Article by Gisella Ali (Director: Innovation & Creativity)
As I imitate the big themes in marketing in the previous years, I am often surprised by the relative absence of one that has historically been of great importance to brands and marketers: creativity.
Being director of contemporary digital marketing & branding company, I often thought, can it be the case that creativity has ceased to be of critical importance to solving brand problems and engaging potential customers? Unfortunately, it seems creativity has dropped out of fashion in a world continuing to make sense of so-called digital channels, data and tech, and artificial intelligence.
In my opinion, creativity is the oxygen in the marketing field! It is essential in all aspects, from how we understand and collaborate with the people who use our categories, make sense of brand challenges, and develop unique solutions that will build our brands and land a sale.
What is Creativity?
Creativity in general marketing term defines the creative aspect and content of the marketing. Creativity is the ad content used to generate leads and sell advertising for marketing developed and generated by creative directors like myself and copywriters in advertising organisation. Ad agencies and buyers often refer to creatives as ad banners or other forms of created advertising. Creatives are the promotional tools used by advertisers to draw in users.
In simple terms, creatives are the artwork, design and concept that goes into a website design or ad script. It represents the “very core message of marketing” and encapsulates the significant themes communicated to the target audience. They cover the five aspects: background, theme, preparation, execution, and finally, the right tone presentation in front of the targeted audience.
Platforms can encourage more creativity among young & energetic entrepreneurs, inspire and direct in the right direction to drive change.
For my company, I came up with a platform where emerging youth can showcase their work and present it to the world so that emerging entrepreneurs can get recognised. Creativity is there in all of us, but you need a mentor to enhance these skills.
With innovation in the way we do business, creativity has emerged as the most critical factor for companies who aspire to lead.
Creativity should be at the core, as a leading cultural source in any marketing and branding company.
My advice is that all teams within the business must get their members to think creatively. I firmly believe that we must embrace some aspects for creative thinking to work in true essence; these elements are:
- Accept the fact that existing knowledge is inadequate for innovative solutions.
- Be prepared to seek solutions/ideas from different sources.
- Be ready to experiment with radically different approaches.
- Be willing to unlearn to offload useless knowledge, enabling us to relearn, and this should be a continuous process.
- New ideas should be welcomed, not curbed as a culture in the company.
I work with designer artists, sales teams and marketers to create a vision for new and start-up brands for their better image. Creativity can be a part of an organisation’s culture. That is where the fruitful results lie.
I have focused the content around the things our experience shows can make the most significant difference:
Inspiration is important:
We invite the most exciting brands, planners, creatives, and experts worldwide to come in and share their brilliant ideas via our established platforms. We use these mediums as real and virtual events, creating a series of blogs, articles, opinions and experiences for marketers to educate themselves.
Think detective:
Creativity is best when pointed at a specific problem, so we emphasise the skills that help marketers frame their brand issues and plunge themselves into the culture to uncover great insights that inspire the kind of strategy that leads to exhilarating work.
Partnerships matters:
Our partners are critical in getting the best creativity for our brands. We are stressing how to develop the most effective ways of working, so our marketers create the right conditions, deliver excellent briefs, and are expert in fostering ideas.
Think wide-range:
It is not just the significant challenges on your brand that will benefit from creativity, but it will go a long way in establishing your brand.
Mindset is crucial: Values of patience and belief are rare. They are also required when creating suitable conditions for creative thinking. Remember the simple formula that creativity comes with extensive research in your field.
We are lucky to have a forum across our brand strategies to see the full range of creative effects and improve. Research data shows creativity spark flame, thereby resulting in improved sales. We can also see the importance of deploying creativity against well-defined strategic opportunities, targeting a broad audience with significant and sustained media investment, carefully balancing long-term and sales-generating activity.
Creative people themselves won’t know how clever they are. It is for others to discover and utilise their talent. Spectators can identify a creative person from how these people conduct their lives. The people who exhibit creative behaviour have a unique set of qualities; some of the essentials are listed below −
• They challenge Status Quo.
• They avoid assumptions & traditi- ons.
• They are naturally inquisitive & cu- rious.
• They try to explore all possibilities.
• They are inclined to have a vivid imagination.
• They are thinking of the future.
• They don’t believe in a definitive idea.
• They believe anything is possible.
• They like taking risks & exploring.
• They are flexible and can adapt to changing environments.
• They are chromatic & visual think- ers.
• They can see beyond the first “Ri- ght idea.’
• They believe in learning each day.
In a nutshell:
Successful problem solving follows three steps of creative problem-solving
Spotting the task atmosphere:
The first step of creative problem solving involves perceiving the events surrounding the problem, then interpreting the events and understanding the nature of the task an individual must participate in to get to the resolution.
Commiserating with the Problem:
In this step, the people are supposed to be precise about the goal. They need to finalise what needs to do for the purpose and what actions will accelerate achieving it. There needs to be a transparent approach to the roots of the problem without jumping to any premature conclusions.
Handling available information:
This is the most important step because the real creative problem solving skills are used in practical problem solving environment and that comes mainly with practice. The available information, along with the information processing style of the problem solver holds great importance here. Working within a diversified team can enhance creative problem solving skills greatly.
If you think you are creative then share your blogs, opinions, work or success story with us:
Check us out: www.h2obluelife.com
