What Is Creative Operations Management?
When it comes to creativity, there needs to be some form of organization to keep things moving. Without it, ideas for projects may not ever come into fruition or get completed on time.Creative operations managementcreates structure for your creative team’s processes. It also helps with managing metrics and data to make sure your team is hitting goals and project hours.
Creative operations management and project management may seem similar from afar, but creative operations management is a bit more involved.
Creative operations involves not only managing projects, but also managing the collaboration over strategies to produce the final products.Creative project management更简单,因为它侧重于记录ganization of the creative process. Creative operations requires team members to have an understanding of cross-departmental communication, as well as to stay up to date with creative strategy best practices.
3 Elements of Creative Operations Management
有很多在cr幕后的工作eative operations management, but the three main elements are people, processes, and applications.
Let’s take a look at each one in greater detail:
- People:These are the people who make up your creative team and complete projects and creative tasks.
- Processes:Your creative team uses planned-out processes to complete the various projects and tasks.
- Applications:The processes are assisted by applications and technology that help streamline communication efforts, coordinate tasks, and organize all the work being done.
As you can see, every element of creative operations depends on the others to function. In order to run like a well-oiled machine, each element needs to stay updated and fresh, whether that means updating processes or changing up the team dynamic.
6 Benefits of Creative Operations Management
Creative operations can improve your business in a variety of ways, including by enhancing productivity, improving cross-departmental communication, and helping you tomanage your creative projectsmore effectively.
Here are six more specific benefits of creative operations management.
1. Improved Efficiency
Sometimes you can’t rush a project that requires a longer timeline. However, it doesn’t mean you can let the project drag on indefinitely. With propercreative workflowmanagement, your creative team can accomplish projects and tasks within a shorter time frame.
2. Increased Consistency
Inconsistent workflows can lead toemployee burnout。使用一个单一的组织平台可以streamline how projects are assigned to team members, so they can deliver projects more efficiently at a consistent, high-caliber level. For example, within a management platform, you can create templates for certain types of projects. That way, each of these projects have the same workflow and number of allocated hours, which helps with consistency.
3. Collaboration Across The Team
Better organizational management typically leads to better collaboration within the team — and this is where the magic happens. And, a centralized platform keeps all team members looped in and up to date, which is crucial for companies that work in a hybrid or remote work environment.
4. Higher Security
Creative operations management provides additional monitoring of brand standards, while also allowing the creative team to concentrate on creating high-level work that meets those standards. This is important for ensuring compliance in the event of a company audit or evaluation.
5. Data-Supported Decision-Making
While creative operations management adds structure to your processes, it should ultimately free up the creative process by giving you the stability to focus on the creative work itself. A management system can provide insight on previous project hours and timelines. With a solid system in place, you’ll be able to make decisions based on available information and data, get a clearer picture of resource availability, and have an easier time prioritizing projects.
6. Resource Planning
Along with decision-making, you can plan ahead based on available data from previous projects. This data may include dedicated project hours or days that differentiate based on the type of project. For example, if you notice a type of project requires more hours than what has been initially set for that project, you may need to build in more hours. That way, you can accurately strategize funding, resources, and time for various projects.
Creative Operations Roles
You’ll find a variety of different roles within a creative team, like strategists, copy writers, and designers. However, there are a few roles that are crucial for keeping creative agency operations running smoothly.
- Creative Operations Manager:This role involves project management of all creative projects and processes. They must have a good understanding of marketing, brand(s), and product design. They work with the creative operations director to address issues and maintain cross-departmental communication.
- Creative Operations Director:As the creative operations leader, the director must have both a creative and a business mind. They lead project management and strategic planning while working with the creative operations manager and coordinator.
- Creative Operations Coordinator:The coordinator organizes the day-to-day creative operations. They help organize project timelines, resources, and reporting. They also oversee project hours and must be able to effectively communicate across multiple departments.
Without these three roles, the creative team lacks the necessary infrastructure to complete projects on time and maintain an efficient creative process.
5 Creative Operations Trends to Check Out
Looking for some real-world examples of creative operations in action? Read on to learn about five current creative operations trends for inspiration as you manage your own creative operations.
1. Digital Content Consumption
Over the last several years, digital content consumption has shifted significantly. Today, we’re seeing a transformative digital space, and as both a creative and marketer, it’s important to stay on top of digital content trends to stay ahead in the game.
