Throughout my career, great work has always started with a great creative strategy. Every agency I worked for had their own version of this document. It was viewed as absolutely non-negotiable to start a project without a creative strategy.
The best creative strategy forms had you fill in the various parts, writing from the user’s perspective. This was great because, at the foundational strategy phase, you had to think and speak like those you were hoping to engage.
At the heart of the creative strategy was the most critical section titled, “What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)?” As you might guess, this is where you crafted a statement that would become the most compelling reason your audience should care about what you were saying or offering. Since it was written from your audience’s point of view, it had a better chance of preventing the WIIFM from being too self-serving to the brand or too vague. Putting it in their language challenged you to make it authentic.
Speed kills.
The pace of business today makes your head spin when compared to the pre-online world. While there are many good things that come with that pace, I have noticed the disappearance of the creative strategy. Oh, it still appears with the big initiatives. But, back in the day, a strategy was created for just about any new piece of creative.
