City of Paris

Our poll, which was posted on the City of Paris website from September 8 through September 21, tries to get at what’s influencing creativity in healthcare communications today. A resounding 60% of you believe that the client is the most important factor in determining the quality of the creative product. A third of you believe that it’s the agency. A minority of votes pointed in the direction of budget, regulatory constraints or brand strategy.

So what about the client? How does the client influence creativity? According to comments on the blog:

1. Clients need to do their homework, be clear about the value proposition and messages to their customers. In most cases, this is the weakest link in the chain. True, it is a partnership between client and agency, and the qualified agency is often a strong contributor to the strategy development process. But homework and thinking are not something a client can delegate.
2. Clients need to set expectations and demand exemplary work. One caveat though. The right to set expectations is earned by laying the strategic groundwork and investing in time and energy to communicate and share your knowledge, insight and strategy with your agency team. You can’t credibly demand good work until you’ve demonstrated that you’ve done your fair share. And the agency team needs the basic information and directions to get started.
3. A sense of conviction and trust in your own judgment are critical when it comes to selling management and other stakeholders within your company on creative work that may deviate from what is expected. Once again, it comes back to homework and strategy grounded in solid understanding of your customer when it comes time to defend the agency’s work, which is also your work if you’ve followed rules 1 and 2 above. Too often, I have watched clients worry more about trying to appeal to their management rather than their customers. Well, management is already sold on the company’s products (most of the time, anyway).
4. A healthy working relationship with the agency is a pre-requisite to good agency work. Agency teams will go out on a limb for clients that they respect and like – that’s human nature, isn’t it? But, remember, being liked is not enough. The effective client is also respected.

What about the agencies? The comments on our blog offered some suggestions.

1. The same advice about doing the homework applies to the agency team, especially when it comes to products involving complex science. There really is no short cut. Now, that does not mean that everyone on the creative team needs to have a science degree, but someone on the team should understand the underlying science and communicate it clearly to the team in simple terms. This is an arduous process but a necessary investment. Equally important is the insight into the customer – who he or she is as a person, what his or her aspirations and fears are, and how he or she accesses and processes information.
2. Put substance before style. For agency professionals, showmanship is a valued skill. But the danger lies in investing the time in executing the concept for presentation purposes rather than in coming up with new and fresh ideas. And with computer-generated art and desktop publishing, it is tempting for art directors to start comping before investing enough energy in ideation.
3. Agency management needs to rethink how talent is recruited, nurtured and deployed. There is no quick answer to the shortage of seasoned agency professionals, in part due to the lack of willingness of young talent to stay put in jobs the way the previous generation did. And what about the dilemma presented by veteran professionals whose experience we value but who have been slow to adapt to changes in the way we work?
4. That same sense of conviction and inner confidence we are advocating for the client is even more important in the case of agencies. And once again, the agency that has done its homework and can back the creative work with thoughtful rationale and solid facts will stand a much better chance of getting the buy-in.

What do you think? Post your comments. Would you like to participate in a roundtable discussion (a mix of agency and client professional) to talk about how we can raise the bar on creativity together? Send me a note and I’ll make sure you’re included.

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