How to resolve creative conflict in paid advertising

How do you resolve creative differences on your team? 

This question came up during our Make Ads That Convert series and it really resonated with the audience.

In the world of creative marketing, conflict is going to happen. 🥊 

But, learning to navigate tension within and among your team will free you to focus on more important things — like shipping more ads, scaling spend, and boosting ROAS.

Interested?

Let’s dive in.

Reframe: Creative differences in the workplace are healthy

Dara Denney has managed over $100 million in paid social ads for some of the biggest DTC brands — she offered a unique perspective on the subject: Creative differences are a good thing!

Why? Because it means people care.

That sentiment is backed up by Jess Bachman — Co-Founder of the tight knit growth marketing agency, FireTeam — who shared a rule on creative differences within his team: whoever cares most, wins. 

True creativity comes from a place of safety.

Encourage your creative team to feel safe to take big risks:

🎨 Give them space to experiment

🎨 Help them remove blockers

🎨 Trust their expertise

Then, watch as they rise to the occasion and create magic.

Be objective: Let data decide your creative strategy

Savannah Sanchez is well-regarded as one of the top UGC creative producers in digital marketing (even bigwigs like Jess Bachman admit to stealing her ideas 😆).

Even still, she admits, she can’t always guess which ads will perform the best. 

Her advice? Follow the data. 

Keep an open mind and be willing to test things even if you don’t think they’ll work. Especially when working with a new client or product.

Savannah uses these four creative metrics to determine the success of an ad 👇

🎯 Bonus tactic: Savannah plays a game with her team where they share ads and vote for which one they think performed better. Spoiler alert ... they’re often wrong. 

This is a fun and practical way to get your team to reduce cognitive biases by repeatedly showing that hunches don’t equal fact. Try it out with your team!

Resolve creative conflict: Establish your authority

Resolving conflict within your own team is important. It becomes extra important (and complicated) when dealing with external agencies and clients where contracts are at stake.

Mirella Crespi  — the mastermind behind Creative Milkshake, one of the largest performance creative studios in Europe who works with huge global brands like Amazon, Monday.com, and True Classic — weighed in on the nuance of dealing with clients.

Build that trust, one wild card at a time.

🏃 3 quick tips for creative conflict resolution 

Wrapping up, here are a few quick and actionable tactics for resolving creative conflict...

✔️ Tip 1: Define goals and structure

Creative conflict is often a symptom of vague or undefined goals. 

Identify the creative metric you’re targeting — i.e. are you looking to improve hook, hold, or watch time?

Then, set a clear, specific goal — what number would signal success for this metric?

✔️ Tip 2: Stay objective

When in doubt, data is the best antidote to subjectivity. 

Look at how your intended audience has responded to similar creatives and form a hypothesis for each new idea. 

Breakdown elements like messaging, imagery, hook, or creator demographic to understand what may or may not work based on past data. 

✔️ Tip 3: Pick your battles

When teams or contributors start to clash, ask yourself: How will this impact our overall creative strategy?

If your visuals drop jaws and stop thumbs, you can probably skip the request to edit the capitalization in the headline.

Don’t waste time and energy on trivial changes. Focus on getting the key elements right.