Episode 3 - Acceptance Criteria

Key Takeaways:

• Introduction to Acceptance Criteria: The episode focuses on establishing and managing acceptance criteria within the creative brief process, emphasizing the importance of clear communication and setting expectations.
• Differentiating Project Types: Discussion on how different types of projects like video production and PR campaigns have clear-cut acceptance criteria compared to more subjective areas like design and copywriting.
• Handling Subjective Feedback: Strategies for managing subjective feedback on creative projects, emphasizing the importance of aligning with client expectations and the original project brief.
• Navigating Client Dynamics: Insights into adapting to different client organizational cultures and dynamics to effectively manage projects and client relationships.
• Scope Creep Management: Techniques for handling scope creep, including the option of revising project scopes and acceptance criteria as needed.
• Effective Communication and Stakeholder Management: The importance of effective communication and managing various stakeholders' expectations throughout a project's lifecycle.

Synopsis:

- Introduction to the concept of acceptance criteria in creative projects, discussing the need for clear criteria to define project completion and satisfaction.

- Exploration of different types of projects like video and PR, detailing how their acceptance criteria can be more straightforward compared to more subjective areas such as design.

- Discussion on handling subjective elements in projects, particularly in design and copywriting, and strategies to manage diverse feedback and expectations.

- Insights into adapting to client organizational cultures and managing dynamics that influence project acceptance and feedback.

- Techniques for managing scope creep, including how to adjust project scopes and criteria effectively when new elements are introduced.

- Emphasis on the importance of effective communication and stakeholder management to ensure project alignment and satisfaction.

- Concluding thoughts on best practices for establishing and managing acceptance criteria, with a call to action for listeners to share their experiences on LinkedIn.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] In this episode, the creative brief, establishing and managing acceptance criteria. So getting a read on the client, is it the top down organization? Is it a collaborative organization? Kind of what's their vibe of how they work? together gives you clues into how then you manage that relationship because I think people think technical terms gives you more credibility and what I feel it does is actually just builds a wall in front of of anyone who could be in the potential influencer much less the prospect.[00:01:00] 
All right. So, um, we've been talking about our lives with creative briefs. So, um, I thought it'd be really cool today if we could talk about acceptance criteria in the process and. You know, managing that, negotiating it with clients, some of the things that we run into with subjective projects. Sounds good.
Essentially. How do, how do we know when the project is done? Right. And how do we make sure that the customers aligned with what we're delivering, with what we're delivering and that we've met the. We've met the criteria. Yeah, it's fair. I think with us there's, what I find, there's sort of two sets of projects that are, that make it clear versus more subjective.
So things like video and PR, I [00:02:00] find very clear cut. It's depending on the kind of video, I should say. Uh, we were doing A animation video, and there's very clear stops and animation to say you need to be you. Once you sign this off, there's it's the point of no return. Like, we can't go back and fix these things, or it has this impact to the budget and just kind of it.
You know, communicating that as we go along tends to be more helpful and saying it's, you know, it's fine to, to take another day to get feedback, you know, internally go to talk to who you need to do because we can't go backwards or this has that equally, I think with PR. When a press release goes out, it goes out.
It's done, right? We then can monitor for a set of time where the pickup has happened, make that reporting, but that's more clear. It's typically aligned in a strategic way to some sort of announcement anyway, so the larger objective that the [00:03:00] PR is supporting is more clear as to here's when it's done. I think there's other parts of.
The process that are, um, can have really great value added objective feedback. And then there's. And almost marketing as a whole for everyone not in marketing is a subjective act, right? You know, and so I think the acceptance tolerance is an interesting thing to say, did we meet what we set out to do?
Have we delivered, you know, there's the very clear cut space, like, did we deliver X amount of blogs, X amount of social cutouts, X amount of podcasts, whatever that is. Um, but I think then saying whether or not it was a success, You know, that depends on metrics and define metrics and how we measured it from the beginning to the go.
But I'm curious to hear some of your stories that how you, how you go ahead and negotiate [00:04:00] when things get into the very subjective space of design and creative. Exactly. Well, it's really interesting too, because one of the things that I keyed in on what you were saying is something that I think is really important, which is You defined those milestone pieces, or you define the metrics for the PR, you know, as part of the kickoff of the project.
