Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

by Douglas Davis

  PRESENTATION 101 TIPS

  If you’re presenting in Keynote or PowerPoint, be sure to present to the audience and not the screen. If there are multiple people on your team presenting, know who’s advancing the slides and be sure they know when to advance them. And don’t read the slides to the audience. Focus on highlighting the key takeaway of each slide in practice sessions. This is what you’ll say as a voice-over while the audience sees the content on each slide.

  Shut Up—The Work Is Speaking

  Once you’ve given a clear strategic context, voilà, it’s time to let the work speak for itself. Read any taglines or brand manifesto copy just before showing the visuals, one solution at a time (unless, of course, you’ve turned the manifesto copy into a part of the launch campaign executions). This will be the introduction to the rest of the creative solutions. Be sure that the first thing your audience sees is the concept that best embodies your idea (such as a manifesto). After you’ve read each element of copy, keep the audience focused on your presentation by turning over or covering any previous work before revealing the next solution.

  It’s also a good idea to comp print ads inside of the magazine, as they would be produced, or show any digital executions in their native habitat. Do this in addition to having the same presentation on a board. Only read what’s in the work; if you did your job during the creative development and the setup, you don’t need to do anything else. If you’re reading a storyboard, read the dialogue as it would be on screen versus explaining the spot. Resist the temptation to add anything that’s not part of the creative you’re selling to the client. My time in the business yielded these insights—but only after I had been in the room as a creative for many years selling ideas versus creating the right context for the ideas to speak for themselves. You had your turn, now let the work shine.

  After all of the work is presented, you can show all of the solutions and pass comps around the room. This will set the stage for client feedback in the last part of the presentation.

  Interpret the Feedback

  Now it’s the client’s turn to speak. This is the part where framing the work from the point of view of meeting the marketing or business objectives and trying to anticipate the creative minefield comes in handy. Hopefully, your setup and presentation will move the discussion away from the subjective critique or “like” and “dislike,” and toward the more objective analysis of why an idea “works” or “doesn’t work.” If your client says the words “like” or “hate,” replace them with “this works” or “this doesn’t work” in your reply. You’ll need to be sure to frame the conversation in such a way that you can get to the root of what makes the overall execution accomplish its objective or not.

  Saying things work or don’t work also lays the groundwork for you to draw your evaluator out by asking questions that seek to isolate the baby from the bathwater. If your client “doesn’t like” the layout or concept, you can then ask if it’s the typeface, colors, format, imagery, headlines, or connotation that they’re reacting to.

  WE’LL LOOK INTO IT (WINK)

  You won’t know what level of politics or trust you are walking into when presenting. If a client makes left-field comments even though you’ve done creative due diligence, consider saying “We can look into that” as a way to acknowledge the issue and then take it off the table for the time being.

  We often hear vague feedback that leaves us more confused after a critique. If a client, creative director, or account person says “I don’t like it” or “I like it,” try to figure out why he or she feels that way. If you can put your finger on what “it” is, you can look into revising that element of the design versus starting from scratch because you didn’t get specifics. I’ve seen so many great ideas die on the table because they weren’t presented correctly and, therefore, had no buffer against the subjective black hole.

  Fall Back on Your Research

  Remember, all the work you have done thus far in the book has prepared you to deal with negative feedback. For example, if the client doesn’t like the image you chose, explain how you picked that one because it resonates with X target audience and the product’s X benefit. Think back to the threads you pulled out of your creative strategy framework and continually push the conversation back to the objectives everyone can agree on—the features/benefits/values—and you’re more likely to make the conversation constructive and focused. If the discussion veers into subjective territory, drive it back on the road to the business or marketing objectives and terms you’ve learned so that you are speaking their language while getting feedback.

  DO YOUR LEGAL HOMEWORK

  The client’s lawyer’s point of view introduces yet another element that could kill your creative work. Sometimes there is no negotiation because of the legal regulations of some categories (such as financial or pharmaceutical). This is why it is key to ask if there are any legal requirements or restrictions upfront to consider while preparing your scenario analysis. Other times, you’ll need to be sure to keep a laser focus on the business or marketing objectives so that the creative decisions remain on point instead of becoming diverted by the possibility of a lawsuit.

  Enjoy Yourself

  Last, try to remember to have fun. You choose typefaces, specify colors, and create concepts for a living—life is good whether you win the business or not. Present your ideas in an upbeat way that will increase the probability that you’ll get past this next round, get the business, or close the deal.

  Turning Words Into Inspiration

  Presenting your pitch to a client is truly the culmination of all the work you’ve done thus far. When you’ve spent time and effort building a strong foundation based on strategy, you’re much more likely to be confident, knowledgeable, and successful.

