Crafting Campaigns: Why Strategy Beats Speed

Imagine this. Your competitor launches a beautiful marketing campaign that gets a lot of traction. You and your company don’t want to fall behind in this competitive advertising market. You come to your agency and ask them for a series of videos inspired by your competitor's campaign.

Instead of going straight to the creation of the video, the agency seems to step on the brakes. They want to talk strategy first. You get frustrated and don’t want to lose momentum. Why don't they just don't do what you asked for? How difficult is it to just deliver the content you asked for?

Let’s zoom out

Let’s take a deep breath. And see the big picture. What are you after?

Not only is this the most effective approach one can adopt when willing to create a beautiful campaign, but it saves time, and effort, and makes it possible to ensure that the content produced resonates with the brand identity.

In this article, we would like to explain our approach towards solving problems, in the case of which video content is just the tip of the iceberg.

Where do I start?

The first question one needs to ask themselves before even trying to define the problem is: Where is it that I want to be? What is my “desired future state”? This question is the starting point for the production of a campaign that stands a chance of resonating with the audience. Let’s have a look at examples.

“I want this video to be about topic X, and it should be told from Y perspective” – this problem statement may be better! You can improve this by zooming out!

It is best to leave the “how” to those expected to deliver.

“After this campaign, I want the right people to submit their job applications to my HR department – for now, who submits them does not understand what we do and who we are” – this is a better statement that your agency can work with since it knows your challenge you are struggling with.

Challenges may differ. A business may want to secure a 100% sales increase. A corporate body may want to raise awareness regarding its ESG stance. A small enterprise also may want to explain a difficult problem to its audience. What could they do? Tell the agency about this.

To make the best use of your marketing budget, it’s best to brief the agency, instead of guiding it along the way. What is needed at this stage is a conversation. It’s your brand. It’s your story. Let’s tackle it together.

We are humans. People often think in terms of the end results. However, it’s better to talk about the ‘what’, instead of dictating the ‘how’, as the latter may result in mediocre output. If you let the ‘how’ be done by the creatives, the results can be surprisingly better, thanks to the creative freedom!

Defining the Problem to Be Solved

Once we know where we are going, it’s time to design a vehicle that will get us there – the campaign. Now is the time to conceptualize the problem. At this point, we will be discussing the target audience and the most effective ways we can adopt to reach them with your business proposition. We will be looking for insights that would form the strategic foundation for the whole campaign. Brainstorm them. Mind map them. Make them make sense.

The Big Idea

Only now comes the time to conceptualize the campaign. Once we do this we present the concept to the client. This process is dialogue-driven. Feedback exchange is a must at this stage. It is imperative to manage the expectations and make sure that all parties involved look at the problem through the very same lens. The whole outlook needs to be aligned here.

Deliverables

Once the concept is approved, can we move on to the deliverables, and have the creative team involved. The three stages that precede the actual production make the delivery process much smoother, faster, and far more efficient.

“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast”, as the Navy SEALs say. Here we decide on the campaign format (campaign, manifesto, posters, people stories, and so on). It is generally known that once the preparation for delivery is done right, the delivery itself is less frustrating, both for the creative team, and the client.

Results

The journey does not end when you publish the campaign. No. It’s not that easy. Once the delivered product is out there in the wild, it’s time to evaluate how effective it is in accomplishing the goal. We take a deep dive into the statistics, and engagement. We measure this. And learn. And use those insights to make things better. We go full circle to reach…

…The Desired Future State…

…again. We compare the results with what we wanted to achieve and where we wanted to go, and gain insights for the next steps. What’s next? Well, if you’re satisfied with the result, one can continue doing the same thing if it works, with maybe some small tweak. Rinse, recycle, repeat.

The creative process is a never-ending journey towards perfection. But moving is better than perfect. It is a continuous process. If the desired future state has been reached, you may come up with another problem to be solved. Content is always needed – if you want to speak to your target audience, show them you are aware of their challenges, and that you are willing to work towards solving their problems.