Um, and I think that that's really, really important and to the degree that you can do that with anything that's objective, um, you know, that's fantastic. But that's, you know, that's, that's only part of marketing. And, and I think one of the challenges is. whether it's a client or internal teams. So many times you run into people who think they know marketing.
And, uh, especially if you're working on a project that has a large number of stakeholders, you can look into very subjective and sometimes even, um, uh, opposing views on [00:05:00] You know, what should be done, how it should be done. Um, and so I, I think one of the things that it takes is some nuance and some really good communication.
And this is where the trust that you have with the client or the team, where you're the subject matter expert, you got to bring your very best to the table on each and every project. And it might mean. That you're educating them in the process or you're negotiating them in the process. Uh, you're helping them understand why something is good and sometimes that's very difficult in particular if you're dealing with a senior level executive and you're back, you're pushing back on something that they want to do.
Um, that's really not in their best interest. You know, that can definitely be a challenge. So I think that that nuanced relationship helping to kind of set yourself out as a subject matter expert and to build that level of trust [00:06:00] so that you can get past a disagreement and have them actually hopefully accept what you truly believe is the best approach.
And then where, so when you have the situations where in the client side, they have opposing agrees, do you take, do you try to mediate or do you let them sort that themselves? It really depends. Okay. It depends on the dynamics, right? Classic answer, Mark. Every, every, every, every client, every internal team, they have different cultures and dynamics.
And so getting a read on the client, is it the top down organization? Is it a collaborative organization? Kind of what's their vibe of how they work together gives you clues into how then you manage that relationship. And so if it's a very authoritative kind of culture and you know, the boss, the CEO, CMO, whoever it is, who's the top decision maker, wants [00:07:00] to go a certain direction.
You know, that's very different than when you're sitting where, you know, three or four different peers might have different things that they want to contribute to make the project better, or to make it different. Um, it's just an entirely different process. So I tend to just kind of be a chameleon. Yeah.
And you adapt to the environment that you're working in and, you know, and go from there, but the, the business fundamentals always remain the same though, which is making sure that we don't go too far afield of what we set out to do in the first place. Also that we don't wind up with a lot of scope creep because sometimes in that iteration comes something that's truly scope creep.
It's not just difference. It's, it's something that's. Entirely new from what we set out to do. And then of course, there's all your normal ways of managing scope creep, revised statement of work, revised [00:08:00] rubric for what is and isn't success. Managing that, holding it out and then adapting the project plan.
Um, So yeah, I mean, I, what I, what I'm finding interesting in this conversation is that, you know, while we're having it in order to share with people, what is the best practice or what's a great thing to do, the reality is it's very individualistic on your relationship with the client and the scope of the project, what kind of project it is.
I think that's very fair. I tend to, I don't want to say take the path of least resistance. That's not really true. I think I take, um, I feel like very strongly that my priority is to keep the project moving. And so if we're getting it stuck at a certain moment, it's like, how long do you, how long do you allow that to, to be stuck and then to be able to communicate?
What that cost of that time being on pause [00:09:00] is to the greater, greater good or to if there's budget impact, if there's something like that, we're rather small agency. But in my, um, when I've worked with other agencies in the past that are very large, it is something that there is a designated person on your team.
It seems that gets wheeled out to tell the client when there's, you know, like, That person is in the meeting to tell you that you're over budget, under budget, over time, you know, whatever. And you only see that one person in those situations. That's not necessarily how I, how I work because it's, you know, I'm kind of like the head of most of the projects.
So I'm trying to move it across, but I think I do tend to say, okay, that's it. That's an interesting standpoint. Like that's a very value added. point. And like, let's, let's try to incorporate that if it isn't too far outside of the outside of the brief. But if it is something that, um, if it is something that so like copy [00:10:00] is something that is so subjective, it is so, so subjective.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies don't have a very clear voice book. And that tends to be something we try to do at the very beginning, um, is say, you know, everyone has their big, beautiful brand book, but there's not Typically enough, unless you're a fairly larger organization, you don't have that really beautiful brand book to say, we talk like this, not like this.
