Over the years I've learned to love creative constraints. It's not that I love tight deadlines or small budgets or off-the-wall executive requests, but that's the world we live in. The sooner we uncover the driving factor behind those constraints, the sooner we'll be successful as professional marketers.

The nature of client/agency relationship is naturally built around constraints. It always surprises me that few people like to talk about budgets or deadlines up front. Especially considering that these two very real constraints drive 99% of all marketing projects. After all who is going to pay an agency to work forever with no defined goals and/or an undetermined invoice amount? The client doesn't want to give away his or her budget amount because they feel it gives the agency too much power or insider information. But without that knowledge, the agency cannot effectively assign resources or understand the scope of what's possible. The best way is to work together to determine an appropriate budget based on business objectives - the client tells the agency what they'd like to accomplish and the agency tells the client the best way to accomplish those goals and how much it will cost. I know this is a little over-simplified, but after all you are paying the agency because they're the experts, right? A lot of businesses have trouble letting go enough to generate new ideas. Not giving an agency the right amount of information, the right type of information, and enough freedom to come up with something new can turn into very damaging constraints of your project.

The true genius of a creative person is finding the best solution available within the project constraints. It’s not unreasonable to renegotiate project deliverables to fit within constraints - and that goes for client expectations as well as agency desires to produce top notch materials on every engagement.

It’s hard to fault a designer for wanting to do the best job possible on each and every assignment. Unfortunately the business world is one of realities more so than possibilities. The trick is doing the best job possible under the deadline and budget restrictions. That’s hard for a lot of creative directors and producers to wrap their heads around. You have to make conscious design decisions early in the project that meet the project/brand goals while staying on time and budget.

As an agency, we have to set client expectations up front about what is possible within given project constraints. With margins thinning, it’s a fine line to walk between customer satisfaction and agency profitability. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The days of multi-year take-over-my-business retainer relationships are gone. I’ve heard a lot of mega-agency people talk about retainers as if they are an open bucket of money without defined deliverables or deadlines. In reality, retainers are just multi-project engagements under contract with one agency. You still have the same constraints as one-off project work; you’re just not fighting off other firms for each job which frees up resources to put into the work.

We have to learn to embrace constraints. Use the constraints as fuel to kick-start creative thinking. Great work comes from finding unique solutions while meeting all goals (project objectives, client satisfaction, time frame, budget, agency goals and designer expectations - probably in that order). Budget and time frame should determine level of effort on a sliding scale. A seasoned design professional will know what is possible when they understand the constraints. After that it’s a matter of aligning client & agency expectations with those constraints and everyone involved making purposeful decisions to stay on target.

Nick Rice • Lexington, Ky • nick@cre8tivegroup.com • www.cre8tivegroup.com