Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

by Douglas Davis

  3 What They Say versus What We Hear

  Translating Client Requests

  Back in January 2015 I received a very kind invitation to give a keynote address in St. Petersburg, Russia, at an Art and Branding conference. I was one of four international speakers (and the only American) invited to share the stage with the top Russian experts in branding. My first thought was, “Yeah, right, who knows my work in Russia? This is fake.” But it turned out that it was a legit invite from a reputable organization.

  Fast forward. I’m on stage and the discussion begins in Russian, so I can’t understand anything. My translator is furiously scribbling down notes and every so often whispers a summary of what is being discussed in my ear. I answer a few questions, with well-reasoned, real insight (in my opinion). But to tell you the truth, I can’t be sure I answered anything because I’m being translated. Here’s how it went: When I said a lot, I’d pause, so the translator could translate. To that my translator would respond, “Go on.” So I did. But then, when I’d say a little bit, he’d translate for a really long time, and we continued with that back and forth, standing next to each other on stage.

  After my session, I had no idea if I connected with the audience through the translation. Things get lost. The rest of the speakers present, the same translator translates. We do interviews, he translates. After a full eight-hour day of presentations, the conference is over. So we’re all relaxing at the mixer and the three international presenters and I are acknowledging the translator’s work. We’re all realizing that this dude was working harder than any of us individually because he translated the whole day—four presentations and four panel discussions.

  As I was thanking the translator along with the group, he turned to me and said, “Actually, I’ve never translated before and I didn’t know how to communicate most of what you guys were saying.” After a deafening silence, brief pause, and deep eye gaze to confirm that he wasn’t joking I replied, “This was worth it for the story.”

  The takeaway here is that you, your firm, and the client can only get by for so long sitting in the meeting nodding your heads when you actually don’t understand each other. The gulf between understanding each other could be as wide as the Grand Canyon or as simple as semantics (for example, B-school professor Kevin Keller’s “Points of Parity and Points of Differentiation” concept equals D-school “Compare and Contrast” concept). Either way, it distracts our focus from the communication barrier between the brand and the target. It also creates a communication barrier between members of the same team. The bottom line: If you’re not fluent in the language spoken in the room, then you can’t communicate.

  Same Book, Different Translation

  At some point you’ll find yourself trying to communicate to an audience or a team who knows exactly what you are saying, but has no idea what you mean. Think of it like this: In England a pram is what we call a stroller in America. Two people might be talking about the same product or project but have no idea that’s the case. Semantics. In our field, art directors in advertising agencies have a very different job than art directors in design firms. At an agency, an art director works with a copywriting partner to conceptualize and design the work. In a design firm, the same job title may have designers reporting to him or her in more of a supervisory role. Context. If you’ve never worked in one or the other, it would be very confusing when you show up for your new gig and try to figure out the pecking order.

  Whether communication snafus arise because of a terminology jargon issue, or because the members of your team aren’t all exposed to certain concepts, lack of understanding is a problem. The first step to moving beyond that problem is determining the root of it. Should your group define some terms? Should there be more clarity on roles or diversity of effort on the team? From there, you can devise a strategy to align everyone on the client goals.

  Perspectives on “Success”

  Believe it or not, the team might not even be on the same page when it comes to defining success. As designers, art directors, writers, or creatives, our point of view about what works or what doesn’t work can seem completely opposite from what “the suits”—account management, new-business team, marketing folks, or clients—think. This is because:

  Creatives are focused on creativity and how beautiful or unique the work can be.

  Account management is focused on pleasing the client.

  The new-business team is focused on winning new accounts.

  The marketers are focused on moving the needle in a way that they can prove with metrics.

  We all begin with our own unique point of view, but this isn’t the root problem. All of these goals are important. The real issue is the difficulty in understanding that regardless of what side of the brain you think with, we are all trying to achieve the same result, what I call creative business solutions.

  Noticing these varying goals is the easy part. Truly understanding each other’s viewpoint is not. Understanding takes energy. Understanding demands active listening skills. Understanding requires translation. Understanding needs a new vocabulary. When you truly understand where everyone else is coming from, you can achieve perspective about how your part factors into the whole. I only know this from a career’s worth of making mistakes that have reinforced the fact that it’s not easy to understand the whole. I wanted to argue from my point of view. “They” didn’t understand and “they” were stupid on top of that. How could “they” not see that this was the exact typeface we should be using? It was completely clear to me that these colors made the composition beautiful. “They” must be blind. Why couldn’t “they” see the most obvious things? “They” just didn’t get it and it made me mad.