We use this kind of commas. We don't use this kind of commas. Um, with one of my copywriters, that's, that is the Oxford comma is discussed so often. And I'm very much like, I don't actually have an opinion on the Oxford comma, but if that's what. That client is doing we just have to be consistent, you know, like that's what they're doing.
That's what they're doing um But you can get in these rounds with copy that Speaking especially when you're working with four tech companies speaking in a simplified voice is what i'm always trying to master What we're always trying to give is speak in the [00:11:00] most layman terms that we can In the most non patronizing language that we can and the most approachable language that we can You Whichever is right for your brand, but there's always this instinct seemingly by tech companies to go in and it's the engineering of it to kind of tinker with the copy and add in some more technical terms because I think people think technical terms gives you more credibility and what I feel it does is actually just builds a wall in front of Of anyone who could be a potential influencer, much less the prospect.
So if you speak, um, there's a time and place for those very technical conversations and it doesn't tend to be in the zero to 60 percent part of the, the pipeline that we, we spend most of our time doing as far as marketing goes. Very interesting. Um, so one of the things that I've been doing for quite some time is mentoring technical founders that don't have a business background.
Oh, [00:12:00] interesting. And so this is something where, uh, this is a constant. This is a constant scenario. And especially because they're startups, they definitely don't have the brand book. They're still figuring out kind of who they are and what their value proposition is. It depends on where they're at in the product market fit cycle.
Um, but they do feel typically if they're a, uh, CTO kind of oriented founder, they come out of the tech itself. They do, they want to be getting all of the feeds and speeds in there and, and all of that, and really. kind of bypassing the concept that the buyer is probably a non technical decision maker. You might have a stakeholder who's the techie who's going to qualify it, but the buyer is probably an exec, in particular, you know, high price point sasses, for example, right?
Sure. And so it, it can be hard and you, you think you've done a good job of laying out the [00:13:00] acceptance criteria and you think you've done a good job of kind of creating a rubric. Um, but because they tend to be naive, uh, when it comes time to kind of negotiate those things and, and drive towards a final version, you know, that could be a sticky point.
It's kind of interesting. Cause when I get in those scenarios, I say, well, let's call it a final for now. Yeah. Yeah. Then we can try it. Let's go out into the market with it. Let's see what kinds of questions that you get. If you get questions that are at that level of technical detail, then we know, yes, we need to be a little bit more proactive with including that in the content.
And I will, I'll be very willing to admit that I was incorrect. Um, you know, and then, you know, go from there. But, but, For the most part, I would say, you know, 95 percent of the times we never go back and do a rewrite in those situations. We wind up doing what we're doing, what we're doing. Not that [00:14:00] it doesn't change over time as they mature.
And as you discuss more about the market and the buyer, I'm not saying there's never any edits. I'm saying the things that they might have originally pushed back against. Don't wind up being incorporated into future versions of the work product. No, I totally agree and it's and I think that those are more applicable for like your longer engagements, right?
So it's a bit different if you're doing The situations that you just discussed. I think that that's a lot more plausible when you're doing You know, factional CMO work or long term campaigns are saying, you know, we need to, so I was kind of go with, we need to start somewhere, right? Like, we need to start with something, we need to start somewhere, and then we're going to fine tune it as we go and get, we're going to listen to the appropriate amount of feedback.
I think in those, um, we did like a direct mailer, which was quite fun and not, not a common, um, thing anymore, but actually, I think it'd be quite, impactful. We'll talk about that another day. But in that situation, that's a finite [00:15:00] project where all of the creative has to be locked. The content has to be locked.
And so that in those situations where you're going to get this one box in the mail or internal mail, wherever it is, I think I do allow a little bit more time to kind of. fine tune those, those extra bits of copy or look at the formatting. A lot of that stuff, it's quite difficult. What I'm finding too, with a lot of my founders or even, you know, clients with, with very large companies is when it comes to marketing, people are far more They need that visual support.
It's hard to look at a document and understand that that's what, well, like, well, that's going to now be on an origami thing. I mean, that's an impossible thing to, to, um, visualize. So then it's like, we have to say, okay, well, here's, in the meantime, here's an origami set out, you know, to say that that's what it is.
