Creative Direction
Keeping Your Brand Consistent and Relevant
Creative direction is at the intersection of strategy, brand story, art direction, and design. It keeps all elements of your project — narratives, visual elements, marketing materials, advertising campaigns, and more — consistent and relevant to your target audience. It keeps your project identity and story at the forefront of every project.
The creative direction process is also a key factor in keeping your creative team focused, providing the necessary oversight to keep projects and campaigns on track. It also ensures your efforts are aligned with cohesive tactics expertly tied to your strategy.
At Creatives On Call, we understand your need for brand consistency and a targeted, cohesive creative approach to all of your projects. Our professionals can scale up or down depending on your needs. They can fill the void if you do not have an existing team, or they can help keep your internal team focused with a strategy for execution. No creative direction project is too small or too large.
Who Owns the Creative Process?
Typically, the owner of creative direction is a creative director who is central to building and maintaining your brand identity or creative project identity across disciplines. They drive brand awareness, own the strategic vision, lead the creative process, and influences the art direction — all while keeping your audience and bottom line in focus.
As the owner of your creative approach and the creative direction process, they often oversee a creative team of copywriters, graphic designers, art directors, and web developers. No matter the size of your company, the creative director is typically the big-picture thinker, the visionary, and the strategist. They oversee everything from logo creation to web design and marketing material development. Talented creative directors are natural team leaders who inspire creativity throughout the entire process.
Who Needs Creative Direction?
The bottom line is any brand or project greatly benefits from strategic creative direction. Your brand or project consists of many different components — a narrative, visual elements, marketing materials, and advertising campaigns, just to name a few. With creative direction leading the way, these elements converge to build a better end product. It helps connect your product or service with your audiences to propel them to take action because they understand who you are, what you offer, and why your company differs from competitors. Good creativity helps to make the experience more engaging.
Utilizing creative direction services will also keep your creative team on track and is an integral component of their success. Without the guidance of a creative director, efforts can feel haphazard and unfocused, and your team may easily be thrown off track.
No project is too big or too small for our creative directors who will sit down with you and your team to get started on strategies and campaigns that deliver results.
"According to Nielsen1, creativity drives 56% of a campaign’s sales ROI, and Google2 reports that 70% of a campaign’s success is determined by the creative." - Meta
How We Can Help
We have a team of creative direction consultants readily available. Our experts will scale up or scale down depending on your project need. We can even provide ongoing support for long-term projects or improve your existing team. We’re here to support your needs from strategy to execution and fill any talent void you’re experiencing internally.
Our Offerings
Ideation
Ideation is where the creative direction process begins. By brainstorming ideas and creative concepts designed to reach your audiences while simultaneously meeting your goals, is the sweet spot of the creative process. In this stage, the creative director leads the team in the right direction, fosters creativity, and ultimately decides which concepts to bring to life — a critical role in the creative direction process.
Strategy & Planning
Ideas are just ideas without a solid strategy and planning process for execution. In this phase, the creative director will turn the ideas and creative concepts into a solid strategy. He or she will refine tactics, ensure your messaging will reach your intended audience, and define timelines for execution.
Creative Execution
Moving from strategy to execution is a skill set your creative director must have. While they may not execute the tactics themselves, they will ensure the creative team stays “on brand,” keeps your messaging focused and your timelines met.
We’re Here When You Need Us
At any point in this process, our experts can come in to lead and/or assist. If you already have ideas in place and need help developing a fully thought-out strategy, we have an expert for that. If you have the ideas and a plan but do not have the resources to execute, we have experts for that as well. Think of Creatives On Call as your one-stop-creative-shop no matter where you are in the creative direction process.
