Hi Friends,
Welcome to pumpkin spice latte season. Even a decade in, I’m still getting used to the Los Angeles idea of October and fall, but I hope some of you are enjoying chilly nights and the leaves changing color.
This issue is about the distance between work that looks finished and work that’s actually good.
Let's get into it.
THE REVIEW MISSED WHAT EVERYONE ELSE SAW
Converse pulled an Instagram ad for its Chuck 70 X sneakers after critics said the lighting on K-pop singer Karina’s skirt resembled a KKK hood, and the way she held the sneakers resembled the dangling feet of a lynching victim. CEO Aaron Cain apologized and told employees Converse was hiring a third party to evaluate its processes, Bloomberg reported.
But the bigger question remained. How did the image make it through the review process in the first place?
Creative, legal, and brand reviews can confirm whether an asset meets the brief, clears legal requirements, and fits the brand. They don’t always catch how a finished image might read to someone seeing it for the first time, without any of the context behind it.
What this means for communicators
- Homogeneous teams carry real risks. Diverse teams bring different perspectives and life experiences to the work, and can catch cultural nuances that others miss.
- Social media travels fast. Creative still needs a review process, even if it’s “just an Instagram post.”
- Better yet, include a cold read in the review process. Before an asset goes live, have someone outside the creative team look at the finished work without the context behind it.
AI IS ABOUT TO KILL THE RFP (HERE'S HOPING)
Any agency can feed your RFP into a model tonight and have something 80 to 90 percent of the way there by morning. So the big ideas across your stack of proposals start to rhyme. They'll also all run about 30% longer than they need to. That's a lot of reading.
The bigger problem is that the thinking on the page may have little to do with the people who'd actually show up to your kickoff. Best case, the proposal is disconnected from the work. Worst case, it's a preview of paying senior-strategist rates for output you could have generated yourself.
Honestly, the RFP was always a shaky proxy for a working relationship. AI just made it obvious. Tell us what you think here.
What this means for communicators
- Replace the written proposal with one-hour conversations with your shortlist. Send a real problem a few days ahead and spend the hour working it together.
- Ask who would staff your account, and get those people in the room. The pitch team and the day-to-day team aren't always the same.
- If procurement requires a written response, cap it. Five pages forces choices.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BRANDS GIVE CREATORS MORE CONTROL?
Most brands have a lot to say about creator content. There are briefs, scripts, shot lists, brand guidelines, legal reviews, and approval rounds in order to keep the work on brand. Chipotle took a different approach with its latest “Behind the Foil” campaign. Marketing Dive reports that Chief Brand Officer Fernando Machado gave 100 creators across food, art, animation, and pottery full creative control inside 50 restaurant kitchens. There were no scripts or shot lists. Instead, the brand collected over 300 hours of raw footage and built the final spots from what creators captured.
Not every creative decision needs to belong to the brand. If the goal is work that feels native to the creator, too much oversight can work against the reason you hired them in the first place.
What this means for communicators
- Every added review round has a cost specific to creator content. It can strip out the rawness the brand hired the creator for in the first place.
- Look at your existing approval process and decide what needs to be controlled and what can be left to the creator. Consistency may make the work feel more like the brand, but it can also make it feel less like the person creating it.
- Yes, the advice here might seem opposite to the Converse story above, but it all comes down to treating different mediums differently. Converse used the brand’s voice; Chipotle leaned on the influencers’ voices.
WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON
CalMatters: California’s community work isn’t a Band-Aid in times of crisis. It’s a resource deserving long-term funding
San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco sues Trump Media over subscriber-only access to Trump’s posts
U.S. News & World Report: Trump vs. Capital One: How Suspicious Activity Rules Can Close Your Account Without Warning
Fox Business: AI expert: We are barely in control of AI right now
WBAI-FM: Early Morning Mondays - Moral Monday
The Washington Post: Texas Senate hopeful Talarico ramps up Black outreach efforts
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Review can fail in both directions. Converse needed one more set of eyes before posting. Chipotle got better work by getting out of the way. The hard part is knowing which situation you're in before anything goes live.
If you're not sure, send it our way. We always have an opinion.
—Shira