Digital marketing is incredibly data-driven. We’re constantly trying to refine how we identify potential customers, how we target and retarget them. The obsession with numbers can sometimes lead to a lack of focus on creativity.

Now, we all know that how you say something matters as much as saying it at the right time. As such, it’s important to ensure that the value of creativity isn’t underweighted. But that creativity should stretch to the data too. People using the same tools in the same way everyday often fall into a pattern of just going through the motions. This is great in accounts payable – you definitely don’t want people toying with those numbers – but in marketing you want to relentlessly push forward.

So how do you foster a creative culture in digital teams?

Mind set

The primary focus, for me at least, is to focus on encouraging people’s curiosity. This is easier said than done. In fact, I’ve known people who believe you either have an inquisitive mind or you don’t. I disagree.

Questions that start with the words “how might we…?” can be really useful.

I think you can encourage people’s latent curiosity but you can only do it by giving them work that is challenging, that stretches the mind and where the process is uncertain.

Uncertainty, in particular, is crucial. Working on things that might not succeed, or lead to a dead end, these are the tasks that encourage investigation.

Questions that start with the words “how might we…?” can be really useful. For example, you could ask: “How might we approximate purchase intent using Facebook’s demographic targeting?” The answer is uncertain but so is the process. How do you go about working this out?

Safety net

Setting tasks that are innately uncertain is all well and good, but it only works if there’s a safety net. Do your team trust that you aren’t setting them up to fail? Or that if they do fail, you’re not going to get mad? Do they think you’re setting them challenging work because you want to produce great work or do they just think you’re massively unreasonable?

So a creative culture has to be one where people are able to fail. And when they do, they shouldn’t get hurt.

Start small. Test things out. Scale up what works. Above all, if a project is steeped in uncertainty, your expectations need to be curbed. You cannot ask for the moon on a stick.

Craft

The third element in fostering creativity, that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to, is an appreciation of craft. Do people appreciate the difference between something that’s been done well and something that’s just ok?

Writing is not a specialism. Copywriting is a specialism.

Writing, for me, is the obvious example. Marketing is not short of writers. Everyone’s a “wordsmith” or they “do words” or they “scribble”. And yet, none of that is particularly useful. Writing is not a specialism. Copywriting is a specialism. Writing words that sell is massively useful.

So encourage an understanding of the craft of selling. Is that ad good? Why is it good? What elements work? How could it be stronger? And go beyond the ads and content. How was your experience in that shop or restaurant or hotel? Did anything make you spend more than you planned? Are you likely to go back? What’s the draw?

Workplace culture is notoriously difficult to change or manage. However, I think managers can never spend enough time on it because it is critical to achieving goals and targets. These three areas are where I’ve got to so far in thinking about building creativity into a team’s culture, but I’d love to know what you think. Do you agree or stridently disagree? What am I missing? Where should I be bolder?

Last night, the Labour Party announced an eye-catching and unexpected plan to nationalise BT’s Openreach business unit and provide free broadband to every home by 2030.

It’s a big business story, so the FT immediately wrote it up and popped at the top of their homepage.

BT’s chief executive, who is currently overseas, told the FT that it: “was an “appealing” idea for customers but that it would need to be thought through carefully.”

So far, so normal.

Later in the FT piece, they quote Neil McRae,  BT’s chief network architect, as tweeting: “Labour plans broadband communism.”

Oh dear. Corporate communications will not be pleased. Understandably so.

A quick search on Twitter will easily find the tweet and Mr McRae’s account. His profile doesn’t mention his work. His feed is nothing out of the ordinary – a mixture of current affairs and personal interests.

I have huge sympathy. I don’t mention my work on my Twitter account either. I happily give away some of the credibility and status that comes with company and title for some separation and freedom.

But it’s only a little more separation. I know my profile and views can easily be followed back to my employer. Because of this I avoid expressing strident views on topics close to work. It is not a terrible hardship. Do I always get it right? I don’t know. I hope I do.

You only have one life and it cannot be split out online by not mentioning work or using pseudonyms.

The outline of a lockforward’s head is the same as a pint of Guinness?

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Some words are so common that blend into the background. They don’t register with the reader. They paint no distinct picture of you. They’re generic. They make you generic. They are wallpaper.

I’ve decided to try and capture these words. The wallpaper below will go up over time – I’m fastidious about lining up the pattern.

(Click on the image to view a larger version)

Clients obsess about defining them (no, really, we do) and agencies wait on tenterhooks for them, briefs are the documents that keep the work flowing and money moving. And yet, many are awful. Here are four clues that you’ve written a bad brief.

You’ve not specified a budget

Now come on, you’ve got a number. Unless you’re just out wasting everyone’s time, you’ve got a budget so state it.

Client-agency relationships are often treated as a one way street. The client sets the terms, the agency does the work, plus they throw in a few friendly drinks now and again.

Wrong. This is all wrong. If you want the best from your agencies, you need to invest time to understand them, share information about your company and your own preferences, you need to agree ways of working, and you need to give honest and detailed feedback.

You can only do all of that if there is trust between you and the agency. And there won’t be any trust because right at the start, you won’t even share a number with a pound sign in front of it.

You might be thinking, “That’s all well and good, but they’ll just come back with a proposal that costs that amount instead of the right thing.” And that’s not an unreasonable retort. But it’s your job to look at the proposal, question it, firm up the numbers, really query that every element is necessary. That’s your job. And if you put out a brief with no budget and someone came in with something really cheap, you’d still have to have question it.

If you don’t critically assess proposals, you’re being negligent. So put the number in the brief.

You’ve answered the question

Have you explained what you’d like to achieve or have just written out what you’d like done? For example, if it’s a digital brief to boost brand awareness, have you said you want a video? Because then you’ve answered the question and you’re going to get a video plus some distribution and a few frilly bits. So really, you’ve written a brief for a video that you’d like to use to raise brand awareness. If you want to boost awareness, just say that you want that and you want it done through digital channels.

Leave it to those who are pitching to answer the question. It puts the onus on agencies to be more creative, as a client you’ll get a more varied range of options and you’re setting the types of challenges that agencies love; things that let them show they can go beyond service delivery and really add value.

Too many objectives

Want to raise brand awareness? Great. And drive up sales? Obvs. And improve perceptions of your environmental impact? Umm, OK, I guess. And build your chief exec’s profile? Hang on. And repair your tarnished employer brand? No.

I’m not sure I need to spell this out any clearer.

Cakeism

Do you want your brand to be really well known? Do you also want to avoid any form of public criticism by not taking a defined position on any issue? Do you see the problem here?

You want your cake and you want to eat it.

If you’ve written a brief strewn with caveats, check it again. Are they all necessary? Are you being over cautious? Are you asking for things that are contradictory? If you refuse to reconcile them, have you at least had the decency to flag up the contradictions?

There is nothing worse than an undeliverable brief.