Many ad agencies and creative firms are wonderful at creating ideas. However, many of those same agencies are very poor at presenting and selling their creative ideas. Even more important is a human tendency to become confused when we offer too many choices.
Hick’s Law: The time it takes to make a decision increases as the number of alternatives increases.
This plays out in many areas of our busy lives, from shopping at the grocery store in an era of product extensions (I just want plain old Cheerios!), to airline pilots having to push the right alarm button on an array with far too many other buttons (with a plane-full of passengers whose lives may be at stake).
While choosing a creative execution falls somewhere between annoying and life-threatening, it still pays to remember that fewer great choices is always better than too many average-to-good choices when presenting your ideas to clients.
Make Clients’ Creative Choices Simpler
Learning to simplify the decision process for clients can greatly improve your success in presenting and selling your great creative work.
- Always have a creative brief stating the client’s objective and the reason why. (Why this objective? Why is it important? Is it the real solution to a client problem?)
- Aim for a strong, single message—too many messages actually reduces recall, and lessens the retention of any single message.
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