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Many of the best marketing campaigns use deep insights to drive big ideas, but syncing strategy
and creative isn’t always easy. Heat’s New York chief creative and lead strategist discuss how
they partner across disciplines to drive meaningful change for clients.

It doesn’t matter how clever, funny, novel, or award-winning ad creative
is; if it doesn’t help brands achieve their business objectives, it’s likely
a waste of time and budget. That’s the common sense credo that

guides Heat New York’s Evan Slater, chief creative, and Maggie Gross, head of strategy, as they
develop multichannel campaigns for the agency’s clients.

To ensure the agency’s creative output delivers against clients’ strategic goals, Slater and Gross
collaborate as closely as a traditional copywriter-art director team would. The two sit across from
one another at a shared desk, discussing, deliberating, and iterating concepts from the earliest
stages of the creative process. “If we approach creative and strategy in a more integrated way, it
enables us to develop campaigns that have a more meaningful impact on business outcomes—
that aren’t just creative for creative’s sake,” Slater says.

In this Q&A, Slater and Gross discuss their approach to client work, how their teams collaborate,
and what skills today’s creatives and strategists need.

How are brands and their agencies approaching marketing creative today? Where is there
room for improvement?

Slater: Consumers are inundated with content and messaging of all kinds, and it’s increasingly
difficult to be heard above the din. In this environment, it’s critical for marketers to understand
how to reach consumers in a more powerful way at the exact moment they are most open to
hearing from a brand. Yet, as marketers, we continue to approach creative and its delivery in a
very myopic way, thinking only in terms of media channels—TV, print, radio, online, and the
occasional event or experience. Many of the conventions by which the industry still abides are
antiquated; a 15- or 30-second TV spot isn’t the only solution. These forms of communication
absolutely are still vital, but they may not be the answer to every marketing question.

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Align Strategy, Creative for Effective
Advertising

Evan Slater and Maggie Gross

We strive to think about creative more broadly, understanding what’s important to a company—
whether it’s immediate sales, brand equity, or some other objective—and identifying the right
channels accordingly. When we think more strategically and creatively about larger business
goals, we see much broader opportunities to connect with customers. There are many parts of
any business—the call center, product packaging, logistics, front-line employees—that ultimately
affect the brand and the way the customer experiences it. By putting strategy at the core of
everything we do, we can identify new, more effective, less expected places to reach people. We
can then apply creative resources to those areas—in addition to campaigns in other media
channels—to reach consumers in a more integrated, meaningful way.

What is your approach to the creative process? How do you make it more strategic?

Gross: We start by discussing business problems, not channel problems. Clients often approach
agencies with a channel brief—a request to create a TV commercial or a social campaign, for
example. We’d much rather have a conversation about the broader business needs, because that
often leads us to suggest a different channel or method that ultimately can be more effective.

From there, we take a very collaborative approach. At many agencies, the strategy team will work
on a brief and then hand it off to the creative team, which works on it before presenting it to the
client. There are variations on that process, but too often the handoffs between disciplines result
in a disconnect between the business need and the creative output.

How do you avoid that disconnect?

Slater: We’re in constant communication throughout the entire process. We work together to
discuss data insights that could feed creative strategies. There’s no big reveal, where Maggie and
her team present their vision to my team or vice versa. This doesn’t mean we’ve merged the
disciplines; our strategists and creatives still have specific responsibilities and are specialists in
what they do. But they work together with a unified goal in mind—solving that business problem.
Business insights are part of the creative; there’s no divide where one starts and the other one
ends.

When hiring, what skills and experience are you seeking?

Gross: For strategists, we look for people who have a solid understanding of quantitative data
and can generate ideas based on it. That’s mandatory, because an idea that’s not rooted in data
is just a hope. For more experienced hires, we look for candidates who understand how to use
analytical techniques such as regression analysis.

As for previous experience, we want candidates who have worked in brand, digital, or
communications strategy. The more of those boxes they can check, the better. Those might be
high expectations, but we’ve found that strategists are happier when their ideas can have a
broader impact because they’re relevant across channels.

Slater: We look for creatives with expertise in more than one channel, and with tonal range—
people who can create work that is funny, heartfelt, inspiring, or whatever the brief requires. We
want people who are willing to figure out new processes and who understand that every time they
get a client brief, the answer may be different.

With your teams working in such close partnership, are there ever disagreements?

Gross: All the time—but that push-pull makes the work stronger and ensures it delivers on the
client’s objectives. If a strategy isn’t broad enough to give the creative team the leeway it needs,
the team lets us know. And if a creative’s idea isn’t based on the insights we’ve determined will
drive the client’s business, we work through it. Collaborating so closely allows us to discover new
opportunities as part of the creative process. We validate ideas as we go, rather than using the
original brief as a creative guillotine. Effective advertising is equal parts data-driven insights and
inspired ideas—having an ongoing partnership between a strategist who’s thinking about the
business and a creative who’s in lockstep.

November 15, 2017, 12:01 am

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