Develop client recommendations for new-business pitches
Uncover strategic threads that inspire conceptual ideas
Use the threads as a basis for developing strategic documents such as creative briefs
Organize my notes in a kickoff meeting
Serve as a group strategy session or thought-starter tool
Here’s how it works. The categories are composed of information that you’ll usually get from a variety of places, including the client, internal briefings, the marketing folks, and your own research. It is helpful to begin the organization process of using this framework right in the kickoff meeting. After taking the time to research the brand, product, or service on your own, use the following three steps to populate the framework.
STEP 1: QUANTITY
Organize your research into the corresponding columns. List all possible target groups; fill in the facts on the brand, product, or service; tease out the features and corresponding benefits of the offering; and draft any communications messaging or client objectives. Don’t get too bogged down in details at this point, just place all your research into the appropriate category. Try to exhaust each individual column of information within 45 to 60 minutes.
STEP 2: QUALITY
At this stage, you’ll consider each element in each column. You’re looking to eliminate irrelevant items through a series of questions or reword your content to become more specific. Have we fully defined the target segments in demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics? Could we build a campaign off each fact listed about the brand, product, or service? Is that indeed the consumer benefit resulting from this feature? Does that message communicate the takeaway we would like the target to leave with? Have we recognized any additional opportunities beyond the objectives our client gave us?
STEP 3: PULL STRATEGIC THREADS
After populating this framework vertically, look for connections horizontally. I call these “threads.” They may not be obvious at first. The value here is the unexpected connections that emerge across categories to help you find inspiration within order. Ultimately, you should end up with quite a few viable connections you could discuss, generate concepts from, and defend like this:
Based on their need or behavior, this Target > Would be interested in a conversation centered around this Fact > Using this Feature/Benefit in the headline and copy to get their attention > To deliver this Message or accomplish this Objective (message or objective is your choice based on what is needed).
With a single strategic thread you can now write a brief, create relevant design concepts, write compelling copy, or make recommendations on how a client could move forward with this line of reasoning.
A JUMPING-OFF POINT
It is important to state that the creative strategy framework is not a template, formula, or recipe—again, it is a framework to organize all the relevant information and use it as a basis to create from. With order, I found clarity, which led to increased inspiration and risk-taking because I was on brand, on strategy, and on message.
View a text version of this table
Using the Creative Strategy Framework
If, at this point, you are thinking about how you could use this framework with something you are currently working on, you can jump to the next chapter or begin using that framework to get started right now. If you’d like more of an overview of how to use the framework in general, continue on in this chapter. Remember, there is no right and wrong way to do this. The faster you find ways to apply the concepts you learn to your everyday life, the greater their value.
Putting the Tool to Work
If you need more context on how you could use the tool, this section is for you. As I mentioned, I’ve found the framework to be very versatile—it can be used in a variety of settings with a range of personnel. Here’s a rundown of how this could help in various roles.
If you are a creative director/art director, I’ve found that the process works best in a brainstorming or strategy session, especially when you would like your team to become more self-reliant. When you and the troops are locked in a war room with a whiteboard, allow your whole team to supply the content for each column. While hanging back a bit at the 30K-foot view, you can watch the leaders emerge and pepper in suggestions here and there. Mainly you’re there to keep the discussion on topic, and over time your team will be able to present concepts that are on brand, on strategy, and on message. This technique allows the junior creatives to become more strategic and independent.
In agency environments with mixed teams on a new-business pitch or answering a request for proposal (RFP), it’s best for one writer to lead from the board. It goes faster this way, because most times people in that scenario are already familiar with strategy.
If you are a working professional using this at a meeting, organizing your notes within the framework helps to identify any holes and specific questions to ask while still in the meeting.
BEST PRACTICES
You can see which methods work best for you and your team, but here are some best practices I’ve learned after years of implementing this framework.
Random is the order. Expect to hop around in the process of populating the chart with information; you don’t need to fill in the columns in any order. As stated earlier, you’ll only get some of the information you need and you’ll have to seek the answers to the questions that arise to fill in missing pieces. For example, in a new product launch pitch, you may have extensive information about the brand or service but nothing about the new target you plan to identify and suggest the client go after. In that scenario, you’ll have quite a bit of information for the second and third columns—Facts and Feature/Benefit respectively—but not a lot of product-specific history to pull from. When brainstorming to develop a new campaign for an existing client, the messaging, target, or marketing objectives may be clear upfront. It may be up to you to find a new insight about the target’s values and zero in on a relevant feature/benefit or compelling fact that could move the needle in the work. The point is that you should populate the chart wherever starting makes sense based on the information you have at the time. Again, this is about finding the gold through connecting the dots that emerge across categories.
