Asserting the Commercial
Case for Creativity
My client was a 350 person global marking consultancy, with a Creative Team of 70 people, led by 2 ECDs (EMEA & US/APAC)
The team was made up of 4 creative depts brought together after a merger, so structure and reporting lines were very unclear. Cross-functional work was challenging, resulting in client write-offs and rework.
Despite being one of the agency’s largest teams, accounting for 25% of revenues, the team experienced little influence or say in the direction of the business. Creative work was not seen as something strategically valuable to clients.
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They needed support to integrate properly as a team, become a business partner and influence the wider business, and clients.
Desired Outcomes
Demonstrate the value of creativity to client work / the agency business.
Create the structure. roles and processes needed to deliver high quality work every time.
Help creative leaders to become more effective influencers within their team and across the business.
Increase value of creative work on client projects, whilst reducing write-offs and rework.
Approach
1
Make the commercial case for creativity
Roadshow across the business explaining the value of creativity, showing examples and commercials, and running ‘creative clinic’ workshops to gather ideas for where creativity could play a deeper role.
2
Role, structure and process work
Working with other functional leads and people analytics team to define clear roles for everyone in the team, a structure built around client / client service needs and clear process for briefing and project work to avoid write offs.
3
Leadership development coaching
Working with all senior creative leaders to help them with key skills like: influencing across functions / into management, giving and receiving development feedback, commercial understanding and planning, setting and holding boundaries and conflict resolution.
Programme Highlights
Roadshow for over 100 people across three continents explaining the value of creativity to the agency and clients.
Restructure of entire Creative team into agile pods, with a CD and ACD leading each, flexing around the creative needs of those specific clients.
Detailed role descriptions for everyone in the creative team, built around outcomes, not tasks.
12 week intensive group coaching programme for all creative leadership, with an NPS score of 9 and high levels of reported effectiveness.
