Two strategies?

Working on a presentation right now and I have come across a conundrum that has been plaguing me ever since I became a planner.

We work to establish the best way for a brand to go and usually this is only one [I find it hard to believe that a brand vision taken in a different direction would obtain similar if not identical results]

So you give direction, and then creative comes and does something good but off the direction you suggested: it's nice, it works, it can sell but it takes the brand someplace unclear and where you won't know what happens. And it definitely has nothing to do with your vision. Usually this happens when a great insight comes along.

The question here is not whether you should allow for that creative to be presented. Apparently most great planners think good work should be nurtured even if it is not on brief (maybe it's that bit of serendipity Richard was talking about), the question is simply how do you put them in a presentation? Both!

I always thought that presentations had to have a sense of ultimate purpose: they had to build up to a conclusion that would be so simple and yet so obvious after all the premises were laid out. And then you showed the creative for that. But when your premises say one thing, the creative is there to support it and then you have something else, for which there is no premise but it's simply nice, what do you do?