If last week’s cartoon was about dysfunctional creative briefs, this week’s cartoon is about dysfunctional creative reviews.
Many organizations take a “too many cooks” approach when assessing creative. Everyone has an opinion, and creative communication can be subjective. If you try to accommodate everyone, you’ll end up with the lowest common denominator.
I think that how we set the stage for a creative review is just as important a part of the creative process as the creative itself. The most talented creative team in the world will deliver mediocre work if you don’t carefully manage the review stage of the process.
When an ill-defined creative brief is combined with a large review team, the result is a mess of compromises.
Here’s a classic video from 2008 parodying if large corporations redesigned the stop sign. There may not be a lot of actors in the scenes, but this exactly pegs the dynamic of having too many creative reviewers in the kitchen.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to navigate the creative review process.
(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed cartoon print. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post by 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)