It’s not set in stone. Since the process of compiling all the information precedes the process of whittling down to the right information, the chart should be a working document.
Keep your eye out for potential barriers to purchase. Your kickoff meeting will likely yield some client objectives and positive information about the brand from the client, but the client may not have included any negative information consumers have stated about their experiences with the brand. Every time a new consumer uses the product, it is the moment of truth, when what is advertised is either as advertised or not true. If the experience goes well, you may have just gained an advocate who will post a positive comment based on his or her experience. As you know, this is the gold potential customers dig for when they Google your brand in their research phase of the journey. On the other hand, bad news travels at twice the speed of light in social media, where negative tweets or Yelp reviews can go viral. Therefore, when developing recommendations, it is imperative to find any gaps in what the company says about itself and what the public says about the brand experience. Be resourceful in where you look for reviews based on the target’s existing behavior. Use any discrepancies or mixed signals as an opportunity to build solutions that address the problems.
The framework is only as good as the information you populate it with. You know what they say: Garbage in, garbage out. If you and your team spend the time up front to populate this framework with well-researched, thoughtful information, the work becomes stronger because it is focused only on what is relevant. Even if you have many different teams working from the same framework, you could give each a different strategic thread or write possible areas to explore based on multiple threads. Either way, the content in the framework will ensure that
none of the teams are on a tangent because they are all working with relevant information. Be discerning, and though you may have to give this a few tries, it will yield a strategic foundation enabling the creatives to take risks while remaining on strategy.
Turning Words Into Inspiration
The creative strategy framework ensures that you have all the information you need, that it’s organized, and that the creative solutions are based on real facts, features, and objectives of the product, brand, or service.
First, list all potential targets, product attributes, brand information, features, and corresponding benefits.
Next, create objectives or messages that the target should come away with after encountering your communications.
After achieving quantity, refine for quality through discussion. Consider each element and ask, “Can we build a campaign on that?”
Pull out threads and use them to focus creative development.
(Additional resources such as my webinar Creative Strategy Framework: Keeping Your Creative Team On Brand, On Strategy, and On Message are available on the web at www.mydesignshop.com/creative-strategy-framework-design-tutorial.)
7 Getting Knee Deep
The Advanced Strategy Session
Delving Further Into the Creative Strategy Framework
If you’ve worked through a creative strategy framework a few times and are ready to get even more out of it, or if your job requires a greater level of strategic thinking and analysis, I’ve included additional information for you in this chapter. We’ll consider each category in more depth and I’ll outline the decisions that need to be made to improve the quality of the chart’s information. Quality is key in each step and the discernment to filter what makes it into the chart will only come with practice. Only you will know what is right based on the problem before you, so in this section I’ll focus on the steps after quantity. At the end of each section, I’ll put the content into the context with an example to illustrate. Let’s say that our design firm or ad agency wanted to go after an assignment for the Amazon Fire TV Stick.
Cleaning for Quality
Now that you’ve filled out the columns in the framework, let’s take an in-depth look at quality. Look through the content and erase anything that really doesn’t have relevance, even if it’s correct or true. There is no one right answer to what should stay and what should go; these discussions are a matter of perspective. This is where discernment comes in. One creative sees gold where another sees nothing. The yes or no answer to the question “Can we build a campaign on that?” must be followed with a rationale in order to determine if the element should remain. Facts like “Apple was founded in a garage” could be relevant if the campaign had something to do with their brand heritage, but if it was a campaign about recent products, none of them originated in that garage so it wouldn’t be relevant. Information like this could therefore be eliminated at this stage.
What you eliminate will always be relative to what you are doing and the client’s goals. Take this time to adjust the words you’ve used or further align or clarify Features and Benefits. Focus on the word choice at this point. Think through each connotation to determine if this is indeed what you are trying to communicate.
Researching Your Target
So who are the people who need this product or service and where could you look to prove it with data points?
For instance, tech blogs could help with (qualitative) directional insight into the psychographics and behavior of cord-cutters. I’d then try to map these characteristics to segments developed by syndicated research companies such as Nielsen to add a layer of certainty. These companies have performed quantitative analysis to form these segments from census, surveys, and credit report data.
