Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

by Douglas Davis

  In a nutshell, I can say to you: the material in this book will sometimes make you feel like a creative person in a math class—it’ll take some time and effort to grasp. Then, even after you want to grasp it, it takes some more time until it becomes second nature, so be patient with yourself. Trust me—it’s worth it. Submerging myself into the world of “how they think” (a.k.a. the business world) slowly taught me why I lost the battles I did. The more integrated marketing classes I digested, the more I understood that an argument based on pure aesthetics was doomed unless it could be tied to accomplishing a business objective. This expedition to the other side of the brain helped me understand in detail what the difference is between art—a personal expression—and design/advertising—art with a commercial purpose.

  STRATEGY VERSUS EXECUTION

  Confused about what’s strategy and what’s execution? Think of it this way: When sitting down to play chess, your goal is to win by capturing the king. Thinking through the plan that details the pieces and process you’ll use to do it is creating your strategy. The way you carry out that strategy, the actual moves themselves, or the tactics, are the execution. You’ll hear people on the business or marketing side of things critique our ideas as “tactical” or “strategic” based on what’s needed.

  D-School Crashes B-School

  After a year of kicking and screaming, I started to see the benefit of the way they think. Surprisingly, it increased the relevance/effectiveness of my creative work. In the Fred Nickols paper “Strategy IS Execution: What You Do Is What You Get,” he states that “strategy as contemplated and strategy as realized are often two very different matters. Strategy as realized is the outcome of efforts to execute strategy as contemplated.” It makes sense that if creative people are included at the table contemplating strategy from the outset, the more likely that strategy is to be realized when they execute. When I apply this thinking to our creative profession, it underscores my belief that injecting creativity into the beginning of a business discussion is the way to boost the success of the outcome. More importantly for the long term, it is the way to make the value of your relationship with the client invaluable. Relegating creativity to the execution or the end of solving a problem is an unfortunate misstep in a world of increased emphasis on aesthetics and design process. Our creative jobs are even more essential to business than in the past because of the way business is annexing design, as it previously integrated marketing. This concept isn’t new: Thomas Watson Jr.’s comment in 1973 states that “good design is good business.” However, the power and impact that design has had on business (as evidenced by visionaries like Steve Jobs) is reflected in the top business consulting firms like McKinsey&Compamy, advising in their article “Building a design-driven culture,” that “[i]t’s not enough to just sell a product or service—companies must truly engage with their customers.” To bottom-line it, right-brained creativity is the spoonful of sugar that makes the business or marketing objectives (the left-brained component) palatable to the public.

  I’ve watched clients’ expectations evolve to the point that they now expect each person involved with their brand to be strategic. This includes the people tasked with building the customer-facing aspects of their communications—i.e., creative people, us. It doesn’t matter that D-school doesn’t focus heavily (if at all) on strategy or that B-school doesn’t teach how to inspire creative people. Creative business solutions that have both rational and creative parts at their core are essential to differentiating you and your work from the pack.

  Nickols’ Strategy-Execution Matrix underscores the necessity of both parts of the brain working in harmony to even have a chance at creating something great. As our world becomes increasingly integrated, I’d argue that any approach that doesn’t have equal parts right-brained creative problem-solving and left-brained strategic thinking will have a struggle making it through the internal process, much less making it to market.

  Chart courtesy of Fred Nickols.

  Sound Execution + Flawed Strategy = Shooting Yourself in the Foot.

  Sound Execution + Sound Strategy = A Fighting Chance.

  Flawed Execution + Flawed Strategy = Doomed from the Beginning.

  Flawed Execution + Sound Strategy = A Botched Job.

  YOU DON’T HAVE TO MEMORIZE THESE

  Feel free to refer back to this section whenever necessary. It’s not written in disappearing ink. Some of these terms are difficult to digest, so don’t feel like you need to master them all in one try.

  The Language of Business

  If you’ve ever been in a meeting and everything that the client, account manager, or strategic planner said sounded like a foreign language, I understand. Business is spoken with the other side of the brain. Think of it as something like learning to draw with your nondominant hand—it will take a bit of getting used to.

  Learning to speak the language is just the first part. In order to do what we’re here to do, we’ve got to speak and understand the words being spoken around us. But, as you know, things get lost in translation. In this chapter, we’ll start with the exposure to and translation of several key concepts. I’d like to help you connect with your clients and add value to your relationships by explaining how you can interpret the rational language of business while translating it into the emotional language of design.

