Creative Director Playbook
This playbook shows you how to integrate Boa into your weekly rhythm as a Creative Director — from Monday’s competitive research to Friday’s strategic reviews.Creative Directors use Boa to build confidence in creative strategy, align teams with data-backed insights, and generate briefs that reduce revision cycles.
Your top 3 goals with Boa
1. Ground creative strategy in real performance data
Stop guessing what works. Use Boa to surface patterns from thousands of creatives and build strategy backed by evidence.2. Align your team and stakeholders faster
Create Reports and Creative Briefs that show the “why” behind your direction — making approvals and hand-offs smoother.3. Stay ahead of creative trends
Spot emerging patterns before competitors, and avoid saturated themes that waste budget.Weekly workflow rhythm
1
Monday: Discover what's working
Time investment: 15-20 minutesGoal: Start the week with fresh competitive intelligence and pattern insights.Recommended Chips:
- Competitor Landscape — See what competitors launched last week and how it’s performing
- Genre Deep Dive — Understand current top-performing patterns in your genre
- Run Competitor Landscape for your top 3-5 competitors
- Note any new creative directions or breakout performances
- Save findings as a Report (for weekly team standup)
Monday Discover workflow
2
Tuesday-Wednesday: Diagnose and refine
Time investment: 20-30 minutesGoal: Understand why top performers work and refine your creative direction.Recommended Chips:
- Creative Breakdown — Deep analysis of a top performer or your recent campaign
- A/B Comparison — Understand differences between creative variations
- Pick 2-3 top performers from Monday’s Discover results
- Run Creative Breakdown to understand tone, pacing, narrative, visuals
- Compare your recent work to these top performers (gap analysis)
- Document learnings for next brief
3
Thursday: Generate briefs and reports
Time investment: 30-40 minutesGoal: Turn insights into actionable deliverables for your team and stakeholders.Recommended Chips:
- Creative Brief Builder — Production-ready briefs for upcoming campaigns
- Strategy Report — Strategic summaries for leadership
- Use insights from Monday-Wednesday to create a Creative Brief for your next campaign
- Include visual references from top performers
- Add clear direction: tone, theme, pacing, character, must-haves
- If needed, create a Strategy Report for leadership updates
4
Friday: Review and forecast
Time investment: 15-20 minutesGoal: Look ahead and prepare for next week.Recommended Chips:
- Trend Spotter (monthly) — Identify rising vs declining patterns
- Review saved Reports and Briefs from the week
- Review what you learned this week
- Run Trend Spotter (once per month) to check for emerging patterns
- Update your creative roadmap based on trends
- Share key insights with your team
Favorite Chips for Creative Directors
Competitor Landscape
Weekly competitive intelligence
Genre Deep Dive
Understand your category
Creative Breakdown
Deconstruct top performers
Creative Brief Builder
Production-ready briefs
Trend Spotter
Spot what’s next (monthly)
Strategy Report
Leadership updates
Fast wins: your first 2 weeks with Boa
Week 1: Build your baseline
Day 1-2: Discover- Run Competitor Landscape for your genre
- Run Genre Deep Dive to understand current patterns
- Save findings as a Report
- Pick your last campaign
- Run Creative Breakdown and compare to top performers
- Document gaps and learnings
- Create a Creative Brief for your next campaign incorporating Week 1 insights
- Share with your team
Week 2: Refine and align
Day 1-2: Deep dive on underperformance- Run Performance Diagnosis on your weakest recent creative
- Identify specific improvement areas
- Share findings in team retrospective
- Run Trend Spotter to identify rising themes
- Create a brief for a test campaign incorporating 1-2 trends
- Validate with stakeholders
- Create a Strategy Report summarizing Week 1-2 findings
- Present to leadership or team
- Set up Competitor Watch (Monitor) for ongoing intelligence
Monthly planning with Boa
Week 1: Competitive review- Run Competitor Landscape for all major players
- Create competitive intelligence Report
- Identify threats and opportunities
- Run Trend Spotter to identify rising/declining patterns
- Assess saturation and brand fit
- Prioritize tests for next quarter
- Create 3-5 Creative Briefs for upcoming campaigns
- Ground each in performance data and visual references
- Get stakeholder approval
- Run Diagnose on last month’s launches
- Document learnings and share with team
- Refine creative direction for next month
Quarterly strategic planning
Month 1: Research and discovery- Run Discover workflows across all genres and themes you care about
- Build a comprehensive view of the market
- Identify top performers and emerging patterns
- Run Diagnose on your best and worst work
- Compare to competitor benchmarks
- Create improvement roadmap
- Run Forecast to understand what’s coming next
- Create quarterly Strategy Report for leadership
- Generate Creative Briefs for next quarter’s campaigns
- Set up Monitor alerts for competitive intelligence
Common scenarios and how to handle them
Scenario: Competitor launches breakout creative
Scenario: Competitor launches breakout creative
What to do:
- Run Creative Breakdown on the breakout creative
- Understand why it’s working (tone, theme, pacing, etc.)
- Assess: Should we fast-follow or differentiate?
- If fast-follow: Create a Creative Brief incorporating similar patterns
- If differentiate: Run Discover to find white space opportunities
Scenario: Campaign underperforms
Scenario: Campaign underperforms
What to do:
- Run Performance Diagnosis on your creative
- Compare to top performers in genre
- Identify specific gaps (pacing? tone? hook?)
- Create revised Creative Brief with improvements
- Test iteration quickly
Scenario: Leadership asks for creative strategy
Scenario: Leadership asks for creative strategy
What to do:
- Run Competitor Landscape and Genre Deep Dive
- Run Trend Spotter for forward-looking insights
- Create Strategy Report with:
- Competitive landscape
- Top-performing patterns
- Emerging trends
- Recommendations and test plan
- Present with visual examples and data
Scenario: Starting new campaign from scratch
Scenario: Starting new campaign from scratch
What to do:
- Run Genre Deep Dive or Theme Explorer to understand what’s working
- Run Diagnose on 2-3 top performers to understand why
- Use Creative Brief Builder to generate production-ready brief
- Include:
- Visual references from top performers
- Specific direction (tone, theme, pacing)
- Must-haves and guardrails
- “What Good Looks Like” benchmark
Scenario: Quarterly planning meeting
Scenario: Quarterly planning meeting
What to do:
- Run Trend Spotter over last 90-180 days
- Run Competitor Landscape for all major players
- Create Strategy Report covering:
- Last quarter’s performance vs benchmarks
- Rising and declining trends
- Competitive positioning
- Next quarter’s creative roadmap
- Generate Creative Briefs for top 3-5 priorities
Pro tips for Creative Directors
Tip 1: Build a pattern library
Save your favorite Discover results and Diagnose breakdowns. Over time, you’ll build a library of proven patterns for your team to reference.Tip 2: Run weekly competitive reviews
Set aside 15 minutes every Monday to run Competitor Landscape. Track changes over time and spot competitive shifts early.Tip 3: Pair insights with examples
Always include visual references in your Briefs and Reports. “Show, don’t just tell” makes your direction 10x clearer.Tip 4: Test emerging trends early
Use Forecast monthly to spot rising patterns. Test them before they saturate — early movers get the biggest wins.Tip 5: Document your “why”
Every creative direction should have a clear rationale backed by data. Use Boa to provide the evidence that builds confidence.The best Creative Directors use Boa not just for insights, but to build team confidence in creative direction. When your team understands the “why,” they execute better.