  Be sure to give new information, or frame what is widely known, in an interesting way or from a fresh perspective. Don’t spend time restating information the room already knows.

  Don’t talk too much while you show the actual creative pieces. Let your work speak for itself.

  When gathering feedback, keep the conversation focused on what works and what doesn’t and try to tease out as much tangible information as possible. Steer conversations away from likes/dislikes and toward the strategic foundations of your solutions.

  Practice, practice, practice. Time yourself, plan out what needs to be said and what doesn’t, and believe in your work!

  PART IV

  Stayin’ Alive: Building a Successful Career

  13 How to Take a Punch in the Face

  7 Tips for Surviving As a Creative

  Looking back, I can say that my experience at Pratt didn’t prepare me for a job—it prepared me for a time when there were no jobs. A year after I was hired at my first gig while in grad school, I was laid off. The dot-com bust changed the landscape of the profession and I had to find a way to do what I loved, even when there was a year-and-nine-month recession in the industry. Pratt was an investment that has allowed me to flourish as a freelance designer/art director. Lessons like the ones you’ll read in this chapter are at the heart of my belief that it’s my responsibility to remain current and to take calculated risks in my career decisions. My layoff taught me that I had to determine how things would go with my career; I couldn’t depend on an employer. Looking back, that period of extreme hardship and uncertainty was my most valuable time as a professional. The skills I learned during this time period would become the foundation I would build on two years later when I was hired at Brouillard, a (now defunct) specialized communications agency within JWT.

  During my time at Brouillard, more and more existing clients requested digital services. One day, I spoke up and leveraged my own digital experience. My education and prior work experiences helped me open up a major area that Brouillard had yet to expand into. I understood the medium well enough to provide their initial requests. I proposed a solution that would enable my employer to offer a scalable web resource as part of its offering. The
immediate client needs were met, but we offered no long-term, integrated web strategy or the capabilities to handle production at a profit. At that point I enlisted the help of my technology partner and good friend David Quintiliani to co-direct Brouillard Interactive. During our eighteen-month run, we saw the paradigm shift from print leading digital projects to digital driving the print projects.

  Over the next eight months, David and I worked as a support for the agency’s various functions, but our value was not reflected in our billable numbers. It became clear that the agency was unsure how to support this new capability. We anticipated this and tried to leverage our prior offshore relationships and experience working that way. Ultimately, we were overextended. The management was willing to embrace this new capability but was uncomfortable with outsourcing to my contacts in India.

  Ultimately I decided to end my run at Brouillard. This decision was based on my desire to understand and learn how to overcome some of the obstacles we faced, such as advising companies on strategies for long-term digital success, managing an enterprise at an operational level, and integration of offshore capabilities.

  Using Strategy to Further Your Career

  There will always be someone who works cheaper and knows Photoshop better, so to stay relevant you must become strategic. I believe in developing the head and hands of a creative or designer in order to advance. Even after doing that, you’ll still have to work with suits. So know what they are thinking when making decisions and develop your own judgment by factoring their considerations into your work. Even after you master this, you’ll have to package it in some visual and verbal form of presentation, as we discussed in Chapter 12.

  But then I thought, let me get some perspective on the long game of a creative career that I just don’t have, since I still have a toe in my thirties. So I sought the advice of a veteran whose work I knew before I knew him. Enter Ron Berger, a Brooklyn native who started in the mailroom of the Carl Ally agency, became an award-winning creative, co-founded his own highly awarded agency that became part of Euro RSCG, and after 25 years as CEO, CCO, he retired as executive chairman of Euro RSCG North America (now Havas Worldwide). Ron has worked on numerous accounts and campaigns, including one you’ve probably quoted if you’ve ever said, “Time to make the doughnuts.” His record of innovation includes launching Advertising Week as a former chairman of the 4A’s and founding and creating the first advertising high school in the country, located in Brooklyn. Ron’s credits are too many to name; who better to give advice on how to become a success.

  Career Tips

  by Ron Berger

  In 2009, I co-founded the High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media, the first public high school in the United States with a curriculum designed to expose students to the advertising industry.

  The problem was we didn’t have the curriculum.

  Enter Professor Douglas Davis, who worked tirelessly as part of my advisory group putting together a curriculum that would lay the foundation for college acceptance, along with standards that would allow accreditation by the New York City Department of Education.

  It was through this close working relationship that I got to know Doug well. He is a talented and committed teacher, but like any good teacher, he is always eager to learn.

  So when he asked me to write some thoughts in this chapter for his book, it was easy for me to say yes. Helping creative people understand the importance of being better strategists, better marketers, better business people has been a decades-long passion of mine.

  I hope you find this chapter helpful.