  If I had to cherry-pick the concepts most relevant to designers, writers, and art directors, it would be these. I’ll give the gist of the concept first and then give scenarios that could help you incorporate these concepts into your approach to problem-solving.

  Key Terms You Need to Know

  The terms in this next section are not exhaustive, but are some of the usual suspects. If you want to impress a dinner date, this is what you’ve been doing at work all these years. I’ve organized this section in order from what you may encounter the most in your everyday job to the higher-level concepts you may face as you become more seasoned. The list ends with a framework to organize all this in a way that will help you create from it.

  A key point: these terms are always relative. Meaning, the term used might vary from company to company or situation to situation—it depends on the person using it, the culture of the agency, and so on. Use the context you see the term in to help guide you toward what’s being referenced. If necessary, ask for clarification!

  Understanding these key business concepts will allow you to:

  Build your creative concepts on a solid strategic understanding.

  Ask relevant questions that help fill in the blanks when information is vague or incomplete.

  Win new and grow existing business relationships.

  When you’re really able to use these terms correctly, eyebrows will raise.

  [ INSIGHT ]

  WHAT IS IT?

  In this context, an insight is the gold that we mine from company data, target-market research, or brand history to inspire our creative concepts. Insights are a set of conclusions rooted in truth that you can think of as distilled inspiration. When looking at data on sales or behaviors, questions like these can lead to insights:

  What is it telling us about the people we are observing and the decisions they make?

  Does the data point to an underlying truth about the values of the people we are observing?

  Does the data contradict what we assume to be true or confirm something we didn’t even know was there? If so, how could we quantify and articulate that information on a broader scale?

  An insight will help present something widely known from a new angle or help frame new information in an interesting way. When pitching a new idea, often an insight will accompany an observation and together gives us the ability to state the implications from the information collected.

  Here’s an example of an observation and insight that could be inspired from research. Let’s say you’re working with the Gotham Writers Workshop.

  Observation: In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he asserts that it takes at
least 10,000 hours practice to master something.

  Insight: If you look at that from the beginning writer’s perspective, someone just starting out will need to overcome a great deal of insecurity, a mountain of rewrites, and the overall temptation to quit.

  The process of developing an insight is a difficult two-part procedure that requires first the observation of an existing truth and then the crafting of the conclusion or conclusions that follow. From there, the observation and resulting insight can inspire multiple concepts and even more executions. Information collected + data interpreted = insights that inspire concepts that inspire executions.

  WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

  Strong insights inspired by data or research inspire strong concepts. Strong concepts inspire relevant and compelling creative work. Relevant and compelling creative work wins clients and new business. Therefore here’s a concept and resulting execution that could be inspired by the insight about Gladwell’s observation:

  Concept: Behind every great speech, book, or script are a ton of revisions, and though people are familiar with the finished versions of the I have a dream speech, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, or the screenplay for The Dark Knight, new writers (our target) are less familiar with the process it takes to get to great.

  Execution: Introduce new writers to the development process by showing the potential phases well-known lines went through to get to what we all know and recognize. Calls to action (CTAs) will correspond with the type of work being edited and the relevant Gotham class.

  WHAT JOB TITLE/ROLE IS CONCERNED WITH THIS?

  Creative strategists, writers, creative directors, art directors, and designers: whoever is tasked with briefing the creative team or inspiring them through writing the creative brief should be versed in extracting informed insights. If you are developing ideas of any kind, it’s your job to look for insights that inspire the work. Depending on the culture of your organization, the person determining insights could be a more senior person or a strategist, but it’s good for everyone to understand how to work from them.

  FOR MORE ON THE SUBJECT

  Read Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan with Sam Bennett.

  [ MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS ]

  WHAT IS IT?

  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory that attempts to explain the psychology of curiosity and human development. It was proposed by Abraham Maslow in his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation,” which was published in 1943 in Psychological Review. You may be thinking, “Why are we talking about this”—hold your horses. Marketing and business programs mention Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when delving into consumer behavior. Abraham Maslow identified what he saw as five stages of human needs. As you can see in the figure, at the most basic level, or the bottom, are the needs that sustain life itself. These items include breathing, food, and water and are labeled physiological needs. Once those needs are taken care of, someone typically would be free to seek safety. After that comes the relational needs of belonging and love. Status or esteem needs follow, and last, at the top, is the abstract need for self-actualization.

