Focus Paper Job and Review Management - BrandMaker

FOCUS PAPER The creative supply chain under control
Supply chain management postulates that in the future it will no longer be enterprises, but rather supply
chains, which compete with one another. Because: The fewer interface problems and breaches an
enterprise encounters in its processes, the more efficiently and effectively can it serve its customers.
In times of comparable products, extremely competitive markets and global competition, this is a key
element necessary to survive in the market. But what is the status of the supply chains in marketing and
communications — the creative supply chains? Are they both efficient and effective – i.e. competitive – or
are they more like a ball and chain for market communications, in matters of quality, cost, and speed? This
focus paper is dedicated to the challenges within the creative supply chain, and demonstrates timely
solutions, with the aid of modern IT, which make marketing forceful and agile in regard to processes.
Hardly any other corporate field is comparable to marketing in its emphasis on interfaces in its processes. Information,
ideas, concepts, and thoughts are exchanged via these interfaces, and their conclusion should be of a successful
campaign as the output of the creative process. A particularly critical process in marketing is the creative production
process: There, diverse process participants within and outside the enterprise exchange an idea, a concept, and its results.
Creation usually takes place under enormous time and cost pressure – in the triangle of objectives regarding quality,
costs, and time, at least one dimension suffers – and so do the nerves of the participants.
Figure: The Creative Supply Chain
Several problems and challenges arise for the participants in the course of a process of creation. The most important are
as follows:
- Marketing receives ideas, wishes, or suggestions for campaigns from product management, from the sales and
distribution department, or directly from the corporate leadership level, and in addition generates its own plans.
This input is captured in a variety of forms; sometimes in the form of e-mails; sometimes only orally in informal
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