by By Aimee Pagano
Marketing as a discipline has its own unequivocal challenges. The spectrum of skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a marketing role is broader 
than perhaps any other discipline. Marketers are required to be both strategic and tactical. They can be equally as aggressive as they are diplomatic. And they need to toggle between the lines of creativity and analytics.
So it only makes sense that a marketing team would be composed of a relatively broad range of personalities and work styles. Different team members land on different ends of the spectrum, and they all bring different strengths and insights to the collaborative equation.
While that diversity is excellent when it comes to the many needs of marketing departments, anyone leading a marketing team sits in a very unique and “character-building” position. In Flair Interactive’s October 2016 #TBT Blog, How to Provide Your Marketing Team with Constructive Feedback, Marissa Kasarov gave some excellent insights on managing marketing teams and providing constructive feedback.
The blog is comprehensive and I really have nothing to add to it since originally published. Instead, I’d like to add an addendum:
How to Provide Your Design Team with Constructive Feedback
In the marketing family, designers are typically the artistic rebellions of the bunch. Where content strategists, marketing planners, and even copywriters tend to operate from both the left and the right brain, designers tend to pull from the right most of the time. So here are a few tips to working with your creative counterparts:
- Minimize the fly-bys: We all know our projects are always the most important. There’s just no disputing that. But before you walk over to your designer’s office or cubicle to check on your urgent project, check out his or her schedule first. Graphic designers are creative and thoughtful by nature. Slipping and sliding all over their creative juices could not only create the wrong working tone between the two of you but could seriously damage their mojo and, ultimately, their progress on your campaign.
- Provide concrete examples: If you’ve ever witnessed a designer’s eyes go blank in the middle of your discussion, there’s a good chance your edits just aren’t clear enough. Phrases like, “I don’t like this,” or, “This doesn’t work for me” may as well be the parent’s garbled voice on the other end of Charlie Brown’s phone. Check out your competitors’ brands, or just peruse other campaigns, to see what seems to best convey the tone and spirit of your vision. Providing multiple examples helps the designer identify trends and will give you a tangible frame of reference to discuss and work from.
- Avoid getting too specific: “Adding a touch of mango orange in the background with an electric blue polka dotted Mini Coupe in the foreground,” isn’t exactly giving your designer creative freedom. If you’re providing instruction on your brand look and feel, more than likely you can simply point to your brand guidelines document. But if your instruction falls more in line with your own preferences, instead convey the overall impression you want to make with your audience and let your designer take it from there.
It’s important that we, as marketers, stick together. And that’s every member of the marketing family. Good communication yields good results. As you prepare for your next discussion, make sure you have a thorough understanding of and appreciation for the type of marketer you’re meeting with to ensure you’re keeping all lines of communication as open as possible.
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