“>What’s The Real Key To Finding Your Muse?

(A three part series on the process and how to separate the purest wheat from the finest chaff)

Setting the Table…

This is a subject near and dear to our hearts about an often lengthy, sometimes bumpy process that goes on literally everyday. Clients looking for fresh thinking or support in the launch of a new product or brand, or attempts to fix a business in decline will send out RFPs and so the winnowing race begins. Sometimes it can feel like a crapshoot for everyone.

Client decision makers walk into a process (in the midst of pressing everyday business priorities) that from the get-go with can be vexing and mysterious. Agencies, too, have a love/hate relationship with the whole thing: love the hunt and the strategic challenge but hate the vagueness implied in a search process and the inevitable giveaway of their intellectual property product.

Not surprising is the general nod with some regularity to a fairly routine line-up of selection criteria such as relevant previous category experience, chemistry, listening skills, strategic chops, planning process, creativity, people power/bench strength and so on. Still there’s a sense of risk involved or so it seems and therefore often an assignment (tell us how you would launch Brand X) is arrayed on the table to put agencies into action so their process and outcomes can be vetted. And from a distance mind you!!

Flaw in the ointment…

All is well and good except every business is deeply unique, and the entire procedure is at once three miles wide and a half-inch deep. It is unavoidably the nature of the beast. This can result in ideas that, while innovative on the surface, are wrong for the brand. This is not due necessarily to lack of due diligence from the agency but more about proximity. No one knows the other all that well. Even with briefs and data dump meetings, many assumptions will be made on both sides that could be right, could be wrong.

Is there a better way?

Yes!!