  How do these needs translate into consumer behavior? Have you ever considered that the person buying the whitening toothpaste may really be out to brush away self-consciousness? Or that the guy purchasing the hair regrowth product may really want to regrow his confidence? A whiter smile or a fuller head of hair is what a product may promise on the surface, but the deeper, underlying meaning that these things represent in the mind of the consumer is what successful creative messaging should speak to.

  WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

  Understanding the underlying need behind a purchase would help us determine how to incorporate it into the creative approach. Anyone using the hierarchy could incorporate any underlying insights into a creative brief, creative concept, or pitch setup. This makes for a much more compelling brief, concept, or story. For example, if you’re designing a campaign for a tooth whitener, you could use Maslow’s hierarchy to help you draw conclusions from the research on a target’s reason behind wanting whiter teeth. Look at the functional aspects of the product as a means to an end that is below the surface (Love/belonging or Esteem). From there, your concept could utilize words and pictures that either illustrate the confidence you’ll get as a result of using the toothpaste or show life without it.

  WHAT JOB TITLE/ROLE IS CONCERNED WITH THIS?

  Writers, creative directors, art directors, and designers can use this hierarchy as a way to uncover what the product could really mean to the purchaser. Adding needs to a creative brief will inspire designers on a conceptual level.

  FOR MORE ON THE SUBJECT

  Read: Relevance: The Power to Change Minds and Behavior and Stay Ahead of the Competition by Andrea Coville.

  [ SEGMENTATION ]

  WHAT IS IT?

  “Segmenting” refers to dividing your target into groups based on such characteristics as:

  Demographics

  The target’s life stage

  Psychographics (the study of a target’s interests, attitudes, and opinions)

  The behaviors and actions a target takes

  Looking at these categories will enable you to speak specifically to the individuals via concepts, media, copy, and design of the marketing message. For example, you wouldn’t talk with a seven-year-old girl who only spoke French, a thirty-eight-year-old businessman, and a seventy-two-year-old grandfather in the same way. Therefore, you shouldn’t “speak” to them the same way in your advertising, design, or copy either. What they have in common is that they all like Coke Classic—however, because of their various life stages, media consumption, and language needs, you would need to develop messaging tailored to them in order to reach them.

  WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

  Segmentation is important because it allows you to drill down to what is relevant to the individuals—making your message suit each target, instead of speaking the same way to, say, men and women between the ages of 7 and 72.

  WHAT JOB TITLE/ROLE IS CONCERNED WITH THIS?

  Creative directors, senior designers, and writers will be concerned with segmentation. Anyone on a pitch team or looking for new business will need to understand segmentation and its strategic relevance to creative execution.

  FOR MORE ON THE SUBJECT

  Read Aaker on Branding: 20 Principles That Drive Success by David A. Aaker.

  [ DIFFERENTIATION ]

  WHAT IS IT?

  Differentiation is simply what makes something different from something else in the same category. Say you’re walking down the sugar aisle in the grocery store and you need a five-pound bag. There are several well-known national brands you could choose, as well as the store brand. If you believe that all sugar is created equal, then there is no differentiation in the mind of the consumer, only a commodity. When this is the case, the consumer will choose on the basis of the lowest price.

  WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

  Differentiation is important because it sets one product (or designer, for that matter) apart from another. This differentiation can be achieved with a unique package design or strong visual brand that calls attention to one product versus another. It could be achieved through, for example, a strong brand heritage or story that is leveraged and reminds the consumer of his or her mother’s choice of sugar. Or it could be achieved on the basis of how the sugar is produced or grown that makes it eco-friendly or healthier. When consumers see the product as much more than “ordinary” sugar, they in theory are willing to pay more and remain loyal to the brand.

  WHAT JOB TITLE/ROLE IS CONCERNED WITH THIS?

  Designers, art directors, copywriters, and creative directors are all a part of activating or bringing to life the story of how this product is different than that product. It is our job to tell the story of that differentiating feature so that customers not only know the difference, but are willing to pay more for it (because, say, they prefer and choose organic brown
sugar).

  FOR MORE ON THE SUBJECT

  Read Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

  [ FEATURES AND BENEFITS ]

  WHAT ARE THEY?

  In the simplest terms, features of a brand, product, or service are tangible, like the physical features of a person. Some examples include:

  How fast the processor is on a Google Chromebook with an Intel processor

  The unique ball on a high-end Dyson vacuum cleaner

  The white-glove furniture delivery service from Restoration Hardware