“Clients buy shiny things” – A phrase ECDs have said for decades to encourage the creatives to add a bit more oommpphh to the pitch deck visuals.
And it’s true. Not all clients can imagine how perfect an idea could be for their brand without some slick mockups to accompany it. So, in a time when AI can generate an image of an astronaut with a jetpack riding a unicorn in space drinking (insert your product here) quicker than it took me to write this post… Have creatives become too excited by the shiny things themselves and forgotten the value of the idea?
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a post dissing AI. There are so many ways to incorporate Chat GPT, MidJourney and whatever other inspiring tools we’re all using to help us out in the creative process (that’s a post for another day). This thought comes off the back of a great session we hosted at Bounce Creative HQ this week with one of our long time client partners at 4 Pines Brewing Company Pty Ltd. We put down our laptops, dissected the brief and ran a collaborative workshop looking at our opportunity from as many different angles as possible.
Have you tried this process with your team in any industry, agency or profession and found it effective? Not only is this a great way for us to encourage lateral thinking, fresh perspectives and the classic popcorn effect of a brainstorm, but it offers so much more. Here’s a few reasons why we’ve found this way of working to be a super useful:
* Aligning on shared views of success
* Having brand and category experts in the room to help guide the thinking
* Uncovering the controlled chaos of the creative process
* A client even more invested in the project
* Learning about the pressures and goals we each share (or don’t)
* Building trust amongst the team
* Allowing everyone to feel heard
* An effective way to gather unexpected thoughts
… Not to mention just being there together to experience that warm tingly feeling that often comes with landing one of those ‘what if we actually did this…’ ideas.
Sure, we’ll still take everything away, break it down, build it back up, get on the tools, design, mock, generate, mood board, adcept and shine away… The difference is, we’ve already cracked open the polish together.
We might not have sold anything shiny just yet, but we’ve certainly put down the deposit 😜 Maxwell Farrow Lucy P. Georgina Butterworth Chris De Santis Jacob Lumsdaine