The 5 Struggles Every Designer Knows All Too Well (But Doesn’t Have To)
Designers, we feel your pain. Your workload is consistently heavy, communication is often scattered, and much of your day is filled with tedious tasks. From extensive reformatting of creative variants to managing workflows across teams, you’re probably ready to consider a solution for your day-to-day struggles. Let’s dig into these woes and explore your options.
1. Groundhog Day syndrome
Is work feeling more and more like a poor man’s version of Groundhog Day? This is a common sentiment amongst designers. The repetitive process of reformatting is taxing, to say the least. After all, no one wants to do something multiple times when it can be finished in one go. And when it comes to more sophisticated media like animation or interactive formats, the monotonous steps continue to pile up. There’s no way around the volume, but there’s one around how long it takes.
2. Email threads read like a novel
Still handling digital ad versions 1-1,000 via JPEG attachments on endless email chains? Is the process feeling eerily like 2001 AOL? Not only does a disjointed process cause confusion and therefore error, it dramatically slows down your speed-to-delivery. Without a centralized platform, your teams lack the resources to properly collaborate. The software you build on should also be empowering your teams by allowing access to the latest creatives. Otherwise, you run into issues like miscommunication and missed deadlines.
3. Stuck in the dark ages — literally
When you lack full transparency into how ad variants will look, you’re missing huge opportunities to optimize. The pressure is only accentuated with cumbersome live updates. While you might be able to see an isolated view of each variant, it’s important that you have full visibility into the campaign as a whole and can easily make real-time updates. These are crucial capabilities as you want the brand to look and feel consistent across channels.
4. Running ads on economy when you need premium
You’re looking to deliver high-quality creative experiences — amiright? So shouldn’t they be produced and delivered through an equally matched software? Coding for customized anything should be an outdated practice.
Without the proper creative technology, you’re essentially running digital ad production on economy fuel. Sure, it will get the job done. But let’s say you’re looking to power the Lamborghini of digital ads, economy just won’t cut it. Face it — you need fuel — (i.e., a set of building tools) that supports maximum speed and efficiency. Building unique creatives shouldn’t require a degree in computer science, it should be simple.
5. You’ve hit a major creative slump
Hate to break it to you, but your digital quality could very well be suffering right now. Escaping the perils of high content demands is challenging. Ever-growing platforms, channels, and formats push new tasks onto designers. And considering digital ad spend reached nearly half of all global ad spending this year, it seems this trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
When volume demands are overwhelming, creative quality takes a hit. But what’s the value of 1,000 messages if you’re unable to affect one consumer? Instead of settling for a subpar brand story, software should enable your creative potential.
A creative software built for designers
Imagine cutting the time to roll out pixel-perfect visuals on all of your channels in half. That’s what Creative Management Platforms (CMPs) are designed to do.
A CMP is a cloud-based software for transforming how you collaborate, create, and scale your digital advertising. The platform provides tools such as format flexibility, production efficiencies, and centralized workflow, meaning no copying and pasting creatives to fit into 4-5 other sizes. Even for more complex media, such as animation, the process is straightforward with templates you can prebuild.
When it comes to workflow on the platform, several users can directly access the latest ad versions and add edits or suggestions in the comments feature. All teams and team members with access are always in the loop. Plus, designers can lock certain layers while allowing regional teams to customize local messages and ensure your carefully crafted campaign look and feel stays consistent. This way, all teams and team members can access the creative but set permissions to ensure no damage is done.
Without the right technology, designers are unable to reach their full potential. Think about it this way, would you ask a video editor to produce without Adobe Premiere Pro, or a writer to publish without spell check? Sure it would be possible, but also needlessly time consuming. It’s time to focus on what really matters — creative experiences that live up to the full potential of your ideas.
