Keeping ideas fresh for long-term clients
Nothing fails like success. Long term clients often fixate on past successes—ads that generated great reponses, animated banner ads that go viral, tradeshow booths that were the center of attention. Who can blame them? The creative was compelling, the strategy was on target and the results showed up. With so much past success, who can possibly embrace the future? Who … well possibly your target audience. That’s the funny thing—they’ve already moved on. They are looking for the next big thing. And it is our job to make sure our clients don’t get too comfortable with their old creative. Because that past success can spell f-a-i-l-u-r-e.
But it’s not that easy for our clients. They know a sure thing, and it’s not that new creative you’ve just presented. Unknowingly (I hope), they keep pushing the creative back into a template of the old creative, and everything starts to look and feel the same.
So, ok, how can we break that cycle and bring on the freshness? Rex Cook, founder and executive creative director of Avatar Labs, brought up some good points in his article, “Avoiding the Tired Old Solution While Keeping the Timid Client Happy.” According to Rex, we need to,
Look outside the box to create outside the box—by looking to the broader artistic community for inspiration; Find fresh ideas, fresh out of school—get those inspired young minds unburdened by years of experience; Remember that a stale team makes stale art—don’t lock your creative teams down, rotate in members from other teams; Tap both sides of the brain—recruit the geeks on-staff and tap their knowledge banks for the latest techy stuff; Be a know-it-all—by knowing how to do everything, at least a little of everything, you’ll be able to consider more things when conceptualizing.
How true, I thought as I read that article—and how true that is here at G/L where we put a lot of these ideas into action everyday.