Cameron Roberts uncovers how agencies are approaching the creative process in an age of increasing budget constraints.
Talk about agencies and the conversation inevitably will turn to the creative brilliance of many events that they organise. Whether it is a showpiece event like Identity delivering the New Year’s Eve fireworks in London, or a bespoke delivery, agencies are often at the cutting edge of what it means to deliver a truly unique event.
Something else that crops up in hushed whispers when discussing the events sector, is budget. The costs of delivering an event on any scale are increasing, with staffing issues, energy prices and the cost of materials, all playing a part in tightening profit margins in our sector. So the question is, how do agencies continue to deliver creative events under these conditions?
To find out, I spoke to: Peter Trapnell, creative director, TRO; David Crease, creative director, Wonder; Andrew Perrott, managing director, Chorus; Roberts Andersen, creative services director, Identity; and Dan Colborne, creative director, Identity.
Creative constraints
Surmounting the hurdle of the budget is not always an easy task for the creative minds at agencies, with the pressures on commerciality often being caused by global-level economic trends, not least including the recovery from the pandemic and the global supply chain.
It’s not just the economics of events that present a challenge now either, now an event has to be mindful of sustainability, inclusivity and community, to name just a few. While these factors are critical for event success, they require investment to get right.
Dan Colborne, creative director, Identity, said: “I think there’s a lot of changes in this world, that everyone’s mindful of. Even a simple question like how many people should we be inviting to a conference? That has massive implications and raises questions like what is the green footprint? What does that mean for carbon offsets? Because of these top-line issues, it means that we’ve got to be smarter and more flexible in our delivery of creativity.”
Clients are also becoming more aware of these external pressures. David Crease, creative director, Wonder, said: “I think at the moment, a brief or an initial client conversation almost starts tentatively and a little bit apologetically – about budgets, about global perception, about not trying to look too brash, about not trying to appear too flamboyant.
“Ultimately, we’re in the events industry. As agencies, we want to put on something effective, whether that’s to be impressive, or showy, or exciting, or whatever the right tone is. But we’re all in it to do something interesting.”
But there are solutions to the budget question. For Andrew Perrott, managing director, Chorus, it’s all about the core strength of the idea that an agency’s creative team is bringing to the table.
He said: “If budget is a challenge, that doesn’t necessarily need to dilute the idea, because the idea exists in so many different guises. Our briefs used to be about a big production, whereas now it’s about an integrated campaign. I think if you’re staying true to an idea, it shouldn’t necessarily need a massive investment.”
Peter Trapnell, creative director, TRO, echoed this idea-centric way of thinking, but also focused on how this can streamline the time investment from the agency side, making the creative process more cost-effective. He said: “I think currently we are working with an ideas-first strategy, which means that we don’t invest early in design time, visuals, all that kind of stuff.
“Early on in a pitch process, we might go in with just the idea, we have got our strategy, our data and the idea. So that a pitch might not absorb so much time within the business so that we can be focusing on the other work.”
A changing role
A theme that constantly came up in my conversations with the creative leads of agencies, was the changing definition of creativity. Far from being restricted to a design-led pitch, it’s now much more about creative problem-solving and reaching a solution to a client’s stated goals.
For Colborne, this all ties into the economics of an event and how agencies are increasingly becoming more influential in clients’ overall strategies. He said: “We’re in a commercial world, right? So, we have to push boundaries within the understanding of where budgets are. We’re not like agencies of the past, I think we’re a lot more cognizant of how the creative and the commercial reflect each other. We tend to look at it, rather than just what the brief is, but actually what the brief could become if we look at it as a longer-term solution.”
Colborne’s fellow Identity creative, Robert Andersen, creative services director, emphasised the importance of bringing in wider teams into the creative process. He said: “I think understanding how best to represent a brief creatively starts with a very loose interpretation and a sketch and a conversation. At that point, we share that vision with all the other departments, project management, production, creative technologists, digital and so on.
“We do this to get the scope on how we can deliver and to get different perspectives. That way we can pitch a solution to a customer, but also try and extend it to the vision that you see.”
With all this additional scope to come under a creative team, it means many agencies will have to change mindsets in how they integrate creative event professionals into deliveries. Crease said: “I think the scrutiny is so much harder on creative, now the ideas have been much more about addressing targets, achieving goals and getting a specific reaction out of a specific audience. So, the conversation absolutely starts with an understanding of the strategy.
“Creativity is far more wide-ranging and wide-reaching these days, that’s a good thing. It now encompasses so much more than just design, it’s the transport of the food, the email invite, it’s just absolutely every detail.”
Andersen pointed out how Identity have brought the focus on creative and adopted this change of mindset to benefit clients. He said: “I think that creativity has to be the thing that is at the front of every engagement. No one looks behind the stand and they think, right, okay, so I’ve got triple brackets everywhere, it’s all about what is in front of me that makes me want to dive into this place because there are some interesting products here. That’s all wrapped around creativity, but it doesn’t have to be flashing lights and amazing, it just needs to be beautiful and you need to see yourself in the experience.”
Working to a client’s stated goals and integrating a business into a pitch are new solutions to make an experience stand out. This ties into the cost implications of creativity, by being more agile in approaching a brief, agencies have more freedom to come up with budget-friendly ideas to achieve company aims.
Perrott explained how creativity served his agency in this way. He said: “We’ve often challenged or interrogated briefs, and they’ve changed radically and probably achieved a far better result. It’s not about us suggesting that it needs to be a bigger budget for us to work with. It’s us focusing on the primary result that provides the most value. Because ultimately, if it’s successful for that brand, then they will keep coming back to us in future.
“Creative doesn’t need to be a beautifully designed piece of content or icon, it might be a creative way of scoping out the brief. Clients these days are so well-informed and so capable, they’re open to all these different options. So, the strength of the idea is what matters. It’s having confidence in the idea, the message it’s sending and how you’re approaching it still being valid and true. Then it doesn’t need to be wrapped up in an expensive box, it can just be an idea.”
Foster the people
With the role of creativity ever-changing and becoming more vital than ever, it’s becoming harder to create an environment to foster this lateral thinking toward projects. After all, setting targets to ‘think creatively’ is unlikely to garner the intended result.
For TRO, time is the key factor, Trapnell said: “We’re going through the process of building back up the team, and then hopefully shortly we will have a better structure in the team so that there will be times when the staff can focus on creativity.
“Hopefully, they will have a bit more time to breathe and think, because the creative process and the process of worrying about money don’t often sit in the same sphere. Some of the ideas people do need clear blocks of time to come up with creative solutions.”
At Wonder, freedom is the way forward early on in the process. Crease said: “Creative minds are notoriously hard to steer. You never want to constrict anyone’s creative thinking, you want to allow them, at least at the early stages of the creative process, to go slightly wild.
“If time allows and the pressures aren’t so much on you, I think the best thing to do is to allow people to interpret a brief and a challenge in their own way, because everyone in every creative approaches things slightly differently with influences from different areas of interest, everyone is going to come up with a different answer.
