In 2006, I drew one of my most popular cartoons: “The 8 Types of Bad Creative Critics.” It featured common archetypes like “The Blender”, “The Waffler” and “The Crammer.”
It seemed to strike a chord because many of us have been in bad creative reviews, on either side of the client/agency table. One agency even asked to print the cartoon as a giant mural in their conference room as a sort of cautionary tale to clients.
At the time, I worked on the client side, and had seen a lot of creative work go off the rails, often in how the creative reviews were managed (or not managed).
Creative work is only as good as the process used to develop it. And the creative review is one if the key stages that is often bungled by too many cooks in the kitchen and not having a clear and constructive way to evaluate ideas.
Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler at BetterBriefs launched The BetterIdeas Project last week. It’s a fascinating research study with the IPA into this critical but often overlooked stage — how ideas are currently evaluated. I got to know Matt and Pieter-Paul when we collaborated a few years ago on cartoons related to getting better at writing briefs.
Matt and Pieter-Paul found that it typically takes a whopping 5 rounds of creative development to get to a signed-off idea (up from 3 rounds in 2007, as reported by the IPA). Only 10% of ideas are evaluated against clearly defined criteria. 70% of creative agencies don’t trust the creative judgement of the marketers they work with. The top words used to describe the process are “inconsistent,” slow,” subjective,” and “painful.”
At the same time, they found that creative agencies are proud of only 26% of work they’ve been involved with across their careers. The number for marketers is slightly higher, at 36%. 75% of agencies and 54% of marketers agree that “most creative work doesn’t stand out.”
That chasm leaves a lot of room for marketers and agencies to improve how creative is briefed and ideas are evaluated to do their best work. These are teachable skills, and ones that can help brand teams punch harder than their weight. Because the norm is so lackluster, marketers and agencies that buck the typical process can stand out.
One inspiring takeaway from The BetterIdeas Project: “Marketers who inspire their agency to do their best work are 3X more likely to feel proud of the work they’re involved in.”
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
