Can a creative process really be optimised by an organised technology? Johann Butting at Slack looks at why, contrary to popular opinion, organisation can stimulate creativity rather than hamper it.
Creativity and being organised might sound like polar opposites – but they are actually just two sides of the same coin, especially for marketing professionals. Take internal structure and order out of the creative process and the productivity of marketing teams starts to unravel.
In fact, more than 20 percent of productive power within agencies is already lost to organisational drag. Whether that’s finding the list of participants at last year’s client kick off meeting, the latest version of the campaign activation plan, details on media buying activities or budget overviews – time is consistently wasted with unnecessary research every single day.
Admin can be hugely time consuming and it takes up too much time that could be spent on delivering more creative and impactful ideas to successfully target potential consumers. The marketing profession in particular faces a fundamental challenge: increasing efficiencies while also improving creativity. To streamline processes, many organisations aim to provide efficient, transparent and personal communication.
Managing the flood of information
Messaging tools, on the surface, can naturally build up this rapport. But agencies need to look beyond simple one-on-one interactions if they want to truly unlock the creative potential of their teams.
Using a workplace collaboration hub like Slack is the right way to go. These collaboration hubs will quickly become a modern knowledge database and a platform for almost unlimited brainstorming – and thus offer creative professionals in particular an ideal place to create, share and develop ideas.
To get teams organised and keep track of different tasks, the use of channels is perfectly suited to the fast-paced environment marketing professionals work in. For those more process-oriented, creating a #processes channel to host conversations about the different processes that go on within the business, can be helpful. Channels, in a way, help employees to build and compartmentalise tasks, allowing them to get in the zone for particular clients, and brainstorms.
As any creative professional will know, people often have the best ideas while being at home, hanging out with friends or – as the old adage has us believe – even in the shower. These spontaneous thoughts can be captured and shared in an #ideas channel, and then be discussed with colleagues at a later day.
The real power of these channels comes from the fact that they are public by default – so anyone can use the search function to get the information they need, regardless of when they joined the team. They instantly have access to the whole repository of knowledge related to a specific task or campaign. This fast tracks onboarding as it allows newcomers to the channel to get up to speed quickly on both current and historic knowledge around a specific campaign.
And if you don’t want to search for long, the Slackbot – Slack’s integrated and automated bot – helps you: It reacts to questions and uses AI to search for similar and already-answered questions, the document in question or for a specialist in this area that could help you. For sensitive and confidential information, however, a channel can also be set to “private” or professionals can set up private conversations with relevant individuals.
What lies ahead
Research by international market research and consulting company IDC has shown that marketing teams using platforms such as Slack have higher success rates across their campaigns. Teams have successfully reduced the time needed to plan and execute their campaigns by 16 per cent while increasing the number of campaigns per year by eight per cent.
These efficiencies are mainly down to streamlining the creative process for marketers, which is enhanced by the transparent communications, and quick exchanges. Empowering employees to communicate directly, smoothly and quickly means that less time is spent working out unnecessary details, and all teams are quickly aligned. For example, if a designer lacks a creative idea, a colleague that might not even be on the same team can make spontaneous suggestions that may help progress the campaign.
But can a creative process really be optimised by an organised technology? The answer is Yes! Creativity, and thus the success of marketing teams and entire marketing departments, will depend even more on networking and coordination in the future. Giving marketing professionals a space to share ideas when they arise and providing food for thought to their colleagues when they need it the most will be how marketing agencies of the future unlock their full creative potential.
By Johann Butting
Head of EMEA Sales
Slack