Evaluating creative work: brand leadership is not a democracy

Evaluating creative work usually ends in a vote. Everyone says what they notice, the opinions cancel each other out, and in the end the most senior person decides without anyone having named a standard. The problem is not that one person decides. That part is right. The problem is that the decision is dressed up as consensus, so nobody has to justify it.

• Evaluating creative work is not a consensus exercise. One person decides, and who that is should be settled before the presentation.
• Anyone evaluating creative work needs criteria. They do not replace the decision, they make it reviewable.
• Four criteria hold up in a team: the brief, recognisability, extendability, longevity.
• Feedback belongs to intent, not to detail.
• Consensus costs distinctiveness, because it reliably lands on the familiar.

Why evaluating creative work ends in a vote

The most common mistake happens before the presentation. If the brief contains no testable task, there is no standard, and without a standard every opinion carries the same weight. That is the point where evaluating creative work turns into a survey. Not because anyone wanted to be democratic, but because nothing else is left.

The second mistake is confusing liking with working. What pleases a room immediately is usually familiar, and familiarity is rarely an advantage in advertising. A group that votes reliably picks the route with the fewest objections, and that is almost never the most distinctive one. How strongly attention and emotional impact correlate with long term results has been documented by Les Binet and Peter Field for the IPA.

Who decides is settled before the presentation

Before the first route is shown, the room needs to know who decides. Not who was invited, not who has the most experience, but who passes judgement and stands behind it. That single clarification takes the edge off the meeting, because nobody has to compete for influence. Everyone else contributes observations, and observations can be collected without being weighed against one another.

Brand leadership is not a democracy at this point, and it should not be. A brand is a claim held up over years, and claims do not come out of majorities. What wins a vote is the lowest common denominator of the people present, which has nothing to do with the audience. The same question shows up between brand and sales, where the brand has to be able to say no at a few points, otherwise it negotiates itself away in small steps.

Evaluating creative work is therefore a question of responsibility, not of participation. I sit on both sides of that table regularly, as someone presenting work and as someone deciding on it. What I feared most as the presenting side was never a hard no. It was the room with no visible decision maker, the one you leave with five opinions and no direction.

Four criteria that make a decision reviewable

Criteria do not take the decision away from the person making it. They force that person to justify the judgement, and they give everyone else a language to contribute in without voting. Anyone evaluating creative work gets further with these four questions than with any round of opinions.

Does the work solve the brief?

Not: is it good? But: does it do what it was commissioned to do? A route that solves a different and possibly better problem is not a success, it is a signal that the brief was wrong. Both are worth naming, but separately.

Is the brand recognisable without the logo?

The simplest test in the room: cover the logo and ask who this could be from. If the answer is interchangeable, the work is doing a job for the category and not for the brand. This criterion is what makes evaluating creative work reviewable, because it forces an answer that has nothing to do with taste.

Can you build on it?

An idea that works exactly once is an execution. An idea that yields twelve more is a campaign. The difference decides the production cost of the coming seasons, and it is already visible in the room if somebody asks.

Will it last beyond one season?

Some work feels fresh at first sight and is used up three months later. The longevity question protects against decisions that get applause immediately and cost distinctiveness later. Anyone evaluating creative work has to hold that timeframe in mind.

How to phrase feedback that helps

Responses should attach to intent, not to detail. “The shot feels distant when we wanted closeness” is usable. “I do not like the picture” is not. The first contains a direction, the second only a verdict.

Order helps too when several people are evaluating creative work: restate the brief first, then go through the four criteria, and only then personal impressions. Put the impressions first and the meeting is lost before it starts.

It also helps to bundle the feedback. If five people answer individually, the result is a list of contradictory wishes that nobody can act on. One person collects, sorts by the four criteria and gives a single decidable response. That costs half an hour and saves a round. It is also the point where you find out whether the question of who decides was really settled.

What consensus costs

No set of criteria produces good work. It protects good work from being rejected for the wrong reasons, and that is the more common damage. The courage to decide stays a personal act that cannot be handed over to a form.

The alternative is more expensive than it looks. Evaluating creative work without deciding at the end produces consensus, and consensus reliably lands on the familiar. Familiarity looks like safety in the presentation. It is paid for later, in work that offends nobody and that nobody recognises either. What can actually be measured and what cannot is covered in the post on marketing metrics.

Evaluating creative work means passing judgement and standing behind it. The criteria make sure that judgement is traceable rather than decided by rank. They do not make it democratic. More posts on this sit in Creation & Storytelling.