What makes a successful campaign? As a designer, I bet you’re assuming I’m going to say something like bold type or flashy photography. And while attention to typography and images IS important, what makes a successful campaign is something a little less sexy: budget.

Why is knowing your budget from the start so crucial? It makes decisions easier. When it comes time to decide whether to create social ads or put up a few more billboards, you’ll be able to look at the cost and make a wise decision. And sometimes decisions like this are why some campaigns never see fruition.

In a dream world, budgets would be bottomless and we would be able to give our clients everything their hearts desire. All the billboard placements, digital ads, print ads, social ads, mailers, guerrilla pieces, and on and on would be on the table. The possibilities are endless! And that is why, here at Redhead, we love working with our clients to create a campaign–because we get to flex some creative muscles.

But when push comes to shove, before we even get to the creative part, the reality that we can’t make ALL the things sets in. It’s why knowing where the buck stops is important. Knowing the true cost of the project from the start ensures we can make wise decisions for our clients and their audiences.

Another unsexy thing that makes a successful campaign? Time.

Like budget, everyone wishes the amount of time available would be endless. That we could devote as many hours as we need to make everything smart, stylish and memorable.

But, like realistic budgets, practical timetables play a big role in just how comprehensive our work can be. It takes time to create effective, beautiful artwork for a campaign. It takes time to reformat or rearrange it to work in a variety of media. It takes budget to pay for thoughtful placements of these creative pieces. Heck, it takes budget to even determine how robust the campaign can be in the first place.

As much as we’d like to think (and say) that creativity is what’s most important about a campaign, it usually takes a back seat… at first.

So tackle the unsexy stuff first. Understand the bottom line and the deadline.

Then let the creativity flow.