  It took time for me to see things from their perspective. To a marketer, that font seemed off brand or off target, and therefore off strategy. To the account manager, that font seemed inconsistent with the client’s conservative brand guidelines. To the new-business team, the font wasn’t large enough to provide the impact we were going for to win the business. So depending on whose perspective we are looking at, we are “they.”

  So what do we do? We understand the other perspectives by learning the objectives behind clients’ requests and shift our focus to that. That provides the clarity by shifting these decisions away from an individual’s preference and toward connecting the brand with the target.

  If You Had to Explain It to Your Mother

  Tibor Kalman, “the bad boy” of graphic design, is often quoted as saying, “We are here to inject art into commerce.” It took me some time to realize this, but the truth is that advertising and design exist to achieve a business or marketing objective. What we are doing stems from the business or marketing objectives that everyone must reach, and how we should do it designwise is the way we get there. If you began your career (like I did) as a pure creative, then you were probably called in after the conversation discussing the business and marketing objectives. Now, it’s time to get the designer. As a result, much or all of what I’ll mention ahead will be familiar to you because you will have designed some or all of it. Yet you (justifiably) might not have a good understanding of the points behind what you were asked to design. I sure didn’t.

  When working now, I focus my visual, verbal, and conceptual thinking on design options that achieve the business and marketing objectives. The work should be beautiful—and effective at achieving the awareness objectives, spiking new member acquisition, driving traffic, or building the company e-mail list. Thinking this way will help you focus on design options that are viable and creative and that increase the probability that you will be on strategy.

  Depending upon your organization’s process, these objectives may be worked out ahead of time without the creative team. Other times, the client will request a tactical deliverable (such as a website) when they really need strategic solutions that accomplish specific objectives (such as an increase in digital sales). Either way, there is a range of business or marketing objectives,
and understanding them in detail will allow you to lead your client in whatever role you find yourself in. As you read these, think of practical ways that you can apply these concepts to problems you are solving at work or for your freelance clients.

  ESTABLISHING OR CHANGING PERCEPTIONS

  Let’s say that you are working on a new product launch (the Apple watch), refreshing an old product/service (a new and improved Motel 6), or repositioning a product or service that has lost its customers’ trust (such as Volkswagen, Chobani, or Naked Juice).

  The marketing objectives for dealing with customers’ perceptions would most likely include:

  Making the target customers aware of this new product

  Communicating product or service benefits in the language and style the target would be receptive to

  Positioning the product relative to its competitors in the target’s mind

  Establishing a brand preference among the potential choices

  Re-establishing positive brand attributes and values

  Loyalty or increased frequency of purchase

  Increasing social media engagement around a brand, product, or service

  SUPPORTING PURCHASE

  Many products and services are complex and need additional parts or care beyond the initial purchase, such as a car. The company would want to inform customers of service plans, support websites, call centers, or service locations. The brand would most likely want to welcome new customers in a series of communications aimed at educating them about all that the new service has to offer.

  The business objectives for supporting a purchase would most likely include:

  Acquiring customers into an insurance, installation, or maintenance plan online or by direct mail

  Decreasing the cost of live phone customer service by driving customers online (websites or social media) to troubleshoot themselves

  Driving customers online to schedule appointments or pickups

  Retaining a high level of customer/brand engagement through e-mail content with deep links to the website

  Cross-selling related products or upselling additional services based on purchase behavior

  EDUCATION

  As new products (smartphones, tablets, wearables, etc.) are developed and technology advances, companies introduce new communication platforms (think Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc.) to ensure that people understand how these products could benefit them (for example, campaigns developed to explain how smartwatches could be leveraged in everyday life). The education objective is crucial to helping consumers understand the differences in similar products when they comparison shop as well.

  The marketing objectives to educate consumers would most likely include:

  Specifying minimum compatibility requirements

  Demonstrating the product’s features and ease of use

  Driving prospects to a website to learn more or capturing e-mail addresses for newsletters

  Increasing frequency of use and expanding user activities with the new product

  Increasing app downloads

  Highlighting a product’s benefits or differences relative to the competition

  FOSTERING AND PROMOTING BRAND ADVOCACY

  After you’ve purchased a new Dyson Ball vacuum cleaner and you watch the commercials or see the billboards, you feel a part of that group. This reinforces your decision to purchase that product. It could also make you more likely to remember that brand in a favorable way and buy additional products from the same company.

