Creativity and marketing

By Sirk Verelst

Life is a sequence of events. Some positive, some negative. The good are to be enjoyed, the "bad" form the essence of the lessons of life. Each and everyone of them contains a pearl of wisdom on how to make things better. These unfortunate incidents are either caused by our actions, decisions, or they are due to circumstances beyond our control. Through these experiences, we learn to deal with and anticipate possibilies. Using available resources, personal experience and the wisdom of others combined with creative thinking , a strategy can be formulated.

Creative problem solving is to be everyone's responsibility. As opposed to leaving the creative up to an outside agency, all parties at every level need to be involved. By making them part of the process, an innovative approach can be achieved. Starting from product development, through production to after-sales service, bringing the product closer to the needs and expectations of the end-user.

Traditionally, creativity is only involved at both ends of the product cycle, conception and promotion. The designer starts by translating the brief into a product. After completion, promotion and marketing take the final product, place it into a context and present it to the prospective buyer. To make the creative an integral part of the business cycle, it needs to be involved at every stage. The product ecosystem needs to integrate an inquisitive frame of mind at every stage. The perceived insignificant components and participants need to be subject to introspection. The existence of the product as well as every member of the team need to have his/her contribution questioned. In this way the final result as well as the process can be optimized yielding a maximum level of satisfaction to all, not only an increase of the absolute, but more importantly the perceived value of the product. The latter being far more important.

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Have The Inmates Taken Over?

Tales From The Marketing Wars

This is an interesting time in the marketing world. First, Time magazine announces that the person of the year is "Us," or all of those folks blogging and chatting on the Internet undermining journalists, politicians, celebrities and anyone that becomes a target.

Then, Advertising Age, in its Jan. 8 edition, announces that the Agency of the Year is not an agency at all--but the award goes to "Us," or all those folks videoing, blogging and browsing the Internet, undermining the professionals in the agency business. The editors explained it by saying that the consumer is king and even though Time beat them to it, they were sticking with "Us." ...

Marketing should be about how you differentiate your product in the mind of your customers and prospects. I've expressed this for many years in book after book. That's because marketing is not a battle of products--it's a battle of perceptions...

So, what does "Us" know about marketing strategy? We'll just come up with some form of clever commercial that probably will not include a reason to buy the product over the competitor's product. It will be the kind of commercial that will elicit the response of "what are they selling?"

If a marketer clearly spells all that out in advance by saying to those consumers or amateurs that are generating this advertising, "Here's my point of difference, I want you to dramatize it," maybe you’ll get something of value. But I tend to doubt it. Effective advertising is a science that requires a great deal of experience and training...

by Jack Trout, Forbes.com

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