Creative Concept & Direction

Good ideas are not usually what fails, execution is

Creative direction is the work of keeping an approved idea intact through everything made from it, which is a governance job rather than an ideation one.

A campaign idea passes through writers, designers, photographers, editors and media teams. Every handover is a chance for the idea to be interpreted slightly differently until the output no longer resembles what was approved.

Wink defines the complete creative direction for a campaign so every deliverable belongs to the same piece of work.

What creative direction covers

Wink sets the standards every asset in a campaign is produced against.

• Art direction
• Tone of voice
• Visual language
• Photography and video direction
• Layout and composition standards
• Production guidance
• Asset review and approval

Direction is decided before production, not judged after it

Creative direction exists to be given, which means it has to be specific enough to brief people who were not in the room when the idea was chosen.

Vague direction produces work that has to be corrected in review, which is expensive, slow and demoralising for everybody involved.

Written direction with references and examples prevents most of that, because it converts taste into an instruction somebody can follow.

Tone of voice is direction too

Tone of voice defines how a campaign sounds, which is as decisive as how it looks and far more often left unspecified.

A visual direction with no verbal direction produces campaigns where the imagery is disciplined and the copy changes personality between assets.

For bilingual campaigns this is more demanding, since tone has to be defined for each language rather than translated across, which is where most bilingual campaigns lose consistency.

Art direction is what makes twenty assets look like one campaign

Art direction governs photography, video, layout, typography and composition so that assets produced separately still read as related.

The practical test is whether somebody seeing two deliverables without a logo would guess they belong together. If not, the campaign is a set of individual pieces.

This matters most under time pressure, when different suppliers produce different assets simultaneously and nobody is comparing them.

Review is part of the service, not an afterthought

Asset review and approval keep the direction enforced through production, which is where it is most likely to erode.

Every asset produced under deadline contains small compromises. Individually reasonable, collectively they move a campaign away from its direction without any single decision doing so.

Reviewing against the direction rather than against preference is what keeps that from happening.

When direction matters most

Creative direction is most valuable on campaigns with many deliverables, multiple suppliers or a long run time.

A single asset needs a brief. Forty assets across five channels over three months need a direction, or they will drift.

The cost of not having one is invisible at the time and obvious afterwards, when a campaign is reviewed as a whole and does not hold together.

Who creative direction is for

• Businesses running campaigns with many deliverables at once
• Companies briefing several agencies, freelancers or production partners
• Brands whose campaign assets do not look like they belong together
• Organizations running campaigns across more than one language
• Any campaign where the approved idea and the final output diverged

What creative direction connects to

Creative direction governs execution of ideas produced by creative concept development, both within creative campaigns.

It is applied across channels in integrated marketing campaigns, and its standards are executed by media production.

Where to start

Put your last campaign's assets side by side with the logos covered. Whether they still look related is the answer.