Written by Tate Holcombe, Creative Director
One of the least understood aspects of building out creative plans is what not to include. What sorts of creativity does your campaign actually need? Do you really need 23 different lead gen ads? Or 6 different 15-second pre-roll ads? The answer is…maybe.
What you really need is a team that can help you trim down your plans to something that can be executed in a unified manner. In short, you need an award-winning creative team at your back. Having a unified creative plan where all of the pieces tell your story, in your voice, with your brand is exactly what we specialize in building. A big piece of that is helping decide when it’s time to cut a certain aspect of the plan so that another piece can get more attention, or have a larger budget put behind it. In addition, being able to put more resources into an ad set can mean that your creative team has either more time or resources, making it that much more effective.
When your video production team is in constant communication with the graphic design team, who is always talking with the copy-writers, your creative is inherently more unified and delivers your message more effectively. That unified team also allows your creative to know when some pieces are unnecessary or duplicative. While political campaigns always come down to name recognition and turn-out, there are times when some voters can be turned off by being overwhelmed with the number of mail pieces, tv ads, or Facebook posts that constantly populate feeds.
One way to avoid this fatigue is to leverage your more effective creative. Knowing what pieces of content can be axed, or in some cases combined, can make every dollar you spend that much more effective. Effective ads need to be a combination of who you are, what problem you’re solving, and why the other guy can’t solve that. Sometimes the negative ad is going to work, other times people need to see your face and name so they know who is getting their vote. But it’s the balancing act that gets tricky, especially when you have to manage all the other moving parts of your campaign. Having a balanced approach to your creative campaign allows for flexibility when issues arise or when new challengers arrive or when the political landscape shifts quickly. A nimble campaign is one that isn’t weighed down with piles of unnecessary creative pieces.
At the end of the day, building a creative plan that increases your name recognition or issue awareness comes down to what you don’t say. Pushing the best and most effective advertisements and creative means working with a team that knows how to craft a creative plan that provides enough creative to win, but not enough to overwhelm and fatigue. Keep your campaign’s creative balanced, nimble, and don’t be afraid to make the cut.
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