How To Give Good Creative Feedback
By Joelle Nole, Managing Director at Larj Media
For most of us, when we are asked for creative feedback, we tend to offer it, even if we’re not exactly sure what might be helpful or useful, because of course, we all have taste, style and we know what we like. But the quality of our feedback goes a long way toward ensuring that we’re getting the results from the investment in a creative endeavor, whether it be a brand campaign, a website, video or a podcast. Your feedback needs to be clear, concise, actionable and it needs to align with the goals of your project and the audience your projected is intended to serve.
If you lead a creative team, or are diving into a creative project yourself, help your stakeholders help you by giving them some suggestions on how to give useful, meaningful, and actionable feedback.
Ask your team how they want to receive feedback: Good news first or last? Written or discussed in person? One-on-one or together with the team?
Stick to what you know. Give feedback that draws from your area of expertise and unique perspective. Come from your place of experience and knowledge.
Explain why. Give context for your feedback. Refer to the creative brief or the initial goals and objectives to help explain where your feedback is coming from.
Avoid sharing your personal taste or being vague and subjective. Intuition doesn’t have a vocabulary so using words like “punchy” or “impactful” should be accompanied by examples of what those words mean to you.
Be kind. Offer positive comments, praise and gratitude often. Highlight what works well and why.
Resist offering the solution or being prescriptive. For example, in podcast production, time stamps are markers used to highlight where you’re hearing the error, or segment that doesn’t work. Do not use the timestamps to prescribe an edit (e.g. “cut 12:22 – 12:28”) A prescriptive solution may solve the current issue but may also introduces a new problem. Your creative team has a more wholistic view of the project and needs to have the freedom to come up with alternate solutions.
Be timely. The team cannot move forward without all the feedback so turn it around quickly to keep the project moving forward. They’re waiting…
Be comprehensive. Collect and deliver all the feedback together at one time. Offering follow up feedback when the next revision is already in production creates re-work and slows the momentum.
**Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you missed something in a previous revision and are just now catching it 2 or 3 rounds later, consider whether it’s important enough to slow the project down. If you missed it previously, maybe it wasn’t all that crucial. Sometimes we catch new things we didn’t hear before because we’re now hearing such a final version that the slightest imperfection comes to light.
**Voltaire said that.