Feeling Boxed In? Good.
You might think your creative team loves to hear things like, "The sky's the limit!" or "Don't worry about the budget." But ironically, such openness can dilute creative opportunities by failing to provide clear boundaries. Some of advertising's greatest creative achievements have come from strict guidelines: tight timelines, tighter budgets, specific value propositions that must be front and center, or even the often-lamented feedback, "Can you make the logo bigger?"
The Problem with "Blank Canvas" Direction
While it may seem you're allowing your creative team to think outside the box, they might bring you concepts that don't fit the end goal or aren't executable within the project's reality. Or, more colloquially, it will be a challenge to fit square-peg ideas into the round-hole constraints that were withheld.
When you clearly define a parameter for your team, they can focus on solving that specific problem, avoiding time wasted on creative distractions. Thinking "inside the box" forces deeper, purposeful thinking rather than wider ideation. You'll even find that concepts beginning with the limitation in mind allow everyone on the team to better focus on the right direction.
You'll see a shift in mindset, converting what the team can't do into, "How can we?" This works because an expected or unfeasible path is immediately cut off, steering the team into new, unexpected territories.
Fueling Resourcefulness
For example, when many brands in advertising grappled with ads being skipped on YouTube, Geico took that as their brief's framework. Geico embraced that constraint, front-loading their message into the first few seconds and confronting viewers who couldn't skip the ad because it was already complete. The cast froze while scene elements continued around them for humorous effect. The result: memorable ads viewers didn't skip due to their creative approach.
One recent project our agency was challenged with was to help our Meineke client promote their WrestleMania ticket giveaway. With only owned channels and no additional media budget, how could we inform the greatest number of WWE fans about the contest? This question pushed us to explore other channels and formats to reach our audience. Utilizing the handmade signs often seen at wrestling events, we wrote clever lines highlighting the promotion, recruited a small crew to share them and got to work. We hit the stands at a local WWE event that was streaming live nationally on Netflix, ensuring our promotional signs were seen by as many eyes as possible. A bonus was filming our team at the event, creating additional social media content. Without the budget and media constraint encouraging us to think differently, we might not have reached as large an audience as we ultimately did.
So, be direct with your creative team. Don't hide constraints; use them to your advantage. What you think may limit ideation can ultimately provide a fruitful path toward fresh, purposeful thinking and open up new ways of tackling the problem.