In 2022, the digital advertising and marketing industry wasvalued at $460 billion。It’s forecasted that we will continue to see more emphasis on digital content and advertising.
2. Personalization at Scale
A one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is no longer an option. Not only will it waste time with off-target campaigns; but it also runs the risk of losing potential customers for good. Today’s customers have come to expect the buying journey to be tailored to them. For example, they want companies to remember previous purchases, make relevant suggestions, and craft offers just for them.
Done right, personalization can increase customer engagement and loyalty. It also benefits the organization. According to areport by Twilio Segment, almost 80% of business leaders say consumers spend more when they have a personalized experience with the brand.
While companies have started the process with a few channels, they may struggle to take the marketing tactic to scale across customer touchpoints. A unified approach within an organization is needed to put processes and practices on the same page.
Personalization requires acting on behavioral data and setting triggers for actions. These triggers then need to be tested. If proven successful, they should become a business rule that is shared across departments.
Personalization also requires more creative assets, such as custom messaging for stages in the buying journey and targeted messages for all of your different customer personas. Your teams will use data to design the assets, but the volume will increase. A digital asset management tool can provide transparency and help you stay organized.
3. Distributed Teams
Today’s marketing team is probably not in the same building and maybe not even in the same time zone. The prevalence of remote and hybrid working arrangements — combined with a reliance on vendors and agencies — can lead to siloed work.
A platform that gives the team end-to-end visibility into the creative process can foster alignment, collaboration, and accountability. Not only can creatives and project managers see all of the work in one place, but they can also use automation to distribute proofs and capture all feedback and approvals in one place — no matter where stakeholders are.
4. Increased Complexity of Omnichannel Marketing
According toAdobe’s Digital Trends Report, 79 percent of leaders believe customers' expectations are constantly reset to match their best omnichannel experiences. In addition to personalization, customers expect consistency — an omnichannel experience across all a brand’s channels.
Implementing an effective strategy can be difficult when teams are siloed or lack a singular vision. Nonetheless, it’s important. Companies that take a cohesive marketing approach can improve customer satisfaction.
To ensure brand consistency across channels, marketers need transparency during planning and implementation of advertising. With a single source of truth, from planning, to creation, todigital asset management and distribution, organizations can build narratives across channels to tell consistent brand stories.
5. Rapidly Shifting Campaigns
With the rise of distributed work, the needs of consumers are changing drastically. To stay relevant, marketers need ways to meet the moment and their customers’ most current needs. According to Adobe, there’s an emphasis on immediate needs versus long-term marketing planning.
By sharing the insights in real time in a centralized platform, organizations can tap into the information they need to quickly pivot campaigns for a fast-changing environment. Marketers can collect data on effective campaigns as well as those that fell short. They can also respond to market feedback in real time.
By understanding the trends, marketing leaders can be better informed while designing plans for the future. Meeting customers where they’re at is how you continue to build relationships going forward.
Industries That Need Creative Operations Management
Creative operations management can be of use in a variety of industries — not necessarily just in a creative agency. Below are a few industries that you may find creative operations management in the works.
Retail
Effective digital advertising and trending content is imperative for a retail company to continue to thrive and make a profit. Retail companies need to spread brand awareness, and also attract customers to purchase their products. A creative team in a retail space may need to create online graphics, run photo and video shoots, and mock up social media posts. This can require a creative operations management system for keeping track of marketing projects, as well as making sure assets follow brand guidelines.
Advertising and Marketing
This is the most common industry in which you’ll find creative operations — advertising exists because of creative teams. The creative team may be required to create content for all types of media channels on hard deadlines. They may also be able to effectively convey a brand’s message through these assets.
For this industry, an effective creative operations management platform is a must. Not only can it track individual hours, but also project hours and timelines. It also can make scheduling team members to projects easier, as you’ll be able to see future scheduled projects and member availability.
Publishing
Today, you’ll find that publications have moved more from paper to digital, such as tablets and e-books. Despite this change, publishing teams still may have short timelines with tight budgets to get a book promoted and out online for readers to purchase and read. With a creative management platform, publishing timelines can be managed more efficiently, as the work is passed between teams such as editors, cover designers, and other groups.
Streamline Your Creative Operations Management With Smartsheet for Marketing
The best marketing teams know the importance of effective campaign management, consistent creative operations, and powerful event logistics -- and Smartsheet helps you deliver on all three so you can be more effective and achieve more.
The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.
When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.Try Smartsheet for free, today.