By the Numbers | The Secret to Writing your Creative Budgets

how can you put stock behind creative assumptions when more often your team’s expertise is not in creative and entertainment strategy building?

If you are responsible for all or part of your organization’s financial planning, then you know the long hours, hard work and stress that come with the process.  As the cost of doing business continues to increase, more emphasis on the bottom line make it difficult to layer in creative and entertainment budgets. The strategy becomes less about trying to score points and more on defense and expense cuts. Still hoping your brand is strong enough to remain relevant to it’s past reputation and initiatives.

A few questions come to mind with this approach. How do you create a budget that includes creative and entertainment expenses that owners and executives can get behind? How do you navigate in a creative space many of your leaders are not well-versed in? How can you put stock behind creative assumptions when more often your team’s expertise is not in creative and entertainment strategy building? The key to the above questions can all be addressed by implementing one simple strategic plan. Partner with creative and entertainment executives who can navigate and build programs within your brand voice and budget. The right partners can interpret the market value of your expenses putting stock behind your budget assumptions, reducing the margin of error and risk.

“price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

They can leverage their relationships and help guide conversations on your organization’s behalf ensuring you are not charged for “not knowing what you don’t know”.  They not only strengthen the top, middle and bottom of your budgets, but also help your brand’s value proposition in the community.

Partners like this arm you with the transparency and confidence you seek behind the budget assumptions you are presenting.  Positioning you to write a budget that is less about limiting your organization from spending to achieve profit goals, but empower you to write a budget that puts forth strategic plans that excite people and stimulate profit. This partnership is what will be the differentiator that builds your brand’s loyalty.

To quote Warren Buffet “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”  As you create your strategy have you positioned your expenses to add value trying to score points? Or does your strategy position your brand to quietly retreat as the subject of the market conversation.

Defensive budget-writing will cost you more in the long run, in reputation and in expense. It takes more resources to be part of a conversations you missed. When you want to be a part of that conversation again will anyone even be listening.  If you are writing creative and entertainment budgets without the right partners, you risk building that strategy on a foundation that is only as strong as those who helped build it and their limited ability to connect truthfully with your audience and key stakeholders.