SEARCH SYNDICATED RESEARCH FOR DEMOGRAPHICS AND PSYCHOGRAPHICS
Search Google for “Nielsen, Claritas MyBestSegments” or utilize databases like Mintel, or get data points from eMarketer, a great resource for digital marketing analytics research, to help you get numbers and characteristics on your target audience. We can isolate one target and come up with many concepts to reach that one, or aim at multiple targets, or recommend viable but unexpected new targets. There is no one right answer, only your right answer and a well-reasoned argument backed up with the data as to why it’s right.
FIRE TV STICK EXAMPLE: THE TARGET
Tech-silvers, or older users who were cutting cable out of their existing TV experience
Binge-watching cord-cutters who are light gamers
Amazon Prime members with HDTVs
When thinking through your target, you’ll want to determine what aspect of the target’s demographic, psychographic, or behavioral characteristics are most relevant, or irrelevant. In this case, binge-watching and a decision not to pay for cable suggests high Internet consumption. The implications of this behavior could be the use of a variety of screens including smart TVs, smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets. This behavior may span male and female watchers and could be found in both younger and older prospects. As a result, there is room for recommending segments or creating personas if the client doesn’t already know whom they would like to go after.
Remember our Apple watch–wearing grandmothers who were cutting cable out of their existing TV experience from Chapter 5? From this one sentence, we know that some people in our target group may be retired and on a fixed income, looking for ways to reduce their overall bills. We know that they’ve probably long been empty-nesters or are widows with grown children, so they have no need to cater to anyone other their own TV preferences. They own flat screens (possibly as gifts from their family members/children) because they are in the market for a device with an HDMI connection. They are very much tech savvy, and as evidenced by the Apple watch, saving money is more from old-school principle than need. They are New-York-City-subway-riding, up-and-down stair-climbing, healthy, active urban citizens.
This background sketch shows how important it is to find the insights that will inspire creatives or inform those writing the briefs that should inspire creativity. Without a well-defined target segment or segments, we don’t have demographics (facts like nationality, amount of money, family size, life stage, location, etc.). Though this is important, I would argue that in this example, psychographics and behavioral attributes (things like values, mindset, attitudes, beliefs about spending money or technology use) would be more important than the demographics. This will always depend on the job. There are no one-size-fits-all rules.
LOOKING DEEPER
Let’s look at each of our sample targets in more detail. “Binge-watching cord-cutters who are light gamers” says to me that this target skews younger, but are probably between thirty-five and forty because they had a cord to cut in the first place. “Light gaming” suggests that they will use what is convenient but may have grown out of being full-on console game players, or may have children whom they now purchase that type of stuff for. This segment is likely Gen X, probably skews male, and grew up with Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and MTV. The MTV part may seem insignificant, but it is how we know that when they were kids, they had cable in their household and grew up with cable and therefore had a cord to cut as an adult.
Finally, “Amazon Prime members with HDTVs” gives no directional insight concerning demographics—which may not be as important as the psychographics or behavioral characteristics with this particular product, but this is a determination that you’ll have to make case by case. We do know that they have late-model TVs and order things online. The Prime membership could allow us to assume they have a computer and an Internet connection, but we have no evidence on how much they order or how they use their TV. In a brainstorming session or pitch, I would suggest finding an element of information that would allow us to understand more about this Prime member with an HDTV. You could conduct your own research, which might include primary company-sponsored info, industry-generated secondary research, or our justified triangulated conclusions. This is the opportunity
to find a new target, such as new Prime members who joined within the last six months with an HDTV. These people may be new homeowners (or could have recently moved) who had the money to purchase new stuff but just haven’t settled in. To inspire the setting for our creative concepts or messaging for this group, we could look at their new life stage—as new homeowners or as being new to a neighborhood, having a fresh start or developing new memories, in a new place with new or old friends.
MORE RESOURCES
If you are going after a public company, find its annual Form 10-K or “10-K statement” on the Securities and Exchange Commission website (www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html). The 10-K is a filing that needs to be updated each quarter and includes the company’s view of the “risks” they perceive in doing business. This document is especially useful when writing a brief or working out a strategy because the company’s own words will tell you what they are concerned about.
Facts
This column should be an exhaustive list of everything you can find or think of that is relevant to the brand, product, or service. This first step will determine the scope you’ll be exploring in this column. If we’re looking at the brand, we will then need to explore the heritage and the portfolio of products or services for something to build our work on. In some situations the client will determine the focus, or as a freelance project you can give strategic recommendations in the form of scenarios (see Chapter 9). Either way, doing your homework here makes the entire process easier because you’ll have a full understanding of the brand—its pros and cons, its history, and its current position in the overall marketplace.
Creative Strategy and the Business of Design Page 8