How to Get Buy-in for Important Marketing and Branding Initiatives

What’s the best way to get decision makers all on the same page when important marketing and communications outcomes are at stake? What can you do when design and branding decisions need to be made by a group – especially by a group of executives who don’t necessarily value the creative process?

It’s important to help people make connections.

A method is needed to help make the connection between the unspoken, emotional aspects of people’s feelings and perceptions about a company, product, or service, and the visual representation of it – a tricky thing to understand for most people.

The problem

Often, brands, logos, and graphics are created by outside marketing firms without executive level input, and are based on a designer’s interpretation of communication value. There is often a substantial gap between the designer’s natural understanding of the creative process and the lack of this understanding on the part of the individuals in the company who are purchasing the creative solution. This gap causes company management to relate to the visual representations on the surface, out of context, and with knee-jerk reactions—even if they understand the objectives used by the designer to develop the solution. In the absence of a process to bridge this gap, personal likes and dislikes are used to evaluate the appropriateness of the creative solution, as individuals have little else on which to base their reactions. When you’ve got a group of decision makers to satisfy, this is bad news. As everyone’s personal likes and dislikes are going to be different, coming to agreement can be very difficult.

The solution

The solution is to bring the people responsible for the approval and ultimate use of the visual solution into the creative process at the beginning and have them involved in the creative development. With the group’s participation, everyone’s input is prioritized and put into context, and relationships between graphic elements and their purpose can be explored. This process helps to bridge the communication gap and match specific objectives with visual interpretation and/or wording in a way that makes use of each person’s valuable insight about the organization, its products and/or services, and its objectives for the future. Understanding, agreement, and ownership are all outcomes of this method.

The process is relatively simple. An initial session can take between two and three hours to complete, depending on the amount of discussion that is a byproduct of the session.

When to use it

Obviously, you wouldn’t use this process for every marketing or communication project that comes across your desk. But for the larger ones, like branding your organization or major marketing campaigns, the addition of a process like this can save time and large amounts of resources in the long run, allowing you to avoid multiple expensive false starts.

How it works

There are three main parts of the session: 1.) determining where everyone stands at the start, in terms of understanding the objective and why it’s being undertaken, 2.) identifying everyone’s current perceptions regarding the objective, and 3.) identifying where the group wants to end up in terms of future perceptions for the initiative. After all of these elements are identified through exercises, discussion uncovers similarities and direction that can be agreed upon. These will be the basis for the creative direction.

The details

2 to 3-hour working session

Attended by everyone who has a voice in the outcome

No more than 25, no less than 4 attendees

Structure of the session is reviewed

Baseline Brainstorming — the group will participate in a working session to identify individual understanding of the objectives.

Current and Desired Perceptions — this two-part exercise helps to identify current and desired future perceptions of the initiative.

Emotional Tests — The group “reacts” to common graphic and communication elements as they relate to previously defined desired future perceptions. The group rates and categorizes communication elements for appropriateness for the initiative.

Summary and Review

Progress and direction are reviewed

Next steps defined

Results Report and Creative Development

Information gathered at this session is condensed and organized into a report for team approval of direction.

After approval of results report, creative conceptualization is begun by design team.

Group Assessment

Group critiques creative solutions

Direction approved, or

Feedback is given for further development

When embarking on major marketing or branding campaigns, organizations that take the time to lay the groundwork with this critical process will pave the way for group buy-in, saving time and large amounts of resources. It’s all about helping people make connections.