Perfecting the art form that is giving feedback
Imagine for a second that you’re throwing a dinner party. Being a good host, you decide to do a practice run on your main entrée to be sure it’s worthy of your guests. You make this bacon-wrapped steak dish with an exotic red wine sauce and eagerly hand it off to a friend to try. Your friend comes back from their tasting and leaves you the following note:
Steak was OK. Could’ve been cooked better. Bacon was good. Sauce wasn’t my favorite.
Now, how confident do you feel that you could improve this dish based on that? If you answered “not very,” everyone would understand. What would make you feel more confident about improving the dish? Something like this:
The overall dish was a little salty, probably due to the bacon. Would try to reduce any salt that is added to the rest of the dish. Steak was slightly overcooked for medium rare. Would suggest cooking it for about one minute less. The bacon was very crisp, which was perfect. Whatever you did, do that again. The sauce was slightly overpowering, so I would use far less on the plate. It did complement the steak well, though, so don’t eliminate it. This will go really well with garlic mashed potatoes or mixed greens.
Now that’s feedback. Everything in the latter example gives specifics as to why something either works or doesn’t. When you go to improve the dish, you don’t have to guess as to what something means. When your friend says, “The steak could’ve been cooked better,” they could mean a ton of things. Could it have been charred? Broiled? Did better mean it wasn’t seasoned properly? Should it have been grilled? The possibilities are almost endless, and will ultimately lead to a second try that doesn’t necessarily improve the dish, it just makes it different. But by being specific and saying it was overcooked for medium rare, you have a foundation for the feedback that you can work from.
Let’s take this example and move it to our world of marketing. Here is an example of bad feedback on a hypothetical ad, and all the questions it produces from the creative room.
Feedback:
Headline doesn’t work for me. Picture could be improved. Colors are OK. Can we add some pop?
Creative Questions:
How does the headline not work? Is it the wrong tone? Does it focus on the wrong benefit? Is it confusing? Too long? Too short? How can the picture be improved? Do you want new subject matter? Did it not tie in strongly enough to the concept? Is the style wrong? What do you like about it that we can be sure is represented in the next round? If the colors are just OK, do you see room for improvement here or should we go ahead with what we have? What type of pop do you envision? What was missing when you saw the ad? Where do you see added elements fitting into the layout?
As you can see, us creatives are a needy bunch. We ask a lot of questions and demand a lot of answers, but it’s all for the betterment of the final product. For us, ideal feedback is something like this:
The headline fell flat to me. I like the use of humor, but this joke didn’t work. Was a little too clever for this audience. Liked the style, though. Try to keep this personality in future rounds. The picture didn’t really connect with our main audience. Since the ad is meant to be humorous, is there any way we can have a picture that’s a bit more outrageous without being silly? We’re thinking younger people with shocked faces. We liked the colors, though they could be punched up a little. The blue was a nice touch, so please feel free to use that accent where possible. We’d like to see this pop a little more, so don’t be afraid to mess with font sizes or border shading.
As you can see, this feedback essentially answers any and all questions we could possibly have coming out of our meeting. The copywriter knows that you’re open to humor, you just want a different joke. The designer knows that he has the freedom to push the visuals a little. The team as a whole has now been given license to explore the ad a little further, and work towards something that’s more disruptive. Compared to the feedback above, which client do you think will receive a better second round of creative?
Ultimately, all we want is to do the best we can to produce work that you’re proud of and happy to put out into the world. To do this, we need your help. We need you to treat feedback in such a way that there can be no question as to what is working, what isn’t, and most importantly, why.
This is truly the most important part of producing great work, and producing it regularly. The more concrete the feedback we receive, the less gray area there is to consider. The less gray area, the less rounds of revisions and the less frustration on both sides.
Here are a few things to consider when giving feedback:
- There’s no such thing as too obvious. What seems obvious to you is something we may feel is working. This is our only chance to get into your head, so let it all spill out.
- Be explicit. Ads and plans have a lot of moving parts, and we need to know exactly what is or isn’t working. Assuming we’ll understand every implication is a recipe for frustration.
- Work to a solution. No, we don’t expect you to come up with the solution, that’s our job, but each piece of feedback should be building towards a finale. Build with us.
- All we have is you. When we show you our thinking, that’s our solution to your problem. The only way we can make it better is for you to guide us. We need your help here.
- It’s never enough. The more feedback, the more we learn about you and our solution. This not only helps fix this round, but gives us a clear path for the next round or project.
There’s a reason we pride ourselves in being collaborative partners with our clients: it works. We need to ask the best questions, and we need you to give us the best answers. Much like everything else, feedback is an art form, and by following these simple steps you can ensure a better process for yourselves, and your agency.