The Real Creative Innovation
AI opens up possibilities. You set the direction.
Hans Prijs, our Creative Innovation Director, works with your team to set the creative direction. He embeds your brand rules and review criteria in an automated process that your team uses to create and assess the work.
What a CID is
Turn creative direction into everyday practice.
A Creative Innovation Director, or CID, connects brand strategy with day-to-day creative work. He works within your team, from the initial decisions through to applying them on live projects.
Why a CID
Creating more takes clear decisions.
What fits your brand? Who decides whether the work is good enough? Without those agreements, a successful AI pilot does not become everyday practice. The CID works through them with your team and records why each direction is chosen or rejected.
What changes
Not the tools. The process.
Changing the tools alone leaves the handovers and revision rounds in place. We look at the whole process.
A campaign in a traditional project model
brief→concept→presentation→production→revisions→production
With an automated processClear criteria
brief→multiple concepts→development→review→selection→production
A CID designs that way of working and captures it, with the brand rules and the review criteria inside it.
Every step records what a person develops and judges, and what the machine executes. That is a design choice and not a consequence of the technology.
01From briefing to final file
Briefing
Reads the briefing and develops the first concept
Reads the same briefing
Sharpens the plan with AI
Explores the imagery within that plan
Selects the creative approach
Produces
Reviews the final file
Final file
02From product data to product image
Product data
Rebuilds the product in 3D
Sets the camera, light and setting
Makes variants in colour, fabric and mood
Selects the variants
Prepares the final output
Reviews the product image
Product image
03From conversation to brand identity
Conversation with the client
Translates the conversation into a brand direction
Researches the market and competitors
Defines the positioning
Explores imagery, colours and typography
Defines the identity
Sets up the brand book
Reviews the brand guidelines
Brand book
The decisions behind your brand
What does your brand stand for? What do you want it to achieve? Those decisions are yours. The CID works with your team to turn them into rules for the work before you automate production.
How a project runs
One start, five phases.
We start by assessing your brand, your work and your team. The findings determine the next steps. You can also commission the assessment on its own.
What it covers
The assessment covers all seven areas, with the emphasis shaped by your brief. Select an area to see how we assess it and where it fits in the later phases.
The question
What standards must the work meet before it is released, and who decides?
For example
Which tools and client data can you use? Who signs off the work? Which brand rules apply?
What you end up with
Rules for brand and creative work, aligned with technical and legal requirements.
How we assess this. We compare approved and rejected work and discuss why each example does or does not meet the standard.
Follow-up: the direction.
What happens then
The assessment
A seven-point assessment
- Establish whether the brief concerns the brand, a campaign or content
- What you are not making because it was too expensive or too slow
- Identify the skills your team needs
- A plan for the next steps and priorities
- Where possible a working component as proof
- Fixed price, known in advance
Findings across all seven areas and a plan for what comes next
The direction
On brand, campaign or content
At brand level
- Positioning, brand promise and behaviour
- Tone of voice
At campaign level
- Proposition, message and audience
- Channel selection
At content level
- Content pillars and narratives
- What does and does not fit per channel
Always
- Clear criteria for assessing the work
- Who guards that standard once we are gone
- Working sessions with the team
Direction and criteria delivered
The concept
Concepts developed into examples you can review
At brand level
- Multiple brand worlds worked out
- Sample applications, from website to social
At campaign level
- Multiple campaign concepts
- Sample executions per concept
At content level
- Multiple formats worked out
- Sample assets per format
Always
- What is possible now and was not feasible before
Chosen concept delivered
The automated process
Build, together with your team
- Brand rules set out in a form AI can use
- Review criteria built into the automated process
- The process redesigned
- Built on live work
- Your team works along from day one
An automated process that applies the brand rules and review criteria
The handover
Ready for your team to use
- Documentation
- Handover session
- Your team creates and reviews the work
- An established process for recurring work
- Captured separately from the model, so the criteria stand when the tools change
Your team manages the process and its criteria
What you keep
You keep the rules your work has to meet, written down so nobody has to meet about them again. Those rules sit inside a way of working that your team runs, and the whole of it sits in one file on your own network.
When technical development is needed
The CID sets the direction. The TID builds the technology.
The CID defines the creative direction and process. If that calls for custom software or AI on your own hardware, Christian Wauben, our Technical Innovation Director (TID), builds it. That development is a separate commission.
Hans defines what the process needs to produce and the standards it must meet. When technical development is needed, he works directly with Christian on those requirements.
What it gives your team
How will the next generation learn?
If AI takes over production tasks, how do creatives learn to judge the work? Your team takes part in the build using real projects, continuing to develop concepts and practise reviewing the results.
Automation in our own work
The Real Déjà vu.
We work for brands including AkzoNobel, Bosch and Komatsu, and automate recurring work. At BMN, adding assets to the configurator now costs 45% less per asset. At Expandable, importing and placing STEP files and updating the configurator went from a full day to a quarter of a day. This is how we make corporate quality accessible to smaller businesses too.
Who you will work with
Hans Prijs
Hans Prijs is Creative Innovation Director at THE REAL MAG. His background is in 3D and brand strategy, with years of experience in creative and art direction for international brands, both in-house and through agencies. As your CID, he brings that experience to your team's creative direction and way of working.
“Judging good work starts with developing ideas yourself.”
Never stop learning
Book an intro call
What is holding your creative team back?
Tell us what your team creates and where the work gets stuck. We will discuss how a CID could help and whether an assessment is the right first step.
- · Hans Prijs, Creative Innovation Director
- · [email protected]
- · +31 (0)45 572 1090
- · Risseweg 22 F · 6004 RM Weert
Senior-level creativity, automated execution.
The Real
Direction.
We start with the work your team creates, then discuss the creative direction, the process and the right next step.