Here’s some tips on how to get the best creative marketing work from any designer or advertising agency.

Providing a clear, focused brief is the best way to ensure that you communicate the right message for your brand.

The first answers to any question are usually the obvious, standard ones. In order to broaden our thinking, it’s some times necessary to eliminate the safe answers and probe further to get more meaningful insight.

If you’re a small business, you may need to write your own copy for various marketing pieces. Whether it’s a social media post or a flier or maybe even an ad now and then.

What if instead of asking to make the logo bigger in ads, what if we asked our designers and agencies to make them smaller?

If you work in new business for an ad agency, design firm, social media consultancy, etc., I’m sure you’ve come across a prospect that contacts you and says, “I’m looking for new ideas on marketing my business.”

Having worked both on the agency and client side, here are some thoughts on how to get the most from your agency.

…you have to get out of the kitchen.

The key to advertising is being able to tell compelling messages about your product that customers care about in a creative format.

They are not trying to ruin your creative. They are not perpetually toothless, timid or trivial. They have no deep-seated desire to undermine the agency. They do not secretly wish to do mediocre work.

Ads that don’t run, don’t matter.

Every week, I share a marketing tool that can help you in developing new ideas for your marketing. Typically, I provide step-by-step exercises. But they’re based on a few core frameworks.

I came across this post with a collection of unique and creative answers kids have written on their school tests. First of all, a lot of them are pretty hilarious and show the depth of understanding of the material beyond the “correct” answer. But it also got me thinking about the nature of creativity.