When we don’t represent our target audiences, how can we claim to know what will resonate with them?
At Nice and Serious, we are always evolving our creative processes to make them more inclusive. We are increasingly recommending to our clients that, at the start of the project, we appoint a Creative Council - a group of up to eight participants that represent the target audience of their brand or campaign. We use the Creative Council as a sounding board throughout the project, from gathering insights, reviewing strategy, responding to design and final production. The result? More impactful and purposeful work.
We brought together a panel of communications specialists to discuss what difference working directly with their audience made to their recent campaigns. Vodafone addressed the impact of harmful social media content and algorithms on young boys; Art Fund encouraged underrepresented communities to visit museums; Maybelline supported young people through the duality of social media.
We’ve pulled out 4 key learnings and quotes from the conversation, but there were so many more practical insights that we’d really encourage you to listen to the 60 minute talk below.
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Introduce your audience as early as possible
“It's not your standard sort of lip service focus group. It's having them in at the ‘does this brief feel right to you?’, stage. We want to do this, how does that sound? That's just been pivotal to developing the whole identity and experience of the brand.”
Natalie Cahillane, Head of Creative, Art Fund
Your audience can reduce risks
“The collaborative approach really reduces risks going into the campaign, as you’re talking to an audience that you're not a part of. It really strengthened the impact to make it really resonate with young people today.”
Alexandra Fraser, Senior Product Manager: Sustainability, Maybelline New York
Unearth brilliant creative nuances
“The expert panel were really important in terms of getting the nuances right, like the experiences the boys were having, the stuff they were seeing, and kind of telling that story in a sympathetic way that people could understand. They were really key to the whole process.”
Kate Arrowsmith, Strategic Comms Lead, Vodafone
Increased confidence in decision making
“You just feel more confident in making decisions because you've got that direct kind of reaction or insight, or if you hit a stumbling block, you've got access to quick insights to kind of help you get over it…You’re also giving your wider stakeholders in the business in a similar confidence, because you can say, ‘Look, we're going in this direction because this is how our audience responded’.”
Peter Larkin, Creative Director, Nice and Serious
If you’re interested in finding out more about how you can bring your audience into the creative process, send us a message hello@niceandserious.com.