When a project is tangible, touchable, or easily visual it’s easy for a customer to understand what they are paying for. However, that is not the norm. The customer needs you, the creative, to help him or her solve a problem. If it were an easy solution they wouldn’t need you. They would just go to Kinkos or buy a template. Your customer has something greater to solve, an idea that needs to mature, creative thinking, strategic planning, stretching the mind as well as key resources. This is what we call the creative. This is the real value — intangibles that begin with just a seed of a thought and germinate into formidable ideas that become tangible, in some cases touchable, visual, and easy to grasp.
That marketing plan that is sought for is only the result of lots of creative. That winning sales proposal only came about because of the 10,000 hours that the creative team has invested in many projects over time, into planning, sketches, thought, strategy, process, unwinding the complexity and then more planning, thought, strategy, process and lest I forget, execution. This is the value a customer wants, not just the end result