February 19, 2025
Pierre Bourdeau—Director P&C Marketing, CAA Insurance Company
The business of marketing your brokerage has many facets. Brand, lead generation, client retention, community engagement—the list goes on.
One of the most fun parts of marketing can be that first look at the creative you’ll be placing. How have you been evaluating that creative and deciding if it’s right for your brokerage?
While it can be only natural to react based on personal preferences, it makes evaluating creative subjective. Good creative is the result of strategy and insight, so have your strategy and creative brief on hand while you’re judging. This can keep you focused on what you set out to accomplish.
To evaluate objectively, ask yourself these questions.
1. Does the creative capture the key message?
Think about the one thing you want your audience to take away from the campaign. Does the creative deliver it? Your creative shouldn’t just list benefits, it should address them in an insightful way, make the consumer feel something about your brokerage/product and solve a problem for them.
2. Does the creative reflect the campaign objective?
Think about why you needed creative in the first place. Are you adding a new product to your offering? Are you looking to increase customer retention? If the creative you’re looking at has you questioning your campaign’s objective, it should be adjusted.
3. Does the creative deliver on business objectives?
You may be looking to boost sales, educate consumers or build awareness of your brokerage. Does the creative accomplish it? Look at content and calls to action to determine how the creative measures up.
4. Does the creative reflect your brokerage’s brand personality?
Whether you want to be seen as the friendly neighbour, educator, problem-solver or anything else, you need to ensure every aspect of the creative reflects it. Look at the visuals and language being used, and the voices and music if it’s a video. Do these elements all correctly reflect your brand?
5. Does the creative stand out?
Getting noticed is one thing, but you also need to stand out from your competition. Creative should be memorable and create an emotional reason for people to want to engage with your brand.
6. Will the creative work across various platforms?
Unless you’re committed to a single medium, the creative idea should be able to work across different channels and platforms. So ensure the creative you’re looking at can also work in digital, print, radio and video formats as appropriate.
7. Would you stop to look at this creative?
Put yourself in your consumers’ shoes for a moment. Would you stop and read this ad if it popped up in your feed? Would you skip the ad on YouTube? If you’re on the fence, get a second opinion from trusted friends or colleagues who don’t work in your brokerage—they’ll have the most unbiased review. This tends to work better when you ask them to compare two pieces of creative that meet your objectives.
Evaluating creative properly is essential—not just to ensure a good use of your marketing dollars, but as a way of building a good partnership with your creative team or agency. Constructive and impartial feedback are great motivation to those delivering the business results you’re aiming for.