Creativity in Marketing: Why You Should Bother

Creativity in Marketing is a lot more than just slapping together an advertisement which ardently depicts the product and brand. It should involve all the aspects of marketing, such as your products, pricing, promotions, placement and the unique service you aim to provide. The unfortunate fact that many companies believe being creative is a requisite, doesn’t compensate for their lack of understanding as to WHY creativity is so useful in marketing. Breathing life into your brand could be as simple as putting together and marketing a creative package which distinguishes your brand from others and associates it with desirable attributes. In other words it will make your customers queasy at the knees credit card…

Why creativity?

Creativity communicates personality – When Nike got creative with Apple for a strategic co-branding combination, I got excited. I didn’t just pass it up as another fitness fad or random product, it was different from anything which I have seen before and I had to think it through and explore the product until I understood it.

It’s quite interesting really, as humans we tend to discard a lot of useless and obvious information. Think about it, when was the last time you awed at the amazing feat of your computer? I would say that you got over all the bells and whistles after just a few weeks of using it. The same goes for creative ideas. Once upon a time it was creative to advertise on cars – Now that everyone does it people don’t notice it as much.

The point I’m trying to make here is that people invest more of their time into processing creative and new ideas than things they’re already familiar with. Now don’t get me wrong – subliminally, we do notice some things which we don’t process consciously but what I want to propose to you is that in order to capture a person’s undivided attention, creativity might just be the tool for you. Also, depending on how your prospects look at it, they could also get more meaning from the creative ad than what you could communicate through a plain ad! It’s all thanks to metaphors.

Being creative isn’t all they say it is though. If you’re going to do it, you need to keep in mind a couple of key considerations:

• Make it congruent with your product, service and brand. So, if you’re funeral coordinators don’t make a joke like “People are just dying to get to us.” It just wouldn’t be respectful or convey a comforting message to those in mourning.
• Link the creative piece to your product or service – That means if you’re selling oranges, you don’t want to talk apples – People need to see a link between the two.
• Also, you need to determine whether your target market will be receptive to your advertising. Engineers often look past a lot of marketing and I can attest to that, as I live with one.
• Try and develop a theme which you can use to send a clear and consistent message. As I described in my article on Bolstering up Your Brand – Familiarity builds trust.

Make Your MC Sing

Have you ever heard of the word ‘synergy’? It has to be one of my favourite concepts in marketing. Basically, if all of your marketing communication delivers the same message, that message creates a more powerful message than if all of your advertising was saying something different. That means you should use creativity to make consistency across everything you do – your product design, packaging, PR, brand image, advertising and anything else you can get your hands onto.

If you want to be creative, I’d definitely recommend taking some time out to develop a theme and constructing your messages around it. If you deliver a clear and distinctive message which communicates that you’re different from your competitors, then I’ll say you’ll be on the road to riches.

Maximising Creativity

I’m not about to tell you to ‘have a chop’ but I will give you some advice with exercising your creative prowess. I’m not the most creative person I know but here are a bunch of tips which I’ve found most useful when getting creative:

Chillout. Forget about everything for a moment and go some place where you won’t be disturbed.
Brainstorm. Talk with someone about it.
Immerse. Dive into the problem and look at it from a many different perspectives as you can.
Record. Take note of all the ideas that are pumping through your head, you might have a notepad or even better a dictator.
Replay. Go through everything you’ve come up with.

Working with creativity

Your creative idea can’t just be anything – it needs to satisfy a couple of questions first, so go and ask yourself:

• Does it appeal to my target market?
• Does it differentiate me from the competition?
• Does it achieve my overall objectives?
• Does it communicate value?
• Can I work with it across other media and in my budget?

If all those questions are A-O-K, you’ve just found yourself a fantastic creative idea. Let me know what you think. Also, try to vent some of those creative ideas you’ve been hiding, with a comment below.

Best of luck creating,
Robert Kingston.