Havas Village — Why this model works (A creative’s perspective)

Media people, how many times have you had a great media idea that the client’s creative agency just CANNOT execute because its ‘not in our scope’ or ‘it doesn’t flow with our vision’?

Creative people, how many times have you had an amazing creative idea only to be met with media folks who ‘just don’t get it’ or aren’t creative enough to suggest innovative media placements / formats?

The pain is real…

What if I told you it doesn’t have to be like that? What if I told you there’s a way for media and creative team to work together cohesively?

Well that model already exists and its call, the HAVAS VILLAGE!

The Havas Village is a very simple concept. You have a creative team on one hand and the media team on the other hand, clap them together, boom!

As a media guy I personally know the benefits of having close open communication channels with the creative team, or at least I know how frustrating it can be NOT having that open communication.

So I caught up with the creative directors from Havas Chicago and here’s what I learned!

Benefits of a Village model

• Ideas come from anywhere, there can be creative lead ideas, or there can be media lead ideas
• There is less sensitivity when it comes to sharing ideas because everyone works for the same team
• You are more likely to hit the Goldilocks zone, where execution serves clients’ objectives and there’s no creative dilution
  (More likely, but it’s still rare, obviously)
• You form a more pleasant partnership because there’s less disconnect between Media objectives and Creative objectives
• Imagine you have an idea you thought of before the meeting. And now you need to sell it in to media before they can support you on it during the meeting. That’s only possible when you have each others’ backs like you do in a Village

Creative process within Havas Chicago

(WIP)To be very honest, the folks here at Havas Chicago have a very good process which is probably why the Village model is even possible in the first place

• Brief is taken by creative strategy team and media team
• The then distill the brief to the strategy team, including inputs such as mandatory deliverables e.g. 30s TVC or Digital Banners
• The creatives then go about their own brainstorm for generate ideas
  (Media does their own ground work)
• Both creative and media meet up to share findings and ideas. Media comes in to help creative find viable formats, placements, or any ideas to help make the creative come to life. Creative comes in to amplify the selected formats, placements or ideas based on TA’s media consumption habits.
• This process goes back and forth a little but each exchange takes the team a step closer to the ideal final executions / ideas
  (Collaborative, instead of nonconstructive)
• During presentations, both media and creative will be together to support each other. IF the idea is creative heavy, creative presents the concept, if idea is media integrated, BOTH media and creative will present the concept.
  (Have different complementary perspectives probably helps the client see the full picture as well)
• Creative optimization comes next where extra steps are taken to ensure maximum effectiveness. The team creates multiple variations of the approved creative concept for testing. If its a video, they test animatics before going into full production, if its digital banners, they get tested live before rotating the lower performing ones out.
• All learnings from previous campaigns gets funneled back into the next campaign as additional creative guidelines

What I like about the process is the level of close collaboration and cross sharing that happens. Its also a process that fundamentally built of learning and optimization instead of finger point and blaming.

If you know who they are you’re probably older than I am (Village People, you know, YMCA?)

What’s I feel are the important criteria for a successful Village

1. Strengths of Creative and Media groups have to be on par. Why would clients want to support the Village if one group is weaker than the other?
2. Both groups need to understand that they serve as valuable resources to each other. e.g. If creative has a crazy idea, they should be open to sharing it with media to test feasibility. If media has a new format to recommend, they should share that with creative to see if they can expand on it.
3. Everyone needs to recognize that we are all on the same team! The typical ‘competitive’ nature of working with an external partner should be tossed out the window.
4. Client needs to be trained to manage multiple POCs because the Village model opens up the client to a large suite of direct resources as well

Thanks for reading, more fun and serious stuff coming up!
- Chintheman