Working Successfully to get Successful Work

Caley Cantrell is a communications professor at VCU, although previous to life in academia, she did tours in the account management and strategy side of agencies in New York and San Francisco before coming to the Martin Agency in Richmond. Strategic planning is her area of expertise at the Brandcenter and it was the focus of her discussion. Here are some of the things she talked about that got me thinking:

The Preconceived Notions Meeting: Caley laid out the proposition that maybe before we creatives ever start working on a project or new brand, we should have a preconceived notions meeting. Before the brief, before anything, we just purge all those ideas that we have about the brand we're about to work on. Whether those preconceived notions are right or not, there might be something there.

The Planner/Creative Relationship: I think in many cases, the creatives might overlook the value of a great strategic planner. This is too bad because more and more, it seems to me that planners make the creatives' jobs easier. When you see some of that amazing work that out there, sometimes you can't tell if the creatives are really that good, or if they just happen to work with a great planner.

The perfect brief? Caley talked quite a bit about the brief writing process. It is a crucial part of the process for sure. What I realized as she showed examples of various "winning briefs" is that there is no single "right way" to write a brief. But I still hold firm to the belief that its not really a "brief" if its longer than one page. Caley talked about the "Need to Know" vs the "Nice to Know" insights that can come from a planner. I myself am an information gatherer. I like to know lots of information before I delve in. But here's the thing: I want a brief to be brief. Limit it to the "need to know info," and make the "nice to know" stuff available somewhere else.

So I had plenty to learn about how to work with planners most effectively. Now to get back to those preconceived notions I'm so good at coming up with...