What’s the best way to get decision makers all on the same page when important marketing and communications outcomes are at stake? What can you do when design and branding decisions need to be made by a group — especially by a group of people who don’t necessarily value the creative process?

It’s important to help people make connections.

A method is needed to help make the connection between the unspoken, emotional aspects of people’s feelings and perceptions about a company, product, or service, and the visual representation of it — a tricky thing to understand for many people.

The problem
Often, brands, logos, and graphics are created by outside marketing firms without executive level input, and are based on a designer’s interpretation of communication value. There is often a substantial gap between the designer’s natural understanding of the creative process and the lack of this understanding on the part of the individuals in the company who are purchasing the creative solution. This gap causes company management to relate to the visual representations on the surface, out of context, and with knee-jerk reactions—even if they understand the objectives used by the designer to develop the solution. In the absence of a process to bridge this gap, personal likes and dislikes are used to evaluate the appropriateness of the creative solution, as individuals have little else on which to base their reactions. When you’ve got a group of decision makers to satisfy, this is bad news. As everyone’s personal likes and dislikes are going to be different, coming to agreement can be very difficult.

The solution
The solution is to bring the people responsible for the approval and ultimate use of the visual solution into the creative process at the beginning and have them involved in the creative development. With the group’s participation, everyone’s input is prioritized and put into context, and relationships between graphic elements and their purpose can be explored. This process helps to bridge the communication gap and match specific objectives with visual interpretation and/or wording in a way that makes use of each person’s valuable insight about the organization, its products and/or services, and its objectives for the future. Understanding, agreement, and ownership are all outcomes of this method.

The process is relatively simple. An initial session can take between two and three hours to complete, depending on the amount of discussion that is a by product of the session.

When to use it
Obviously, you wouldn’t use this process for every marketing or communication project that comes across your desk. But for the larger ones, like branding your organization or major marketing campaigns, the addition of a process like this can save time and large amounts of resources in the long run, allowing you to avoid multiple expensive false starts.

How it works
There are three main parts of the session:
1.) determining where everyone stands at the start, in terms of understanding the objective and why it’s being undertaken;
2.) identifying everyone’s current perceptions regarding the objective; and
3.) identifying where the group wants to end up in terms of future perceptions for the initiative.

After all of these elements are identified through exercises, discussion uncovers similarities and direction that can be agreed upon. These will be the basis for the creative direction.

The details
2 to 3-hour session/Attended by everyone who has a voice in the outcome/4 to 25 attendees

Baseline Brainstorming — a working session to identify individual understanding of the objectives.

Current and Desired Perceptions — a two-part exercise to identify current and desired future perceptions.

Emotional Tests — The group “reacts” to common graphic and communication elements as they relate to previously defined desired future perceptions. The group rates and categorizes communication elements for appropriateness for the initiative.

Summary and Review — Progress and direction are reviewed, next steps are defined.

Results Report and Creative Development — Information gathered at session is condensed and organized into a report for team approval of direction. After approval of results report, creative conceptualization can begin.

Assessment — Group critiques creative solutions, approves direction, or feedback is given for further development

When embarking on major marketing or branding campaigns, organizations that take the time to lay the groundwork with this critical process will pave the way for group buy-in, saving time and large amounts of resources.

It’s all about helping people make connections.

[tags]marketing, marketing initiatives, branding, branding initiatives, how to get buy in, building consensus, communication gap, branding process, marketing process

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 10:18 am and is filed under Brand Strategy, Marketing Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.