  The marketing objectives to promote brand advocacy would most likely include:

  Increasing sharing from a customer to his or her friends

  Increasing favorable product reviews on websites

  Increasing word-of-mouth referral visits to retailers

  DRIVING SALES

  Increasing sales is the overall objective of any initiative, but here I’ll focus on things that immediately move the needle in a short period of time. These include promotions, coupons, sweepstakes that need point-of-purchase displays, counter cards, risers, advertorials. For example, think of the decreasing cost and increasing size of Ultra HD 4K LED TVs, seasonal McRib sandwiches at McDonalds, and back-to-school or year-end car sales.

  The business or marketing objectives for driving sales would most likely include:

  Building a list of prospects based on the best current customers

  Increasing overall purchase amounts

  Liquidating a certain product to make room for another

  Do Unto Others As Marketers Do Unto You

  While looking over this list of common business objectives, you may have begun to visualize the type of communication needed based on the objective. If so, this illustrates the fact that it’s easier for creatives to arrive at a relevant strategic communication when they clearly understand the objective.

  It’s always a good exercise to see how these communications have shown up in your own life. Look in your Inbox and mailbox at home to recognize these business and marketing objectives in the offers that have targeted you.

  Step 1: Find any ad or promotion in any channel. Grab a magazine, open your promotions tab in Gmail, or find a video/TV spot. Any marketing message will do.

  Step 2: Identify the objective(s) of the marketing material. There is a reason for this piece—likely one of the business or marketing objectives just listed. Can you find it?

  Step 3: Identify the message of the marketing material. What do they want the target, reader, or viewer to take away from the material? Looking at the language used and visual elements, briefly sum up what they are trying to communicate about the brand, product, or service.

  Step 4: Identify what the call to action is. Now that the target has read and received the message, what steps is he or she instructed to take to receive the benefit?

  When I understood these objectives, I began to see that this was less about what I liked about the typeface and more about what was most persuasive to the target, as a means to achieve the business objective. Being on brand, on strategy, and on message with every element of the work is what makes it viable.

  What “They” Say versus What “They” Need

  Though our clients, whether internal or external, come to us for a variety of very different reasons, projects, budgets, and scopes of work, they basically show up with different forms of the exact same request: “Solve my problem.” They, like any other person needing an expert, arrive in front of you wanting your professional opinion of the viable options they have—that is, they want your leadership. Knowing this, we can read between the lines to identify what they really need and fight the impulse to simply respond tactically. We need to determine the business and marketing objectives that should guide the way forward.

  “Solve my problem” is not how the request is communicated to us. The request usually sounds like “I need a website,” “We need a new logo,” or “It’s time to update our packaging.” But none of these requests really hit at the heart of what the client’s business or marketing objectives are. That’s where your work as a translator comes in.

  THEY SAY: I need a website.

  WE HEAR: They need a cool website! (a tactical request)

  Most of us who went to D-school were taught to focus on the tactical parts of strategic decisions: the finished product, the details, what it looks like, the colors, the typefaces, the layout. But if you respond to a tactical request with only a tactical outcome, you are leaving strategy out of the equation and miss the bigger picture of what our creative business solutions are supposed to achieve. Yet the bigger picture is exactly why we are all in the room, to find the strategic approach with the most effective design execution. In order to get more perspective, I’m proposing that we dig a little deeper and learn to hear the request a bit differently.

  Let’s face it: If you get vague direction from the client (“I need a website”), it’s because they don’t know exactly how to communicate their objectives. They’re looking
to you as the expert.

  I believe this is the opportunity we miss to make the client’s relationship with us much more valuable than the “just get it done” transactional relationships we’ve all had. Sure, they need a new website. Now that that’s established, isolate the key business objective—i.e., what the organization needs the website to accomplish. This will be how they will define success. And they’ll need to hit certain goals within that definition to move the needle on the way to achieving that success. If we can focus the creative team while developing our recommendations with that definition in mind, I can assure you that you’ll have their attention when proposing solutions. Now you’re focused on solving their strategic job responsibilities through design.

  THEY SAY: I need a website.

  WHAT WE CAN TRANSLATE:

  The Marketing Objectives (wrapped in a cool website)

  Knowing what they’re trying to accomplish with the website lets us translate their wishes into realizable design objectives. They might want to:

  Increase traffic

  Increase repeat and unique visits

  Increase number of page views, increase time on site

  Increase average order value

  Increase pass-along value

  Facilitate brand advocacy

  For example, the head of e-commerce will need to increase digital sales, therefore the website she asked for will need to be responsive, should be optimized for SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization), and will need a component to drive traffic and extend its reach through being easily shareable in social media.

  When you dig deeper, you see that her actual needs are a lot more complicated than the original request.