Never Miss a Market Opportunity: How to Plan for Agility and Speed in Creative Production

The 24/7, always-connected digital landscape means marketers and in-house creative teams need to move faster than ever before. Why? The cultural impact of COVID-19 has proven that situations can change in the blink of an eye. We saw the rapid, mass development of products like face masks, hand sanitizer, and face shields. We saw our local gyms close and people flocking to fitness e-commerce sites to buy home workout equipment. We even saw the Bernie inauguration meme go viral and Ikea’s iconic reaction. The biggest thing we’ve learned so far is that things can change overnight, and we have to be ready to act accordingly. 

If an in-house creative team is equipped with the right tools and workflows, they can react quickly to what is happening in the market and capitalize on that. 

On the flip side, if you’re a slow mover then you miss out on those key marketing moments or risk looking irrelevant. For example, let’s say you have a big in-store promotion planned but then a new lockdown hits. You have to readjust your strategy and find new ways to get to market fast. If you can’t quickly pivot, then your competitors will overtake and out-market you. 

It’s challenging to achieve agility and speed, now more than ever. With teams working remotely, in-person collaboration has come to a grinding halt. This means that brands have to find new ways to plan for agility and speed in creative production. Here are a few different ways that you can set your team up for success and produce creative content at record speed.

Create efficient project management workflows

Avoid bottlenecks with team and system processes. In order to create a well-oiled machine that can move with agility, seamless workflows are crucial. Instead of working in isolated silos, processes should promote team collaboration. That way, all team members can easily work together to produce, review, and distribute creative content. Updating workflows can seem challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. After key stakeholders and organizational structures are defined, adding new tools like automation to the creative production process becomes a breeze. 

Enable cross-functional communication 

Endless email chains and PDF comments just don’t make the cut anymore. When small details get lost in the back-and-forth or hours go by waiting for consolidated feedback, these outdated methods of communication are simply too slow and unreliable to keep up with today’s fast-paced market. Instead, brands need to find innovative tools that allow team members to grab instant feedback and make updates in real-time. That way the entire team can stay aligned while also boosting their overall productivity.  

Automate production to scale at speed 

There’s a reason why 88% of marketers say their creative teams leverage automation tools to streamline their creative development. Manual means of production is slow and requires designers to build creative one-by-one. This eats up so much of their time that could be spent on things like creative ideation or quickly reacting to disruptive market trends. Instead, teams can use automation to multiply creative volume and variety with just a few clicks.  

If you’re looking for one solution that tackles all of these ways to plan for speed in creative production, then it’s time to look into Creative Automation. Our cloud-based platform allows designers, marketers, producers, and media teams to collaborate in real-time. Get out the door quickly with centralized, interactive feedback and approval tools for lightning-fast review cycles. Creative Automation has all the tools for templates and toolkits that designers need to create variety at speed, with average campaign results of 2x shorter campaign production cycles. Check out this video to learn more about Creative Automation, or get in touch with us today.