  It’s a list of things that over the years I learned, that helped me become a better creative person, a more successful Creative Director, and ultimately, a co-founder and CEO of my own agency.

  1. Help clients feel comfortable with being uncomfortable.

  I have been in so many meetings where powerful ideas were presented that clearly made the client nervous.

  I remember a Volvo meeting in 1992, for example, where we presented ads that challenged the auto industry’s commitment to safety. “The airbag is so powerful it’s allowed an entire industry to hide behind it” one headline said, and then went on to explain Volvo’s history of safety innovations, including the invention of the three-part seat belt, which Volvo never patented, because they wanted other car companies to be free to put those seat belts in their cars as well.

  The client loved the ad, but was clearly nervous at its aggressive tone. I understood how the client felt, but also understood that research showed Volvo’s safety leadership was being eroded by hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by other car companies trying to convince people that if a car has airbags, it’s safe enough.

  I used that understanding of the research, and suggested focus groups with car buyers of competitive cars to gauge reaction to the ad. And it worked. The client became more comfortable with being uncomfortable, the ad ran, and Volvo retained its safety leadership position. Key takeaway if you’re ever in a situation like this: research can be your ally, showing the client you’re open to feedback which can make the work a lot better and your relationship with the client stronger.

  2. Bend but don’t break.

  Some of the great stories I heard when I got into the business were about creative people throwing tantrums if a client had the audacity to suggest changing a line or two in a campaign. One of the best was when after a client continued to critique a creative presentation, an agency founder walked over to the corner of the conference room, and began urinating on a plant.

  The stunned client asked, “What the hell are you doing?!” The agency founder replied, “I’ll stop peeing on your plant when you stop shitting on my work.”

  My advice: Listen to what the client says, then figure out what comments could potentially help, what comments won’t make a difference, and what comments ruin the idea. Then you can sit down, and explain your thinking rationally and calmly. More often than not, a client will appreciate that you listened and agree with your point-of-view. And you won’t need to replace the plant in your conference room. Or, more importantly, the client.

  3. Awards aren’t an end, they’re a means to an end.

  This may be pet peeve #1 about creative people. They present an idea they think is so brilliant, they’re already building a new cabinet to hold all of the awards they’re going to win. And they actually present the idea, pointing out how it will be a major award winner as one of its strengths. Yet they forget that the client they’re presenting to sits in a cubicle in an office park outside of Cleveland, and has a hard time envisioning drinking bottles of rosé during a Grand Prix celebration at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the South of France. Truth is, clients love winning awards, but hate being told they need to buy your idea because it will win every major award. Which leads me to pet peeve #1A . . .

  4. Be more interested in your clients’ success than your own.

  Clients pay us a lot of money, but more important, they put their jobs, and their careers, on the line when they choose to work with us. And what do they get in return? Too often, creative people who put their own self-interest ahead of interest in the clients.

  How do you stop doing that? Stop reading trade magazines, and start reading the Wall Street Journal. I did every day. Watch CNBC. I did every morning. I can’t tell you how many times I read or heard something about a client’s business, or a client, that enabled me to have a discussion with the client that showed I understood their business in ways no other creative director could. These insights pay real dividends when you then present ideas that reflect what you read or heard about your client or its competitors. An article in the WSJ, for example, on trends in the fast-food industry led to “Eat Fresh” for Subway. An interview on CNBC with the CMO of Charles Schwab about how Chuck was still involved in the day-to-day business helped create “Talk to Chuck.” And several stories on the sameness of German luxury auto design led to the campaign theme “Gor
geous” highlighting Jaguar’s stunning design heritage. In all of these cases, drawing on outside reference points was invaluable in helping the client understand why these ideas were right for their businesses.

  5. The best creative people aren’t copywriters or art directors.

  They’re strategists, and directors, and designers. In other words, the best creative people can do everything. One of my former partners, Barry Vetere, was an art director by title, but was arguably the best strategist we had in the agency. He directed all of his commercials. And he was the voiceover for many of them. Google “Helmut Krone” and study the work he did for Porsche at Doyle Dane Bernbach—those were ads that were designed as elegantly as the cars themselves. Or look at the brilliantly designed campaign that introduced the iPod for Apple. You’ll see design that brought to life the simplicity and joy of the product itself.

  That’s what the best creative people do: they capture the essence of what a brand and product are about, and bring it to life in ways that move people in amazing ways.

  6. Clients rent ideas; they buy you.

  I see this all the time: creative directors walk into a meeting thinking they have to sell this idea, or this design, or this TV commercial, or this ad, when in reality, all of those things are props that you should use to sell yourself. Sell how much you understand about the client’s business. Sell how much you listened to the franchisees you visited to hear what’s going on in the marketplace. Sell the insights you came away with after listening to consumer interviews.