Mastering the balancing act: Creative craft meets operational efficiency in high-volume marketing

Vicky Hope

November 30, 2023

Creative

Creative Operations

In the bustling world of high-volume marketing, the interplay between creative ingenuity and streamlined operations is paramount. Recently, I had the honour of participating in a roundtable discussion - staying creative at scale by automating global toolkits.

Navigating a creative terrain, particularly as a former Managing Director of an in-house creative production studio, meant routinely handling high volume briefs for financial services brands. As marketers and creative delivery professionals, we spend time and money creating powerful brand campaigns. Generating more and more content from different formats, for different audiences, and from test & learn approaches. The challenge is how we build workflows to reuse these creative solutions throughout the full communications funnel.

Optimise and uphold brand excellence

One might ponder, "How do we work smarter and not just harder?" The formula involves sweating the assets through optimisation while safeguarding high brand quality. This intricate dance calls for a delicate balance – utilising digital assets to their fullest, yet never compromising on the authenticity and excellence that defines our brand.

Here are my three pivotal takeaways from the discussion that are vital for in-house teams and creative services alike:

1. When to create 'new'

A fundamental, but often missed step in the briefing process is to ask – what are we trying to achieve? Agree on the right approach for asset creation at the start. Where there’s a need to create a new concept for a campaign, we should still think about optimisation. Presenting the campaign as a toolkit (masters, campaign packs being other terms) will shift it from being viewed as a static campaign to a modular one. A modular campaign will then have assets that can be stored on the DAM (Digital asset management system) or be captured in best practice campaign playbooks for future re-use.

2. Re-use isn’t a compromise

So rather than the brief always being for new work, the starting point for conversion activity mid-funnel should be first to see what’s available to re-use. This challenge comes from the brief owner (often wanting a new campaign) and the creative teams (wanting to make new). Tech helps both to review what already exists and has performed well. It’s a mindset shift. Don’t view it as a compromise that every brief isn’t a highly crafted piece of creativity. For savings, scale and speed, there’s a need to connect workflows to adapt and automate what already exists. And there’s a cultural dynamic at play here, too. Respect the value provided by all disciplines. From the bespoke campaign craft through to adaptions to gain savings, scale and speed.

3. Tech doesn’t replace creative humans

In creative marketing there will always be the need to balance the human approach versus the tools. You need good, robust workflows so you can trust the process and understand that tech isn’t going to replace high-quality creative solutions.

It’s about freeing up human resources to do quality thinking and not the more repetitive tasks.

When we understand what we’re trying to achieve – the requirement for new or scale will then determine the workflow. And don’t forget that people are still using workflows and need to want to use them. There’s no point in having a DAM if the metadata isn’t consistent so creatives can’t search to find an asset to re-use. If there isn’t a consistent best practice you soon see end-users improvising with their own makeshift systems, such as sharing assets informally on email or chat channels.

Shared challenges, shared resolve

Echoing through our discussion was a common narrative irrespective of industry. The art of balancing people, processes, and technological support rests on one fundamental understanding—the intent.

Our roundtable underscored the precision in identifying objectives early. Distinguishing when a concept requires hands-on craftsmanship versus prioritising economy, swift execution and breadth of coverage delineates the path we take.

It shows that in-house teams can indeed master this dynamic, bridging creative campaigns and operational efficiency. As stewards of digital assets, it’s about striking the right chord between tradition and innovation.

Credits to Henry Stewart Events, www.DAMusers.com, Oliver Stewart from Celtra, Julia Anderson, Pritesh Patel, Deborah Charles, and Amy Potts.