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 weapon”, and they lose sight of this superpower when they get “bogged down in the weeds of data and analytics”.
As a marketing executive, former agency owner, and strategist, I’m intimately familiar with this friction and have navigated these complexities from both sides. From the brand side, I’ve witnessed agencies overpromise and underdeliver. From the agency side, I’ve seen tried-and-true creative processes cut short due to budget and time constraints.
At the root of these challenges lies a fundamental tension not only between agencies and brands but between creatives and executive teams across all industries: the creative process - holistic, investigative, intuitive, non-linear, and unpredictable - is expected to fit neatly within a model that is often siloed, analytical, linear, and requires reliable financial outcomes. Neither are wrong; both are necessary. And this relationship can balance or break a company.
Like any relationship, the best ones begin with clear definitions, expectations and boundaries, as well as a mutual understanding of each others’ processes and goals. Let’s explore the creative process, and why the best ones start with strategy.
The Creative Process
The creative team is hired to perform a process proven to deliver an output that is beyond the expertise of the in-house team. And often, they are hired to improve upon what currently exists, uncover what’s currently out of sight, and accelerate growth. In a best case scenario, the creative team is afforded the time, freedom and resources required to find its flow state. This is not a metaphor; it’s a scientifically proven neurological state that enhances focus, adaptability, productivity, clarity and creative output. What’s important to note is that the creative output is only as good as the creative process, and the best creative teams are the ones who prioritize their process first and foremost. They know how to get the most juice out of the squeeze, so they ask for what they need and they do not cut corners to meet unrealistic demands. Not because they’re trying to be difficult or because it’s their revenue model, but because they know they cannot produce their greatest work any other way. There’s a method to the madness of creating something from nothing - or creating something better from nothing great. All great creative processes include four universal phases:
Preparation
This is the fact-gathering, inspiration-seeking phase that requires open awareness and divergent thinking. This is when the creative team dissects all existing materials including brand guidelines, creative briefs, existing and previous strategies, archival campaigns, and marketing plans. They do their own primary research, experiencing the product, talking with customers and sales teams, conducting interviews and surveying people within the brand ecosystem. This is the note-taking, white-boarding, mind-mapping phase that indeed requires revisiting the existing strategy, diving into data, and getting bogged down. Being bogged down is a creative mandate. I don’t know of any creative process that does not include at least a short-lived phase of complete and utter overwhelm by the sheer volume of information, ideas and critical insights that need to be integrated into one cohesive narrative. Being bogged down is the essence of the Preparation phase, and a skilled creative team recognizes that the magic they are seeking - the very magic the company is paying them for - is hidden within this mess.
Incubation
There’s always a stopping point. A great creative team knows when they’ve maxed out on inspiration, information, ideas, and insights. They know when they have all of the ingredients to make magic. But they don’t know what shape the magic will take. First they need to go surf. Or sleep. Or cook or hike or meditate. They need to go offline, or maybe off the grid for a weekend. A great creative team bakes in time to let their collective brain organize the deluge of material they’ve just absorbed. As they divert their attention elsewhere, their brains forge fresh neural pathways in the background. Don’t fret. This part of the process may just be a long weekend, but it’s important to appreciate this critical phase in the flow, which is often cut short due to demanding timelines.
Illumination
The Illumination phase is both the magic and the mystery of the creative process. It’s what big companies pay for, but it’s also the part that cannot be predicted. It is the creative insight that sparks when the subconscious links together the ocean of inspiration, information, ideas and insights into one clear and unified vision. Ask any prolifically creative person about their moments of illumination and they will likely share vivid examples of ‘aha’ moments when ideas dropped in fully formed, seemingly out of nowhere. Some have visions, others hear words in their head as if their higher self is writing a script for them. One person I know must drop everything he is doing and race to write down the message that’s coming through him. My own creative downloads come through my dreams, on planes, and on beach walks. However it comes, this moment of illumination is when the creative output begins to take shape.
Verification
This phase is what distinguishes the masters from the novices. Verification requires convergent thinking to refine the raw insight into something novel and useful. It requires discipline to consistently call upon that moment of illumination, when the idea was whole and complete, and pull it out of the ether into reality. It often requires many drafts before what’s on the drawing board matches (or is better than) the idea itself. It’s the original proof of concept; confirmation that the moment of illumination has legs. At this point, the team should be close to presenting their “big, bold ideas that move the needle.”
Any company engaging a creative team should expect fresh ideas, new perspective and killer creative. They should never settle for a regurgitation of ideas and insights that already exist. That’s unacceptable.
Equally unacceptable is to expect fresh ideas, new perspective and killer creative without allowing for a deep, holistic, investigative, intuitive, creative process to unfold.
For me, this isn’t a question of whether or not the agency model is broken. Maybe it is. The real question is whether or not the speed, scale, and expectations of business today are conducive to fostering and nurturing top-tier creative output.
One thing we can all agree on is this: It’s time to write a new playbook. One that allows for more collaboration, values diverse approaches, and adapts to the ways brands and creatives operate.
THE BOARD is doing it. They are redefining the way companies and creatives collaborate. Recognizing the need for vetted experts at the highest levels who can accelerate growth and transform businesses, THE BOARD curates dream teams of fractional talent across creative, executive, marketing, innovation, technology, and more. It a big, bold idea, and it may just be the model we need.