Related Posts
Bowl Leader
DM me for more details.
Additional Posts in Creatives
Community Builder
Someone should get fired for this
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I believe that creatives need to make the work that makes sense for them. I know there’s a place in the creative process for strategy, after all, strategy as a discipline was the creative’s job until it was spun off from creative as a way to increase billing.
I guess, to that end, I believe that the role of strategy is to tee up the ball for creatives so they can step up and hit the long drive. The way you provide direction and help strengthen ideas is by bringing them the juiciest, most inspiring insights. I wouldn’t expect that creatives will necessarily continue to involve you intimately throughout the process—but if you provide enough real value to them from the jump (great insights), I bet they will.
@Dir, The reason Strategists exist is to research clients at a very high level, to plan 3 to 5 years out, to collect audience and market information from testing...to have a 30,000 feet, long term strategy.
But no one uses them like that now. No client will invest in all that. In the last 10 years or so—as clients have wanted to spend less and less money on production—Strategists have indeed been turned into billable hours for decks, meetings, rebriefings, talking talking talking, more meetings, and more opinions in the room. It’s the “new model,” where producing actual ads is replaced by revising decks about the “ideas” we “could” do.
I always like it when strategists build on the execution in new media channels more than when they try and build on the idea itself.
Find ways and places to extend the idea, make the campaign more well rounded, more 360.
I feel like after you do that a few times, they'll come to you more proactively going forward.
For proactive thinking. Trying to work on creating open briefs that address that, but that’s a whole other conversation
A good strategist is a godsend, and can offer a POV different from that of account people, who often just play wannabe creative director. A bad strategist plays wannabe creative director. If you’re good and can offer genuine insights, people will beg to have you on their accounts.
Try making the problem creative needs to solve more interesting, more focused, and more important (without losing your honesty).
Nothing makes the difference between ideas more clear than an understanding of what problems they really solve.
Aside from that, I just try to imagine the best possible version of the idea they’re sharing with me and help build to that version.
Also, really helps if they have seen the clients put their trust in you. My creative partners know that I can sell in an idea differently than they do, and so they know my feedback and reactions are oriented to help make their favorite ideas (often the best ones thank god) better.
Lastly, get time with them outside the office. Hit the bar, go for lunch, whatever. Go somewhere else that feels less like work and have a talk through the ideas like two humans who care about the work. The work environment and meetings just makes it feel sucky.
100%
Thanks! Will try that.
The answers were so predictable... @OP. Go find a place that values you and has evolved beyond antiquated models. They exist.
For me, a great strategist distills all the info that’s out there into a clear insight. And gets the client to agree to it. That way I can focus on how to convey it rather than what needs to be said. They don’t give me all the info, they clear it away.
If you’re good at that, if you give me a good place to stay, I’ll trust you and want your guidance making sure we’re true to it, talking about where else it can go, etc.
But a lot of what you guys do is before the creative work starts. At a certain point, it’s now my job to take over and to assess the subjective execution stuff. And yeah, I can imagine that’s super frustrating for someone who’s spent weeks on this before I ever get to it. But that’s kind of the gig.
I do find a lot of the same excuses:
“Most strategists are bad, so better to cherry pick involvement” 
And...
“Just give me the brief and vanish”
I think everyone in an agency needs to help each other. A planner needs to help creatives just as much as creatives need to allow and empower planners to help them in key parts of the process. The problem is, that for creatives, the “key” part is only the brief hand off and NEVER casual conversations that nurture additional builds on the insight without intruding on creative work.
Having the last word is really important to you, huh?