Tips for Getting the Best Work from Creative Vendors

Whether you’re managing an internal creative team or hiring a creative firm as a supplier, there are a few simple things you can do to improve the quality of work being produced.

1. Be transparent

Be transparent about your desired short term and long term outcomes, and why they are important to you and your audience.

Understanding “why” we are doing something or how we are helping you and the end user is very important, it motivates us, and drives us to make remarkable things. A clear vision and purpose helps us weather fatigue and revisions.

2. Overcommunicate

Overcommunicate about your audience and how the work will be used.

Every detail matters. To design the best possible work for the situation, we need all of the relevant information, especially about the audience.

For example, when and how are they using the product? What’s important to them? What are their goals?

You may be the only one with this information, but it is essential to share to help guide the many small incremental creative decisions that must be made every day leading to the final deliverable that you shouldn’t need to be involved in.

Set a clear direction with the audience and your goals as the guiding star.

3. Maintain a constructive dialogue about the work

Keep regular project communication open, honest and helpful.

Feedback should always be constructive and descriptive enough to be useful, without being overly prescriptive. Creatives need a balance of constraints and space to experiment. Too many constraints, and the work is likely to turn out bland, too much space to play and you risk drifting out of scope.

By establishing healthy communication norms as equal thought partners, you can increase the likelihood of the engagement being successful and something you are all proud of and excited about.

4. Trust your instincts, but stay open minded

Expanding on the note above, always share when something isn’t landing with you and explain what is not feeling right in descriptive terms. Remember that you understand your context and audience more deeply than they do, so they may just be missing important information.

Ask them about their rationale behind the creative decision and see what’s driving it. Be open to their point of view, especially if they are an outside company, they may see something you don’t and this is a valuable part of the engagement for both parties to learn something new. Often, you’ll meet in the middle with a better solution than either of you would have come up with on your own!