We have done an origami, that's why I'm saying it. But like, it was a [00:16:00] very cool project. But, um, I have something to show you. I have something to show you after we, uh, hang up on this. So, um, I can't wait to have that conversation. Ah, secrets. Um, and so, um, no, but that, that, those spaces. So I think it's also allowing when you talk about like the, the acceptance criteria, how do we know it's done?
I think that's also understanding the types of creative that we're putting in, understanding that copy is. Always something people have an opinion on. I'm less dear about the, I think it's very subjective. Most of the time, if you wish the coffee plant in a infographic was green versus yellow versus whatever I'm, I'm, I'm very like, okay.
You know, I can click that it's done, you know, especially if we're not trying to do any kind of testing or things like that. I have been a part of a project where we were testing. I'm sure most people have ever done AB tests, have at least, have always done like a button color test at some point in their career and that's [00:17:00] quite different.
But, um, but yeah, otherwise we kind of brought that in to say, okay, we're going to add a day for everyone to kind of think about that before it goes down the final space. But then there gets to be a point where it's just, you're like, it's too late, you have to accept it. I love the idea where you actually set aside like a specific period of time, you know, this is your time to gel on it, sit with it, let it resonate.
Kind of see what kind of, uh, you know, response that you have to it emotionally, psychologically, whatever the case is, give them time to kind of steep in it for a little bit. And then because, um, I think a lot of times, uh, uh, Whether it's a client or internal teams, they feel like they need to be responsive right then in the moment because they're eager to get the project done.
But there's a lot to be said for saying, let's give it 48 hours or on a [00:18:00] Thursday, let's touch base back on Monday and discuss your inputs and give them time to really kind of think through it because sometimes their knee jerk reaction To it doesn't really come with the, the thought process or letting it kind of stew or there's, and there's always, um, a mystery stakeholder, there's right, there's always someone, because I'll always ask at the beginning, who are all the stakeholders here, because they want to make sure everyone's catered for.
And then equally, it gives you an idea of how long the feedback loop goes. Will take because if there's say, well, if we need four people, I mean, nightmare for people, two people, plus is nightmare. But like, that's, that's just the reality of it is. But if someone tells you early on, there's that I'm like, okay, we need to allow all these people are busy people.
We need to allow this amount of time. We need to allow the person who has probably commissioned it knows the most amount of the project, but has to report [00:19:00] to other people to guard. Gather all of their results. And then I'm kind of root for that person to say, but, okay, that's fine. Let's come back, but we can go back and tell them what, like, what do you think this is your project?
Yes. They're going to ultimately sign it off, but how do we support that, that primary person? But yeah, there's always been that person that pops out of nowhere that has to, oh, well, actually so and so's cousins in town and they also want, you know what I mean? Like, you're like, oh, okay, great. So they, so they, they know nothing about the project and don't know.
And we're, when we're one day from final delivery of sending this to 10, 000 people, great. I'd love to hear their feedback, you know? Um, so that's always that other, other space of, of management, but. Yeah, the mystery stakeholder. That's like, I don't understand. I don't understand why they need to know that.
It's interesting because when you do wind up with those multiple stakeholders, I [00:20:00] think one of the things when we talked about nuancing earlier, I think one of the things that needs to be understood is that, all opinions aren't equal. Oh, of course. Yeah. So taking in the opinion of someone who understands the space, understands, you know, the, the, the type of deliverable, whatever the case is, uh, have a lot more weight than someone who's on the sidelines or, you know, just may not be a domain expert.
And so oftentimes what I offer is I'll be the bad guy to deliver the news because so often whoever that key project lead is, they're in some sort of political maelstrom, right? Project. And you want to kind of be the bad guy for them so that they can just go, Well, this is what they're saying. We need to do.
Yeah, I need to be able to trust them and just [00:21:00] let them bring that message back. Um, versus, you know, getting all, you know, caught up in the politics of feedback. I do like to also go I mean, that's really helpful. And it's a good advocate and how you Create loyal clients, I think, but I also like to be very, um, I still feel like for whatever reason, it's, it's rarely accepted how scientific modern marketing is.
