Once an agency comes back with their thinking, marketers face the next challenge: assessing the ideas, making decisions, and giving feedback that helps move the work forward.
It can be a tough task! Especially when you’re working without a clear or consistent framework to guide your judgment.
Recently, we welcomed in a fresh cohort of marketers to upskill in this exact area, and learn a systematic framework for assessing ideas. Over three weeks, they explored how to evaluate ideas objectively, separate strategic judgement from personal opinion and give feedback that strengthens both the work and collaboration with their agencies.
Here’s how it went.
Callout: Yet to read our Brief Writing course debrief? Check it out here.
Our latest cohort brought together marketers from across industries and experience levels, plus a handful of agency creatives who were invested in understanding their client’s assessment frameworks first-hand.
Marketing teams joined in as a mini cohort within the cohort, with the goal to adopt a shared language around idea assessment at work.
The majority had graduated from our Brief Writing course just a week prior, leveraging momentum to complete both courses back-to-back as a creative excellence programme.
When we asked this cohort to set their learning objectives, three big cravings emerged: how to assess an idea objectively and strategically, give helpful feedback to their agencies, and learn a clear structure for creative decision-making.
The live Q&A gave this cohort of marketers an opportunity to sense-check their understanding as well as their approach to the bigger challenges around idea assessment in practice.
One big topic we covered was around stakeholder management, with many marketers craving tips for preventing stakeholder opinion from eroding the idea.
A big tip from Matt and Pieter-Paul: The same person who signs off on the brief should sign off on the idea. (Why should someone with no view of the brief have the final say in what gets approved? Or any say for that matter!)
Everyone had a systematic framework they could use immediately. From the very first second an idea shows up right through to protecting ideas from dilution as they pass through organisations on their way to market.
Teams walked away with a shared language around idea assessment to embed more broadly in their organisation (and share on with their agency - that’s important!).
Everyone who passed their final knowledge check successfully became a ‘Better Idea Assessor’, with certification to prove it.
A: The BetterBriefs Assessing Creative Ideas course is a three-week, self-paced idea assessment course for marketers. Participants complete expert-led lessons, practical exercises, real campaign case studies, downloadable tools and a live Q&A with the BetterBriefs founders. Throughout the course, marketers learn a systematic framework for assessing ideas that they can apply immediately in their own organisations.
Q: How long does the course take to complete?
A: The BetterBriefs Assessing Creative Ideas course takes around 4 hours to complete over a three-week period. The online course is self-paced, allowing marketers to fit the training around their day-to-day work while putting a new idea assessment framework into practice between modules. Participants can complete the learning from anywhere, making it suitable for both individuals and teams.
Q: Who is the course designed for?
A: The BetterBriefs Assessing Creative Ideas course is designed for marketers who assess, approve or contribute to the selection of ideas. This includes brand managers, marketing managers, campaign managers, senior marketers, marketing leaders and anyone responsible for briefing agencies or internal creative teams. The course is suitable for both experienced marketers looking to refine their idea assessment skills and those receiving formal idea assessment training for the first time.
About us:
Pieter-Paul von Weiler is the co-founder of BetterBriefs, an advisory and training business that helps marketers write better briefs and deliver more impactful ideas. A highly awarded former agency strategist, having worked at Publicis Amsterdam, Publicis London, Saatchi & Saatchi and AJF Partnership. Pieter-Paul has served as an Effie judge across Australia and APAC for over a decade.
Together with co-founder Matt Davies, he wrote the BetterBriefs Project and The Best Way for a Client to Brief an Agency, a practical guide for marketers to improve the quality of briefs, co-authored by Mark Ritson and published in partnership with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). Matt (together with Pieter-Paul) also led the BetterIdeas Project, a global study exposing the poor state of the creative evaluation process. The study aims to improve the creative decision-making and evaluation practices and was launched in partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the IPA.