The 5-Step Framework to Set the Right Objectives for E-commerce Content Production Teams
Swipe this powerful framework to help you set your e-commerce content production objectives, from David Hudson, former Studio Operations Director at Burberry.
Swipe this powerful framework to help you set your e-commerce content production objectives, from David Hudson, former Studio Operations Director at Burberry.
Setting the right content objectives for your e-commerce content production team is a critical aspect of achieving success in the highly competitive online marketplace. It involves aligning your brand’s unique value propositions with your commercial goal of driving increased online sales.
By establishing a clear “North Star” objective that unites creative and commercial aspirations, you can steer your content production teams toward success. In this blog, I’ll be sharing a comprehensive 5-step framework I used during my time at Burberry, to help you set the right objectives for your e-commerce creative teams and supercharge their productivity.
They are long-term goals that are focused on ambition and mission. The objectives are high-level and inspirational, designed to ignite your motivation and uplift you as you set your sights high.
When scoping out a project, it makes sense to assess the future success of the initiative in terms of how it influences your brand’s North Star objective. In an ideal world, the success of everything you work on will funnel up to this one objective.
Here’s an example to reverse engineer from your North Star objective in 4 steps:
Many fashion businesses excel at the initial stages of defining their North Star, i.e. stages 1-3, but face difficulties at stage 4, where meeting complex content needs within tight deadlines becomes a challenge. Overcoming errors at this stage is crucial for fulfilling your brand’s North Star objective.
To tackle this, ensure that your creative and content production teams are well-aligned with their targets. As a creative operations leader, you can play a vital role in directing teams’ attention to what truly matters.
To boost productivity and efficiency, focus on removing communication and technical hiccups that hinder your teams’ creative flow. Minimize reply-all email threads and unnecessary status update meetings, which tend to stifle creativity and deep work focus times. It’s essential to provide stakeholders, especially merchandisers, with easy access to content statuses from a centralised single source of truth in real-time and automated updates.
Workflow and tracking platforms like Lets Flo allow you to streamline your content production and sample management processes, so your teams no longer work in silos – rather, you work in harmony. With a single platform solution, you can store briefs, deliverables, feedback and approvals all via a single real-time system to eliminate inconsistencies and back-and-forth communications.
Moreover, encourage your teams to eliminate distractions from platforms like WhatsApp and Teams, creating a distraction-free space for them to produce their best work.
The success of the content production process largely depends on a mental shift within the teams.
Encourage your teams to share their perspectives on the challenges faced in meeting content production deadlines and how these issues can be improved. Emphasise that change will happen incrementally, and you will work together to address the identified problems as a team, not in silos.
By fostering open communication and addressing issues gradually, your teams will witness continuous improvements, regain lost hours, and reduce frustration – ultimately contributing to the achievement of your content production objectives.
While I worked at Burberry, the creative teams’ biggest obstacle was reshoots. The quality required by our creative directors meant that some imagery wouldn’t pass approval due to sample ordering or at-capture issues, which slowed down the time-to-market.
By removing imperfections that led to reshoots, the creative teams had more time to work on elevated and editorial-type shoots, along with product imagery that allowed greater control of styling on wholesale sites.
Here’s a simple 5-step framework to help demonstrate how small improvements in your team can contribute to your business’s objectives:
1. Identify your objective, and what can influence it
Burberry’s main objective is to drive revenue by producing the highest-quality, differentiated e-commerce content on time and within budget.
2. Map out your existing processes and how they work together
Content availability is dependent on the efficiency of the handovers between samples, studio, post-production, and merchandising.
3. Speak to your teams to find out how these things can be improved
Improving efficiency reduces the cost of effort by cutting down reshoots and speeding up content delivery, giving teams more time to work on different creative concepts during shoots.
4. Keep track of progress as you introduce incremental improvements
Introducing key performance indicators (KPIs) to track content availability helps drive continuous improvement to the metrics that matter most.
5. Make progress visible
Introducing a single, visual platform for teams to exchange assets and get real-time updates on the leading metrics (such as reshoots) that funnel up to an overall improvement in Burberry’s ability to influence its North Star.
By following this structured 5-step framework, you can effectively set the right objectives for your e-commerce content production teams and optimise their workflow.
By aligning their efforts with your brand’s North Star objective, eliminating distractions, fostering open communication, and tracking progress, you can enhance your content production process and achieve greater success in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
Want to see how Lets Flo can support you in streamlining your content processes? Request a live demo and see Lets Flo in action here.