If someone says that their creative and marketing teams work in harmony, know that they are lying to your face. These two types of people are like oil and water. They simply don’t get along. They are trained to look differently at a certain situation and have completely different mindsets to approach a problem. Marketers are trained to measure all objectives while designers have a “vision” that is often intangible.
So how do you, as a business leader, get the most out of these two groups of people? How do you bring harmony and peace between them? How do you strike the perfect balance?
Together, from concept to execution
Get designers and marketers to work on a project right from conception till execution. Instead of marketers giving “client briefs” to designers, let designers be a part of client meetings. Let the design team visualize the tangibles – target market, buyer persona, message and its tone, etc.
The false sense of marketers that makes them “stay in control” of client relationships could be a precursor to a lot of bad blood between the two teams. Getting designers to participate in client meetings will ensure that they better understand client needs and be prepared to achieve them.
Communication is the key
They have to work towards achieving measurable results. The design team, on the other hand, works in a more “loose” environment. Their vision is subjective. Communication between the two teams will create an appreciation of the marketer’s need to achieve tangible results and the designer’s interest in aesthetics and offering the best user experience.
Create a smooth process for amendments
Clients will demand changes and amendments to the designs at one stage or another. They will communicate this to the marketer who has to be the messenger to the designer. Most often than not, these are the reasons for hostilities between the two teams. Again, communication is key. Marketers may feel that designers lack practical focus while designers feel that the amends will alter the quality of the final product.
The biggest problem is when designers feel that the amends are arbitrary and impulsive. To avoid this make sure that you have a well-documented strategy for amendments. Every communication between marketer and client with regards to amendments needs to be documented and shared with the designer. Any specific amends request must be written and shared with the designer. Opinion of the designer should be communicated in writing to the client. No communication should be casual and undocumented, lest it becomes open to misunderstandings.
Think of the customer
Instead of creating friction between each other, each team should think of the final target – the customer. Each team can gain immensely from their perspectives of the customer. While the designer knows how to wow the customer, the marketer knows what the customer wants. The two can communicate better to bring the best to the customer.
Tap the commonalities
Apart from these, both start from the same place of wanting to meet the client’s needs. Both conceptualize and examine several strategies during the process. Every good designer appreciates good marketing and vice versa. Tap into these points and find common ground for each team to appreciate and acknowledge the other’s skills and talents.
Acknowledge differences and appreciate roles
Contradictory as it may sound, the two teams need to acknowledge and celebrate their differences. You don’t want your designers to be bogged down by market statistics and restrain them. You would not want your marketing team to lose focus of the ultimate target. Each team has its specific skills. It is best to let them use these innovatively.
Marketers and designers have a different set of pressures to deal with. Each person has their own constraints and scope of work. Appreciation of each other’s roles will bring about respect and cohesion.
How marketers can improve
- By giving better and consistent feedback. A survey indicated that less than 30% creatives said they received timely, consistent and clear feedback.
- By staying within the scope. Explain the entire scope at the outset and avoid going out of the initial scope.
- Be clear with project briefings and stick to them. A good brief should include – a) the problem you are solving, b) the target audience, c) media being targeted, and d) your intended audience’s reaction.
- Share credit with designers.
- Set clear timelines. With firm, realistic deadlines, the entire process is streamlined.
- See designers not as artists, but as problem solvers. Designers respond to a need and create a solution to make lives better.
How designers can improve
- Staff adequately. More than 60% creatives said that they look at outside resources to complete a project. This may lead to fractured communication and disrupted timelines.
- Anticipate problems and follow a transparent process.
- Follow the brief and ask questions if you don’t understand anything.
- Do not look at marketing ideas with disdain. If marketers suggest a direction, look at it closely to see its merits.
How the “Design and Build” model won’t work anymore
A simplified take at the procedure would be that they will perform market research and ask customers what features they would like to have. Then they would prepare a PRD, or Product Requirements Document, and hand it over to the design (or engineering) team. If that would have been the case at Apple, the iPhone would never have come out!
An iPhone is a radically new product that has brought a paradigm shift in the way a smartphone is made. At Apple, Steve Jobs made it clear what products would be built at Apple. It was not a decision to be taken by either marketing or engineering. It was taken much above them. He didn’t care about focus groups and marketing departments and market surveys and consensus opinions. That is how the iPhone came into existence; not an existing phone with better features.
And yet, I am not downgrading the value of the marketing department or making false gods out of designers. Unfortunately, designers are trained to look at themselves as a breed over and above the rest. They are trained to pay obeisance to artistic sensibilities while caring less than a penny for the client’s requirements. That designers simply “don’t listen” to the client or the demands of the marketplace is one reason that puts them in conflict with the marketing team.
So what do good designers do? They listen. They know when to follow suggestions and when to hold on to their own. A good marketer needs to appreciate when to suggest and when to shut up. Ignoring consensus doesn’t always lead to building of an iPhone. Brands like Apple are a rarity. And look what is happening to them after Jobs.
Design thinking – The Golden Mean
Design thinking, or design strategy, is a way in which both the design and marketing teams can work on new product development, business strategy and marketing problems. This holistic approach can iron out the traditional problems between the two teams and help them achieve their combined goals.
So how is design thinking different from the traditional marketing thinking? Developed by IDEO founder David Kelley, it is defined as “human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
Marketing thinking sees people as an aggregate to allow efficient communication. Design thinking, on the other hand, sees people as individuals so that you wow one and extrapolate the results to the rest. In design thinking, it is the customer that drives the state of the business – current and future. This means that the customer has to be central to everything the business does and should be an integral part of the product lifecycle.
Design strategy looks at starting at the user and working backwards from end-use. This type of design strategy is also termed “human-centered.” Finally, as mentioned earlier, the end goal is to create a product for the customer, wouldn’t it be worthwhile if the entire process of product creation revolves round the customer?
Takeaway
Finally, marketers and designers aren’t all that different. Both of them are creators. While designers create the blueprint for an awesome product, what good would it be without a meticulously planned and innovative marketing campaign?
A great marketer has at least a working knowledge of how design works and its limitations. They are the touch points of an organization with its audience. They understand client requirements; they are responsible for consistency in communication and they create milestones and generally oversee the process of product creation.
A strong designer, on the other hand, has a working knowledge of marketing strategies and is aware of the psychology of the audience and what appeals to them. A designer is receptive to the client’s needs, budgetary constraints and avenues of use and focuses his creation accordingly.
The perfect balance is achieved only when the two people understand and appreciate each other’s work. Each team has the successful selling of the product and ultimately, the growth of the company as its final objective. Both have the same goals of pleasing viewers and visitors and turning them into buying customers. How to achieve this will always be colorfully debated across boardrooms around the world. And yet, just the right amount of soap solution is enough to mix oil and water together.
Avinash Nair is a Digital Marketer at E2M, one of India’s fastest growing Digital Marketing Agency committed to meeting the highest ethical standards of digital marketing strategies and drive sustainable business growth. He is responsible for SEO and Social Media Marketing Services. You can find him on Twitter: @AviNair52
