Overcoming The Creative Clash

The 4 phases of the creative process and how to foster top-tier creative output.

It was the rant heard round the creative world. In her LinkedIn post that led to an AdWeek Op-Ed, Stephanie McCarty, the CMO at Taylor Morrison, shared her beef with ad agencies. 

TL;DR: McCarty suggests that a company’s in-house marketing team should be charged with strategy. They know their ‘why’, their USP, their customers and their competition inside and out. What they don’t have is killer creative. That’s the job of the creative agency, who is hired to bring fresh ideas, new perspective and out-of-the-box thinking to problems the company already knows it has. The problem is, most agencies won’t dive right into creative work before doing their due diligence, which most often includes revisiting the strategy to find fresh insights. For the company, this can feel like a drain on time, resources and budget. For the creative agency, it’s central to their process.

McCarty suggests that creativity - “the ability to concept big, bold ideas that move the needle” is an agency’s “secret weapo…