The Brief - Roadmap to Great Creative

The Brief is the Roadmap for the Creative Process. The output may be a commercial, print campaign, convention display, detail aid, digital campaign, or a totally integrated Marketing Campaign. Regardless, a well-crafted, “tight” Brief provides the required clarity and direction to focus efforts, minimize frustration, and accelerate the entire development process. Marketing Communications development is part art, part science. There is no guarantee that the output of our process will be brilliant. However, the presence of a well-crafted Brief at the outset of the process will provide us with the greatest chance for success in this highly competitive marketplace. 

This Virtual Workshop has been specifically designed to foster “active learning” and use actual Member projects in its exercises.  This highly interactive workshop includes “best practices” examples, concepts, and techniques from a wide variety of industries and disciplines. Each has been vetted in actual workplace experience. This workshop is not about theory and it is not an academic exercise – it is about learning and doing and getting participants engaged throughout the sessions with engaging whiteboard activities, open-ended questions, quizzes, breakout team exercises and downloadable tool kits.

From Insights to Great Messaging

We live in an age of data - overwhelming amounts of quantitative data. However, this data is available to all our competitors, so our Brands compete in an “age of sameness”. Insights help differentiate them from commoditized products competing on “price” into sustainable, memorable Brands. 

Unfortunately, Insights are often misunderstood, inaccurately identified, and/or frequently confused with Customer Needs, Requirements, Commonly Accepted Beliefs, and data points. Thus the lack of Impactful Messaging and real innovation in products, services, and customer communications. 

Program participants learn a clear Insight definition, how to differentiate real from “faux” insights, how Insights are discovered through a detailed understanding of our Target Audience, how creative “Ideas” are based on Insights, and how to assess, comment, and coach creative work to reinforce unique Consumer Insights. 

This highly engaging and interactive virtual workshop focuses on your unique marketing issues. Participants leave with actionable tools - concepts they can immediately apply to real-time Marketing situations. 

ELEVATED TRAINING: 101, 201, 301, 401

Available for The Brief and Insights Programs

THE GOAL: Provide superior Marketing training in breadth and depth

THE FORMAT: Tiered Training following the academic 101 to 401 model

INSIGHTS: Tiered Approach

• 101: Insights to Great Messaging

• 201: Insights to Great Marketing Mix

• 301: Insight Inspired Innovation

• 401: Executive Insight Overview

Assessing, Commenting, and Coaching Creative

Effective communications development is a blend of art and science.  Done well, the creative development process produces consistent, brilliant output.  Done poorly (or not at all), the creative development process leaves creative results to serendipity. In this economic climate, this is an unacceptable option.

Unfortunately for many companies today, clear communication between marketing and creative teams is not the norm. In many instances, this miscommunication leads to extended timelines, increased costs, and team frustration.

On the other hand, when marketers understand how to effectively provide strategic feedback to their creative counterparts, great work is possible that not only eliminates adversity and frustration but that also delivers results for the brand and organization. Assessing, commenting, and coaching is a learned skill - not impossible - but also not intuitive for most people. 

This interactive virtual workshop focuses on best practices for today’s modern marketing professional to ensure clear communication takes place between the marketing and creative teams. Starting with developing a “tight” creative brief to providing strategic feedback during review meetings, participants will leave with a keen understanding of how to deliver comments and coaching to creatives that leads to improved team effectiveness and the delivery of great work.

Strategic Customer-Centric Marketing

Unfortunately for many companies today, marketing with a customer-centric approach is not the norm. In many instances, important marketing decisions are being made without key customer-centric knowledge and opportunities for customer value creation are being missed. 

Conversely, customer-centric companies make business and marketing decisions that support the creation of customer value. These decisions are made possible by knowing the right insights to use, how to source them, and how to activate insights in order to make business and marketing decisions that are focused on customer value creation. 

This interactive virtual workshop focuses on key marketing responsibilities that ensure an organization becomes and remains “customer-focused.” Customer-centric marketing is presented as a strategic imperative, not a trend. This workshop teaches effective approaches to implement a “best practice” strategic marketing framework to enable powerful customer-centric marketing that drives customer value.

Maximizing Social Media for Brand Building

The proliferation of social media platforms and empowered consumers makes reaching your clients’ target audiences challenging. Even the most successful agencies struggle with how to communicate the value of social media to help Brands be relevant and authentic. It's no longer a question of whether social media plays a role in marketing, it's about what role the agency needs to play in communicating the best social media strategy to drive marketing results, customer engagement and overall business success for clients.

This virtual workshop will help you get into the mind of the modern marketer in order to successfully communicate value. By providing strategic best practices that can be used across social marketing platforms and reviewing essential components of a strategic social media content development plan, this highly engaging and interactive workshop will help participants better understand how social fits into their clients’ current marketing mix, and what the client is typically most concerned about in terms of measuring ROI.

Participants will leave with actionable concepts and tools they can immediately apply to real-world situations, including aligning social media strategy with a client’s customer experience and marketing plan goals. The workshop provides practical frameworks and models to understand and optimize social media strategy to enhance overall customer experience and build client brand equity.

Optimizing Your Agency Relationship

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is I don’t know which half!”

Whether you attribute that quote to retail giant John Wannamaker or industry legend Lord Leverhulme, no one can afford to waste money in today’s economy. 

Yet organizations continue to do just that by providing vague direction to their agencies in the Marketing Communications development process. Additionally, clients compound this error by failing to provide agencies adequate time to develop and refine creative. Further, clients delay creative development and, thereby incur unnecessary incremental costs, when they fail to recognize creative ideas and provide appropriate direction and coaching to their agency partners. In fact, most clients do not view their communications agencies as partners at all.  Rather, in our current “procurement” environment, agencies are seen as just another “vendor”, and thus the continual revolving-door approach to Agency Relations. 

This course helps marketers understand how to sustain a successful relationship with their agencies, why it must be considered mutually important, and why neither the client nor the agency can be expected to exert all the effort.

This program focuses on the key Client responsibilities that will ensure their organization becomes the “Client of Choice”.  Course content has been developed through extensive work with major Advertising agencies and some of the largest advertisers, across a wide variety of industries.

Importantly, the program was developed with the Global Marketing Community in mind. The concepts and tools presented are equally appropriate and applicable regardless of region or industry.

Modern MarTech: Harnessing Technology to Enhance the Customer Journey

Integrating platforms and systems across the MarTech stack allows marketers to look at customer data holistically, from the first touchpoint to the last. It helps us understand where we need improvement, lets us look factually at what is working, and allows us to optimize quickly and effectively. 

However, with over 8000+ technology solutions currently available in the marketing technology landscape, this proliferation of “logos” demands that today’s modern marketing professionals develop a keen grasp on how to select and evaluate the technology and tools within their organizations. It's no longer a question of whether technology plays a role in marketing, it's  about what role the modern marketer needs to play in selecting the best solution to drive marketing results and overall business success.  

This virtual workshop will help you understand the essential components of a marketing technology strategy, define how CMOs and other decision-makers should engage in the technology roadmap and vendor selection process, and help marketing executives and teams assess their new and evolving role as a technologist within the enterprise. The course provides practical frameworks and models to understand and optimize marketing technology to enhance the overall customer experience.