievement paradigm when it is communicated but too many times it is not. When the "what you want" is outlined and described in tangible ideas, the creative can take that and gallop with it.
We may be the unicorns in the room but trust me we are not legendary creatures to be feared or the source of frustration- however we are the optic that every business needs to cut through the noise and shine a kaleidoscopic light on the brand.
In my next post I'll outline the three steps that leaders should follow when giving feedback to a creative.
-Kim Thore