And so it is something like the grounding space of saying, this is like, where are we going to get the numbers? Will the number show this? Will we be able to hear some numbers? You'll be able to report back to your board or just your member needs to know. And so I think having that kind of space also at the beginning of the brief of how do we know it was a success?
It's not just that it looks beautiful and it went out on time and the copy was in the right voice and it hit the people saying, okay, and we're going to give you X amount of, you know, we, we ended up with, This many pickups for the PR project, we ended up [00:22:00] with this boost of a site visits or this many downloads or, or, you know what I mean?
So I think that data tends to be. A very grounding and report to the specifics to say, no, now we know that I like to say what we are doing it next time. These are the couple of things I would change in the project. There was like a great, um, it's the last place I was, I was employed, um, a big company.
There's a great, great thing where you'd, after an event, they'd send out, um, the email to all of the Mia. So, what is in Europe, Middle East, and, and Africa to say, this is the event or the campaign that we just did. And then I always loved like these learnings and people are really hardcore. They go, this went wrong.
And so this went wrong. This went wrong. This went wrong. If we were to work with his partner again, we change it this. And then it was so fascinating to kind of hear. Actually take that moment of reflection of [00:23:00] what did you learn? Um, uh, along the way with the campaign, but also what do you want to share with your colleagues so that they don't, you know, that's how you really scale, right?
As if I'm, I'm, I'm learning the bad thing for everybody. So you can, uh, avoid that obstacle. Um, but yeah, then as, as it got bigger, then it ended up being a little bit more ethical. that disappeared after a few years because everyone wants to be more showy offy and I'm like, okay, this isn't helpful. I know everything didn't go well with this event.
Um, So that was like my cynicism because I found it so valuable to say, you know, what, what do you wish had gone differently in this process? And sometimes I'll be like, well, I wish, you know, we hadn't taken on all the subjective feedback. Okay. The next time we were going to say, you need to know about it, but you don't get to sign off on it.
You get to know about it, but you do get to sign off on it and then keep going. Yeah, I really like that. Um, I love working with [00:24:00] organizations that have a RACI so you know who's accountable for it. And who's just, you know, they get informational updates, but they don't really have a vote. Um, you know, those things are always really interesting.
What did you call it? RACI? RACI? It's a Six Sigma thing. Again, my engineering background winds up getting into the way that I'm putting, uh, I think that that's the model that we ended up adopting is that. I just didn't know it was called RACI. I'm part of that. You get to know about it, but you don't get to have an opinion about it.
Exactly. I mean, you can have an opinion about it, but the opinion's not going to come back to the changes. Thank you so much. Um, and the other thing I wanted to key back into to when you were talking about the analysis after the fact, um, I think I call them postmortems. I don't know where I picked up that term.
Um, I've been using it for as long as I can remember, but doing postmortems [00:25:00] on any project of size is really important. And in particular, I find that with any project anything big like a branding project, a video project, those things where a, uh, a nice amount of time, money, resources, heart, and soul went into it.
Um, there's always going to be lessons learned either for that client or for your organization and or probably both. I agree. I think that that's the, um, Yeah, it's a key moment of reflection and occasionally I will say let's save that for the postmortem because there will be aspects of like project management and anything that kind of flare up at different moments and I'm like that this isn't the time to discuss it, we need to get this approved and move forward and later we can talk about how complicated this sign off process was or something like that.
Right. Sometimes don't you find that people just want to be heard? Like it's, they want to hear that [00:26:00] you hear that they thought that something should have been done differently. Yes, but, well, I shouldn't say yes, but, but yes, most of the time people want to be heard. I think that there's also a situation of, for me personally, and now we're going off the track, but for me personally, I get very, because that's who I am.
I can very easily go into like, Um, I don't know if it's because I'm in a therapist mode or sure, let me let's die. You know, how can we work better? But I don't actually think while I do it all of the time, I don't actually think that's my role. And so it's a matter of saying, you know, if it's my main client, yeah, but if it's me trying to mediate something with other people, I personally need to do better not to get involved with that and saying, okay, that's something for the postmortem where you to need to figure out your communication styles.
