There’s a lot a creative agency can do for your brand. But if you haven’t worked with a creative agency before, you might be a little in the dark about what your working relationship will look like or what the collaboration process will be. (And even if you have worked with one before, each agency is unique so it’s important to start off on the right foot.)
To get the best work from your creative agency, you want to approach things as a true creative partner. Hence, it’s important to know what to expect from your engagement, what role you’ll be playing, and how to be the best team player along the way.
Having worked with thousands of clients over the last decade, we’ve seen the good, bad, and ugly of client-agency relations, and we’ve noticed that most issues come down to a lack of education or communication. So today we thought we’d give you a primer on what to expect once you start working with a creative agency, plus our best tips to keep your teams on the same page and work as true partners.
What You Should Know About Working with a Creative Agency
Again, each agency is unique, with its own production process, communication style, and creative philosophy, but there are a few general things you’re likely to encounter. To make sure your engagement goes as smoothly as possible, here’s what to expect and how you can help your creative agency along the way.
1) Complete Your Creative Brief
The creative brief is likely the first ask you’ll get from your creative agency. This document is the key to a successful project. It will ask you to detail all of the important information about your project, including goals, deadlines, budget, branding guidelines, etc. As this is the document that will keep you and your creative agency on the same page—literally—it’s important that you take your time to fill it out fully and thoughtfully. A few tips to make your brief as useful as possible:
- Include the right amount of information. You should fill out the brief in detail and provide any relevant supporting materials (such as brand guidelines, sales materials, etc.), but don’t drown your creative agency in documents. Remember: The goal of the brief is to efficiently and succinctly explain what you’re trying to achieve.
- Get everyone’s input. Sometimes people will dash off a creative brief without getting their team’s thoughts, which causes issues down the line when there are internal conflicts about certain details. So make sure to get approval before you send the brief back to your agency.
- Watch your language. You may be highly familiar with your industry’s buzzwords and acronyms, but your agency may not be. Write your brief in plain English.
2) Ask Questions During The Kickoff
As the name implies, this is when your team will do its first meet and greet. Depending on the engagement, your kickoff may be in person, on the phone, or via video chat. There are several goals for this meeting:
- Meet the team. You will meet the creative team that will work on your project (or at least the main crew), which may or may not include: Account Director, Producer (or Project Manager), Strategist, Creative Director, Art Director, Designers, Developers, Copywriters, Animators, etc. This is your first opportunity to get to know each other and get a general sense of each other’s vibes.
- Go over the brief in detail. You’ll also cover the creative agency’s process, talk timelines, and discuss other pertinent project details.
- Ensure both teams are aligned. This is the opportunity to clarify any confusion, flag any potential issues, and address any outstanding unknowns.
Of course, nobody wants a rocky kickoff, so there are a few things you can do to make everything go smoothly:
- Know your goal. If you’re not sure what you’re trying to achieve, your agency won’t be able to help you. Make sure you have a clear vision before your kickoff.
- Ask questions. Don’t feel silly or shy. It’s better to be redundant now than sorry later. Even if you think it’s something simple or obvious, ask away (e.g., do you work in Google Docs or Word?). Here are a few starter questions if you’re not sure what to ask.
- Make sure the right people are in the room. Don’t leave a key stakeholder out of the conversation (and thus require everyone to repeat the same information later).
3) Understand The Process
Every agency has its own production process and infrastructure. (If you’re interested, here’s a peek into our creative approach.) But, in general, your creative engagement will include the following phases:
- Discovery: This is the “learning” phase, in which your creative agency dives into your brand, learning about your unique needs, the problems you’re facing, your previous attempts to solve it, etc.
- Insights: Having gone through the discovery phase and done additional research (e.g., survey, content audit, analytics review, etc.), your team will surface key insights that should inform what approaches are going to yield the best results for your objectives.
- Ideation: Next comes the brainstorm phase. Depending on your involvement, this may or may not include your team. Either way, once ideas are vetted, your creative team will pitch you concepts and you’ll select the winner.
- Execution: Now your team will dive into creative execution, creating and iterating content based on your feedback.
- Measurement: Once your creative work is live, your team will track success based on predetermined metrics.
Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can support your creative agency during these phases:
- Share visual inspiration. It’s often easier to show someone what you’re envisioning instead of just describing it with words. Feel free to include images, mood boards, storyboards, sketches, or whatever helps your agency “see” your ideas.
- Share your knowledge. Two teams are better than one, and knowledge-sharing is one of the biggest benefits of getting to work together. Whether it’s tools, tips, resources, or convenient hacks, it’s smart to clue each other in. (For example, here are 100+ tools to help your content marketing.)
- Address issues early and often. Your creative agency is invested in doing good work, so make sure to voice your concerns or ask questions up front and throughout your engagement. You can also try these tactics to work together more effectively.
4) Close the Feedback Loop
Naturally, as there are many moving parts in the creative process, you don’t want any miscommunication or oversights to interrupt or delay work. Hence, it’s crucial to have very clear communication during these stages, especially when it comes to feedback.
- Identify your points of contact. Know who will be managing things on each side. That way you know who owns what and who to contact for questions, edits, or any other issues.
- Speak up. Be vocal about how you think the agency is performing, how your experience is, and how it could be better. A good agency wants to know how they’re doing and how they can improve things.
- Get approvals. This is one of the more frustrating issues that can waste everyone’s time and resources. Your agency should build approvals into the timeline so that, for example, a stakeholder doesn’t offer late-stage copy feedback for a project that’s already moved into the design phase.
- Consolidate feedback. For the sake of time and efficiency, your point person should be in charge of collecting and consolidating feedback. This includes getting approvals and resolving conflicting feedback. (It’s much easier for your creative agency to work with a single checklist of edits instead of 32 comments from 7 different people.)
- Be responsive. It’s hard to stick to timelines if your creative agency is stuck waiting for a logo to be sent over. Respond within a reasonable amount of time—or at least acknowledge that you’re working on an answer.
5) Nurture The Relationship
The best clients are positive, proactive, and eager to educate themselves about both their industry and best practices. Whether you work with a creative agency on a single project or you work together for a decade, building a good relationship is your best bet to do work you can both be proud of. For more on that, follow these tips to build a great relationship from the jump.
That said, not every creative agency may be the right fit for your brand. If you’re on the hunt for a different one, here’s how to find a creative agency.