How to Get Results with Creative Partnerships

NEW YEAR, NEW BRAND: PART 4

Whether you need to develop your brand voice, create videos that tell your brand’s story, or pivot in the face of bad optics, creative partnerships can help.

In this final installment of the New Year, New Brand series, we’ll explore how to amplify your brand by utilizing creative partnerships. You’ll also learn tips for conveying your vision providing feedback that gets the results you want.

Types of Creative Partners
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​A creative partner can be any person or agency that you hire either as an employee, freelancer, or vendor and who helps take your idea and brings it to life.

When it comes to creating content, creative partners often include:

• Writers and editors
• Graphic designers and artists
• Photographers and video production teams
• Marketing agencies
• Instructional designers
• Web developers

While each type of creative partner is different in terms of what they create, they all share a similar goal: use their expertise to produce an amazing product that benefits your target audience and your business. 

How to Convey Your Ideas Clearly

Working with a creative partner is project-based, even if they’re on staff. You want the creative partner to produce a piece of content based on a set of goals and constraints.

Like any project, a creative project will include key milestones, reviews or quality checkpoints, and contingency plans.

However, the trickiest part is conveying your idea in a way that gets creative partners on board from day one.

Here are some tips that can help.

Provide Examples of What You Like, or at Least What You Don’t Like
Every creative partner needs a frame of reference in which to develop a solution for bringing your idea to life.

For example, let’s say you want a graphic designer to redesign your brochures to look more modern and innovative. The words modern and innovative can mean a lot of things from a simple change to font and color to a total overhaul of graphics and layout.

By providing examples of what you like and don’t like, the graphic designer can determine in what direction to take their creative vision.

Create a Creative Brief
A creative brief is a document that helps onboard people to your project. It will include key background information such as the target audience and rationale. It may also include templates, style guides, and other relevant information.

Providing this information up front clarifies your expectations and helps get everyone on the same page.

Make a Storyboard
Another way to convey your idea, especially if you envision something specific, is to create a storyboard. First developed for filmmaking, storyboards are particularly useful for video projects or for creating interactive media such as e-learning or gaming. They depict in still images and written text what the audience will see, hear, and do. 

Related: 5 Reasons to Storyboard

How to Provide Effective Feedback

You are the expert on your content and what you want to say. Your creative partner is an expert in how to convey your message in their chosen medium to the greatest effect.

Your partnership is just that – a partnership. Meaning, you both have to be able to communicate openly and effectively throughout the content creation process.

As Brené Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Promote an Environment of Open Communication:

• Be transparent. If a requirement needs to change midway through the project, explain what’s going on as early as possible. If your creative partners’ solution doesn’t fit the budget, say so. Creative partners are pros at coming up with alternatives.

 

• Be human. Creative work relies on human brainpower, not an automated factory line. Obstacles will pop up in every project. If someone’s computer crashes or a pandemic takes down half your team, be respectful, and revise expectations and scope as needed.

Make Sure Comments Are Constructive:

1. Call out where the change needs to occur. Be as specific as possible. For example, say, “On page 5, in the second paragraph,” instead of “that one part where it talks about the benefits.”
2. Explain why the change is needed. Again, be transparent and respectful. Instead of saying, “I don’t like this,” be more specific by explaining what it is that rubs you the wrong way. Is the tone too casual? Is it factually inaccurate? Of course, small changes like fixing a typo won’t require an explanation, but larger or more conceptual errors will need more background to find the best solution.
3. Set clear expectations. It’s your creative partner’s job to figure out how to get from point A (the current content) to point B (what you want), but it’s your job to help them understand what point B is. The clearer and more specific you can be, the better.

Related: Is Your Feedback Helpful?
 
You’ve Got This!

Good creative partnerships bolster your brand. Great creative partnerships can help it grow beyond your expectations.

By conveying your ideas and goals clearly from the start, you empower your creative partners to bring your vision to life, tell your story, and amplify your voice.

Now, you have all the tools revamp your year and your brand!

As always, if you need a little extra help, the writers and editors at Dream Write Creative can help. Just contact us.