How to add value in creative reviews

If you work in a creative agency, you know you're doing a good job if you're in a lot of creative reviews. It means your work is unlocking more work actual real people will get to see. Which is the real endgame there.

But while creative reviews are fun, they should also feel rigorous. You're there to help everyone people make thoughtful decisions. But how do you do this, when it's not your job to actually decide which work goes ahead?

Here are some questions that have helped me over the years.

Conceptual questions

• "Where's your energy right now?"
  (Creative teams will need sustained energy to protect the work.)

• "How would we describe the big idea?"
  (It's easy and natural to get lost in detail, help people zoom out.)

• "Is there a simpler way of describing it?"
  (There often is, and it emerges after 2-3 conversations.)

• "What is the single best way to sell this to clients?"
  (Buy-in is as importance as brilliance, never forget that.)

• "How do we make it feel real?"
  (Whether you like it or not, clients respond to specifics.)

Audience questions

• "What do we think the audience will notice in this?"
  (Always assume they have 3 other things distracting them.)

• "What do we think they will take away from this?"
  (They will take out no more than 1-2 things at best.)

• "Why should they believe what we're saying?"
  (Impact, communication and persuasion, always in that order.)

• "Do we feel this solves their problem?"
  (Always represent a clear problem to solve.)

• "Why would real people talk about this?"
  (Talk value is a good proxy for audience interest.)

• "Why would journalists write about this?"
  (Earned media coverage is a good proxy for talk value.)

• "Why would creators riff on this?"
  (Remixability is also a powerful proxy for talk value.)

Brand questions

• "What's the explicit message?"
  (Your job is to help reduce comms to the bare necessities.)

• "What's the implicit message?"
  (Media signals and creative craft are powerful body language.)

• "What does this say about the brand?"
  (You're in the reputation management business.)

• "How would people interpret this in the best possible way?"
  (What you say is not always what people take away.)

• "How would people interpret this in the worst possible way?"
  (Er, what you say is not always what people take away.)

• "What's stopping our biggest competitor from doing this?" (Sometimes the right answer is 'we did it first' and that’s enough.)

Oh, and avoid leading with "is it disruptive enough". Over the last decade we became obsessed with being disruptive. But our job is to be charming. Don't disrupt people's lives, give them entertainment value. That simple.

The above questions are not ways to dictate what the right answer is. They're ways to facilitate the conversation among the team as a whole. They are not super smart questions. Then again, that was never the point.