Planners and creatives in Asia consider their partnership to be important – but there is room for improvement.
According to Andreas Krasser, Chief Strategy Officer at DDB Hong Kong, the marriage between agency creatives and strategists is probably in need of some relationship therapy – but there’s still reason for optimism.
In his own survey of more than 100 advertising planners and creatives across Asia, more than 95% of creatives and strategists considered the relationship between the functions to be either important or very important. (For more, read WARC’s report: Planners and creatives in Asia: A happy marriage?)
“To me, that's really good news because it means this relationship has a chance,” he said at the AD STARS event in Busan, South Korea. “We can save this marriage, hopefully.
“The most common theme that came out of this is really the need for each other. A lot of strategists said, ‘We need creatives to do our job’; a lot of creatives also said, ‘We need strategists to do our job’.
Krasser’s results, which he stressed were unscientific, reflect previous studies in which strategists, in general, felt more positive toward creatives than vice versa.
“For the strategists, it was fairly positive. Forty-nine per cent said very good, and 6% even said that their previous relationships with creatives were excellent,” Krasser reported.
“Only 32% of the creatives said their previous relationships with strategists were very good. And only 4.8% said they were excellent.”
Among some creatives, there was a perception that planners and strategists that come from a digital background are more focused on short-term rather than long-term objectives, and thus are perceived as more ‘tactical’.
But no matter how much the roles and responsibilities of planners and strategists have changed over the past few years, the thing creatives still want from them more than anything else is insight, Krasser said.
“The brief essence here is both of us – strategists as well as creatives – we think and we believe and we know that we need each other to do the best work possible we can,” he said.
According to Andreas Krasser, Chief Strategy Officer at DDB Hong Kong, the marriage between agency creatives and strategists is probably in need of some relationship therapy – but there’s still reason for optimism.
In his own survey of more than 100 advertising planners and creatives across Asia, more than 95% of creatives and strategists considered the relationship between the functions to be either important or very important. (For more, read WARC’s report: Planners and creatives in Asia: A happy marriage?)
“To me, that's really good news because it means this relationship has a chance,” he said at the AD STARS event in Busan, South Korea. “We can save this marriage, hopefully.
“The most common theme that came out of this is really the need for each other. A lot of strategists said, ‘We need creatives to do our job’; a lot of creatives also said, ‘We need strategists to do our job’.
Krasser’s results, which he stressed were unscientific, reflect previous studies in which strategists, in general, felt more positive toward creatives than vice versa.
“For the strategists, it was fairly positive. Forty-nine per cent said very good, and 6% even said that their previous relationships with creatives were excellent,” Krasser reported.
“Only 32% of the creatives said their previous relationships with strategists were very good. And only 4.8% said they were excellent.”
Read more on the current state and future expectations of planning in WARC’s 2018 Future Of Strategy Report.
“One thing that really came out from the strategist side, very often, was this feeling that there is not enough of appreciation for their craft and for the job they’re doing,” Krasser revealed.Among some creatives, there was a perception that planners and strategists that come from a digital background are more focused on short-term rather than long-term objectives, and thus are perceived as more ‘tactical’.
But no matter how much the roles and responsibilities of planners and strategists have changed over the past few years, the thing creatives still want from them more than anything else is insight, Krasser said.
“The brief essence here is both of us – strategists as well as creatives – we think and we believe and we know that we need each other to do the best work possible we can,” he said.
Sourced from WARC
