The psychology of creative feedback

Or how creative scales can save creative reviews

For all the work marketers do on understanding how consumers will respond to advertising, we don’t do a lot of work on how marketers respond to creative.

Most of the time its in the context of a meeting, with a whole bunch of folks, all with different priorities, all with different backgrounds, all with different levels of investment in the work that’s being discussed. 

Hard wired to be social, but hard wired to hear what we want to hear

The challenge with these type of meetings is how humans are hard wired.  We’re hard wired to be social animals, we want to “fit in,” we want everyone to “be heard” we want “a good meeting.”  But at the same time, we’re individuals, deeply invested in our own world views, equally hard wired to hearing what we want to hear, resistant to accepting new information that challenges our worldview.

What happens next? Most feedback in meetings is delivered through the following dynamics.  We like to focus on what we all agree upon by “building” on what’s already been said.   Because we want to disagree without being disagreeable, we couch critiques of certain elements with praise of elements we like. Meanwhile the folks closest and most excited about the work hear want they want to hear.  They discount the critiques as minor details, and inflate the praise as central.

“Didn’t they hear what I told them”

And when we meet again, and there is nothing but frustration, afterwards resulting in exasperated claims of “Didn’t they hear what I told them” or “We did what they told us too.”  Its no wonder that the trust and transparency that is so critical between agencies and their clients can be so hard to maintain.  Too many meetings are not run in a way that can help teams overcome our natural mental biases towards sociability and hearing what we want to hear.

Organizations spend countless hours and dollars training their teams on how to give and receive good creative feedback.  Its invaluable training, but it does not address one of the biggest problems when reviewing creative, the fact that we use words.

The vagueness of words

Why are words so problematic when discussing creative?  To understand that, we have to go back to the early days of the Cold War and the “Father Of Intelligence Analysis,” Sherman Kent, a guy who was as far from evaluating creative as you can imagine.  

As detailed by Andrew Mauboussin and Michael J Mauboussin, Kent was focused on how likely it was that the Soviet Union would invade Yugoslavia.  At the time, the official estimate was that it was “a serious possibility,” but Kent wanted to know what exactly that meant and most importantly what it communicated.  Some intelligence analysts believed that “a serious possibility” meant there was a 20% of an invasion, others 80%. Dismayed he dug into the issue more, surveying experienced intelligence analysts about terms frequently used in intelligence reports to communicate probability.  

What he found was that one person’s “highly likely,” was another one’s “probably,” and one person’s “probably” was another person’s “probably not.”  His research, work that has been replicated in more recent years, found that words are incredibly vague in communicating.

And that’s the problem with words in creative reviews.  We use words when discussing if this campaign will be successful, and by using words we add to the vagueness of feedback.  It’s a lot easier to say “this idea is really interesting, but I feel we need to dial up the branding” than it is “I give this work a 30% change of success, unless we dial up the branding.”  The use of numbers forces the speaker to be a lot more specific as to the seriousness of the issue, and there is no ambiguity to anyone listening to them, about how they feel.   

Precise communication, also has the benefit of giving people the permission to debate.  The work has been presented, everyone has shared their estimate of the probability that it will succeed (ideally voted on simultaneously to avoid group think).  A lot of people are dubious about an idea, they believe it has around an 25% chance of success.  But a smaller group, are really excited, giving it a 80% chance of success.  There is clear disagreement, and that is a good thing.  The focus of the team is now on understanding the disagreement, giving the nay-sayers a space to share their views, while also giving those excited about the work, the permission to share why its so full of potential for them.  

The rise of creative scales

This is why so many creative organizations are having success with creative scales, numeric scales used by marketers to evaluate creative.  Heineken credited its creative scale as being “the backbone” of their efforts to become a more creative organization.  Its a ten point scale, enabling marketers to rank work from destructive to legendary. And here at FCB, we gave a similar shout out to our creative scale when we made this years’ Ad Age A-List.

A common precise language

Both scales are very different in how they are constructed.  But both scales overcome the inherent vagueness of words when evaluating creative.  And it starts to make sense why creative scales are frequently cited by organizations as one of the key reasons why they’ve been getting to better work.   Creative scales don’t just create a common language, they create a common PRECISE language, enabling marketers to be better heard, driving clarity and debate. 

Of course replacing vague words with precise numbers won’t ensure you’ll always make the right creative decisions.  Ultimately there are too many unknowns in evaluating creative for any one process or person to be infallible.   

But the power of creative scales is that they ensure a far greater CHANCE of success.  They work, because they start with an understanding of how marketers respond to creative. The need to fit in, coupled with our tendency to hear what they want to hear.

Instead, imagine your next creative review, focused on a clear understanding of all the issues and opinions in play, and a process that gives dissenting opinions the space to share. Now compare that with your last creative review. That’s the power of numbers versus words.