2. Keep your brief tight Far too many creative briefs include absolutely everything and go on for page after page, presumably because the client fears missing out something which might be the seed of the creative idea. All this does is to hide the proverbial creative needle in an even bigger haystack of confusion. Instead focus on the single problem you are trying to solve and what is your desired outcome and then let the creative team ask you the questions they feel they need to ask. If you can’t write what you need the creative team to do in one or two lines, it’s not a creative brief. 3. Give creativity time Ideas can come in an instant, we all know that. However, coming up with robust creative concepts takes time and cannot be rushed. Throughout the creative process, multiple ideas will spark at any time but these all need to be expanded, propagated, explored, interrogated and stress-tested before they even make it onto the initial list of potential solutions. The more time you give creativity, the more robust the creative solutions will be. If time pressures mount, avoid trying to ‘throw more creatives at the problem’ to speed up the creative process. This is a bit like suggesting that by adding multiple cooks, you can make the egg boil quicker. 4. Set a clear budget Some clients are reluctant to provide creative agencies with the budget they have allocated for a particular project. This is not only counter-intuitive but actually pretty daft. Imagine walking into a car showroom and declaring, “I would like a car but I’m afraid I am not willing to share a budget with you at this stage”. Presenting the client with a mid-range family saloon is likely to be met with comments about how something more exciting was expected. A two-seater sports car might prompt comments about its lack of flexibility and so on. You end up developing a hybrid which has all the off-road capabilities of a Land Rover, the economy of a Tesla and the flatline speed of a Ferrari which costs the same as the GDP of a medium-sized country, only to then find out the budget would not have stretched beyond a bicycle. Now you are back at square one but with less time to deliver and less budget owing to the money you already spent developing a creative ‘unicorn’. 5. Immerse the creatives Bring the agency in, let them try your products first-hand, see how your products are made, meet the people who make them, experience the services you offer, see where they are sold and how people experience or consume them. Yes, they will see all the same things that you see but they will also see the things you don’t because they are trained creatives, and that’s where the magic happens.

6. Collaborate to make great Once you appoint a creative agency, it is essential you work together and not just leave them to get on with it by themselves. Think of it more like you have teamed up with another expert just like yourself, albeit with slightly different superpowers to your own. Together you can take the world by storm. Together you are Holmes & Watson, Mulder & Scully or maybe even Shaggy & Scooby; more powerful together than individually. 7. Appoint a single decision maker More brilliant creative ideas have been killed by committee than anyone would care to admit. The problem is that every stakeholder in a ‘deciding’ committee feels compelled to make a tiny tweak; just a tiny, weeny little tweak. It seems highly unlikely it will alter the creative concept too much and at the very least it will demonstrate to all the other committee members just how involved you are in the creative process. In fact, it is death by a thousand cuts; the arms and legs of any creative idea are cut off before it has even had the chance to flourish. It is no coincidence that the best creative work typically occurs when there is a single client-side decision maker. 8. Stick to your role You wouldn’t go into a renowned restaurant and tell the chef how to cook the food, would you? So surely you wouldn’t hire a creative agency and then tell them how to come up with their concepts, but you’d be surprised how often this happens. Ask yourself this question: Does your business employ a Creative Director who is expertly skilled at identifying which embryonic creative idea is likely to have the most potential, who has the experience to keep the creative concept on track throughout the development phase and, crucially, who knows exactly how to land it? No, we didn’t think you did either because if you did, you wouldn’t need an agency in the first place. So, let them do the job you are paying them to do and you’ll get the best creative work.