Why a clear, focused strategy drives more brilliant creative
It’s about depth over breadth.
The more focused a strategy the deeper you can go creatively on that singular point of view, over and over again, with new and different executions that bring it to life. It generates more possibilities, more iterations, more opportunities to find the breakthrough idea that changes how people see your brand.
The less focused a strategy, the more you end up dancing across the broad surface of multiple POVs with a breadth of superficial ideas. Creative energy gets diluted.
Creatives get put in this position many times throughout their careers. A marketing assignment starts with a vague, multi-layered strategy and the misguided hope that the creative will solve the rest. Usually this happens because brands fear commitment to one strategy or because honestly, it’s hard to understand what a strong, singular strategy actually is. Creatives go off and work against multiple strategies with one or two ideas against each. To cover the variety of possible angles, that’s as many as they can generate per. The result: more shallow ideas. When given one, clear, singular strategy, they go deep against that one strategy with 5, 8, 12 ideas, and of course, that leads to more unique, provocative ideas.
Focus allows them to go beyond the surface into the deep waters of creativity, where the most colorful ideas swim.
Focus also makes sure they get right to the business of creative ideas and don’t spend the first hours or days figuring out the strategy they believe is best before even starting.
Great creative rarely comes from the first idea. It comes from the seventh, tenth or fifteenth. It emerges after you've exhausted all the obvious approaches. A focused strategy allows teams to stay with a problem long enough to get there. It's simple math. Want to get to a great idea, have lots of ideas. And not buckshot across many strategic directions but drilled down deep into one. Creativity thrives on focus.
