The Right Way to Evaluate Creative in Advertising

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Peter S. Dawson on Marketing Strategy and Execution

6 min readJul 9, 2024

I Got Beaten Up Early So You Don’t Have To

Early in my career, I had an experience that terrified me, but forever shaped my approach to this ever-evolving business.

I was a young professional fresh out of college, eager to make my mark and found myself working on a significant campaign for The American Express Corporate Card at Wunderman, Cato, Johnson, an agency known for its smart and straightforward creatives and strategists. By that I mean, you’d better have it together when interacting with them.

Confidently, but not heeding the advice above, I put together what I thought was a passable creative brief for a smaller project. Rightfully and directly, a strategic planner tore it to shreds (figuratively thankfully), criticizing my half-hearted effort. She is still a hero.

The experience was humbling and, frankly, a wake-up call. From that day on, I understood the immense importance of a well-crafted brief. It wasn’t just a formality; it was the backbone of any successful campaign. That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career, underscoring the need for thorough, well-thought-out briefs.

In the fast-paced world of advertising and its collective ego, evaluating creative work can often feel like a firing squad coming from multiple directions. With so many subjective opinions and preferences at play, how can we ensure that our assessments are fair, objective, and aligned with the campaign’s goals? For the last 30 years, I have worked with some of the best creatives, researchers, analysts, planners, clients, and tacticians and have learned some things.

This blog outlines the key lessons I’ve learned along the way.

The Importance of Objectivity

Evaluating creative work objectively is paramount. While personal taste and subjective opinions can provide valuable insights, they should not dominate the evaluation process. Instead, the focus should be on how well the creative work aligns with the campaign objective, strategy, approach, and ultimately what will provoke the desired impact of your campaign.

The Creative Brief: Your Guiding Light

The foundation of any successful evaluation lies in the creative brief. This crucial document, which I insist on regardless of the project scope, outlines the strategy, objectives, target audience, key messages, and desired outcomes. A well-crafted brief serves as a benchmark against which all creative work is measured. It ensures that everyone involved in the project is on the same page and has a clear understanding of what success looks like. If you are designing a cocktail napkin for commerce, there needs to be a brief.

The Briefing Process: Collaboration from Start to Finish

An effective briefing process is essential for ensuring that the creative work aligns with the campaign goals. It is incumbent upon all subject matter experts (SMEs) and executives to be involved from start to finish, when relevant. Leadership should buy into your strategy and ensure the project remains strategically on-point. Not going to talk about managing up here, but their input is invaluable and essential in the process of large creative initiatives. Furthermore, obtaining buy-in from everyone on the brief before execution is crucial. This alignment ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page, which significantly helps in reducing subjectivity during the later stages of creative evaluation.

Leveraging Research and Analytics

Incorporating primary and secondary research, as well as analytics, into the creative brief process is crucial for creating informed and effective campaigns. Research provides the data-driven insights needed to understand the market, audience, and competitive landscape, leading to the key insight that your brief should drive home.

Primary Research: Conduct surveys, focus groups, co-creation labs, stakeholder interviews, or however you feel all key parties are represented and more importantly listened to. This qualitative data helps in understanding their needs, preferences, and pain points. Remember, qualitative research should be used to evolve ideas, not to shoot them down. I had a client once who hated green. Other than that quirk, he was a great client. Qualitative provides the nuanced understanding needed to create resonant and effective messaging. Quantitative is more of a go/don’t go approach. More on my love of primary research in a future blog, perhaps.
Secondary Research: Utilize existing reports, studies, and data from reputable sources to gain a broader understanding of the market and industry trends. This helps in identifying opportunities and threats, as well as benchmarking against competitors.
Analytics: Leverage transactional, engagement, and preference data, analytics, social media insights, and sales data to understand how your audience interacts with your brand and content. This quantitative data provides a solid foundation for setting realistic objectives and measuring success.
Feedback and Collaboration: Encourage constructive feedback and collaboration among team members. Diverse perspectives can help identify strengths and weaknesses that might be overlooked. It’s trite but true, the best questions and ideas can come from anyone, regardless of their title.

Conclusion

Evaluating creative in advertising doesn’t have to be a subjective exercise fraught with personal biases. By grounding your evaluations in a solid creative brief, involving key team members at crucial points, and focusing on objective criteria, you can ensure that every piece of work is aligned with your campaign goals and resonates with your target audience. Remember, the ultimate measure of success is how well the creative achieves its intended outcomes, not just how it looks or feels. I can’t count how many times when a brilliant creative test loses to an ugly control. It’s sad, but we move on with what works.

About Me

With over 30 years of experience in the advertising industry, I have led teams and worked on high-stakes campaigns for major clients like Delta Airlines, Southern California Edison, AARP, and American Express. My background spans across various facets of advertising, including strategy, research, and execution, providing me with a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to create and evaluate successful campaigns.

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