And maybe that's very like, I don't know, otherwise I, I'm somebody that everyone tells me everything. And [00:27:00] so I'd like to facilitate it and stop it all at the same time. But I don't know how, I don't know how to do it, but I'm kind of like, but, um, yeah, that's a little off piece, but there you are. But no, it's fair.
Like the feedback that I think the problem that I have is that it depends again, like what the feedback wants. If you, if you're looking for attention to tell me why. Something should have been two shades lighter and gray. I can't really, on to one hand, I can't allow you to waste your budget telling me about that, right?
And that's the other part of it is a little bit, it's like, you know, I have, you know, we have to keep in budget and time is this, and, and we are an extension of your team to a point, but, um, I want to keep things as qualitative and again, as moving as we can. And say, yes, I do want to hear everything you have to say, but [00:28:00] let's save that for the postmortem.
I like that. One of the things that I think works great is really what you're describing is something that might happen early, like early in the relationship when they're first a client. And then over time, they start to understand that you've got, you know, you've got the juice, like you're coming at it with the right person.
You know, or from an area of expertise and trust you that you know what you're doing. So don't you find that in the beginning of the relationship, there's more of the back and forth and back and forth. And then at some point you develop trust and they understand your expertise better. And then they'll defer more and things get more into kind of a steady state of just normal collaboration.
It's almost as if you're an extension of the team because there's that there's that trustworthiness there. Yeah, you'd hope so and I think for most people that does happen. I think it goes back to what we're talking about Is when do you know a [00:29:00] project's done? That is Again, it's totally different on those fixed projects versus these longer engagements where, where you do allow a little bit more time and the longer engagements to say, okay, what is the culture here?
Are they a visual learner? Are they not a visual learner? I make a note of, um, you know, like, again, I'm, we're both chameleons, right? So a client and I'd be like, are you, I love a good color code, right? But I, but I asked my clients, are you colorblind? And so, and. You know ones like I am and I was like on which which colors the red green and then I purposely make sure I don't do any kind of color coding with those things or the ones I think are more visual.
I'll share my screen to show the agenda. I mean it's five bullet points and I was like you should be able to know what we're going but that's really helpful to them to like look at what it is. So it's adapting to like those things equally that not only are making it more um, Accessible for the client and [00:30:00] easier to understand and taking the moment sometimes on.
Yeah. This is the process that we do But eventually this is gonna be so dull to hear Then you're gonna do this and then I'm gonna do this and then the copywriter is gonna do this then design will have an opinion Then you know, then it's fine. Just do it. It's also one tactic more just make it a little boring I go, I know it's so much work, but I'll do it for you and it's fine.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's always, it's always changing. What do you think some key takeaways are for anybody who's. Um, listening today on, on, you know, the whole experience. You know what? I think that, you know, we didn't talk about this directly, but indirectly I think it's coming into a project with an open mind.
Um, if you're the person that's commissioning some work, come into it with an open mind and maybe, and even if you have a very clear, we hope, we hope [00:31:00] as the receivers that you have a very clear vision of what you want to achieve and what success looks like. But come in with a bit of, of saying, Oh, I hadn't, you know, you are the expert.
Maybe, you know, a more efficient way to do this, or you know, a, um, there's a template we can start with to, to adjust it. It's still going to look like you in the end, but this is a way to achieve your vision in a, in a scrappier way. Um, you know, then I think it's always like over communication, like set accurate expectations.
So if I say, I'm going to email you the final thing tomorrow by two and tomorrow is say Tuesday, then you have till Friday to reply, you know, to reply because our designers working over the weekend, you know, it's, it's, I need to, because I want you to respect it, to have it, uh, the fast track done over the weekend where it's happening by Friday.
I need to deliver what I I said I would bite you. [00:32:00] So it's that kind of, you know, communication and have an open mind. Um, and please limit those mystery stakeholders. I love it. Okay. I think with that final note, we should wrap it up for this. I think that's really tight. So, um, thanks again for your time and having a really cool conversation.
Thank you, Mark. I hope you have a great day. Awesome. Thanks. You too. Ciao, ciao.
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