When you consider multiple communication channels from the start, your campaign design will coalesce into a seamless experience where the elements complement each other. This ensures effective and recognizable communication of your product, message and brand across channels. If this isn't considered from the start, you run the risk of some of the channels feeling "forced" or tacked on to the campaign. All channels have their own strengths and weaknesses, so by thinking 360° from the start, you can make the best use of each channel and let them play well together. By considering all channels from the start, you will also be able to reuse several graphic elements across channels.
A good and thorough brief allows your team to prepare in the best possible way: it gives the graphic designer a chance to use their years of experience to anticipate potential problems and head them off - or avoid them altogether. It allows your creative team to make recommendations for alternative and possibly more cost-effective solutions when they are involved in the vision from the start. At the same time, a good brief will ensure that the client's core message is communicated most effectively and continuously across all channels. And it will also crystallize the vision for the task and the final output so that the outcome is aligned with the expectations of the entire team.
By finalizing and approving a master version before the actual production starts, you can save a world of time. A master version can be your guide throughout production to avoid time-consuming mistakes later on. This is because a master version takes you through the entire workflow from start to finish and allows you to thoroughly test all the technical aspects along the way. You'll have 100% mapped out your pipeline before production starts. You also give the customer a concrete example of a finished product that they can approve - and which you can then use to check the rest of your versions
against as a quality check. A finalized master version can also be used and tested as a litmus test for the communication and collaboration itself, that there is a huge deadline breathing down both your necks. And when that deadline approaches, the whole team will be much better prepared for feedback and any challenges in the process.
There's an old saying that "things take time - what takes no time takes fifteen minutes". It seems obvious to say that "you have to plan in detail". Yet time and time again we see jobs where there is no time planned for customer feedback or approval from your own organization.
For best results, you should schedule time for feedback and approval in the manager's calendar so that the job can be done in peace and quiet. This avoids the awful type of deadline process where feedback comes too late and the project "doesn't have to be good, it has to be finished".
If your employees are hired for their strategic or creative skills, it's a waste of resources to use them to produce and version your campaigns. It may make sense to outsource the more repetitive parts of your production so your internal team can focus on strategy, vision and development. Otherwise, you risk wasting precious creative hours on operational production tasks that could have been used to create more value.
