Strategic Creativity

A Business Field Guide to Advertising, Branding, and Design

Robin Landa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032137797
• eBook ISBN: 9781000586640
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The secret weapon for business experts to ensure strategically creative results, this is an indispensable field guide to evaluating creative advertising, branding, and design ideas and solutions, and to working with creatives.

Strategic Creativity is a fundamental resource that enables business professionals to stand out amongst their colleagues and enhance their ability to communicate the creative "why" throughout their organizations, and it covers what every business expert should fully comprehend about the creative process. To effectively grow a business and reach the right audience or move a brand forward, advertising and branding need to be relevant, engaging, and worth people's time. This book contains what a CEO, CMO, manager, business owner, or client didn't learn about the creative side of advertising and design in business school.

Featuring insightful conversations with creative experts, this book will earn a place on the desks of executives, leaders, managers, and middle managers across industries, whose work requires them to understand and execute on branding initiatives, advertising campaigns, social media, and other customer-facing content.

Why Strategic Creativity

DOI: 10.4324/9781003230786-1

The Value of Strategic Creativity

If you’ve ever consulted “Dr. Internet” about a medical issue, then this cautionary tale is for you. Furthermore, if you are not a graphic designer and have designed your own logo, please don’t tell me because I want to keep this read friendly.

Lots of folks in Romania may have an overconfidence bias, which psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls the “most significant of the cognitive biases.” According to Vice magazine journalist Mihai Popescu, three-quarters of people in Romania take medication without consulting doctors. To encourage people in Romania to seek medical attention, McCann Bucharest partnered with Vice for Regina Maria, one of the biggest healthcare providers in Romania. They introduced the “Internet’s Residency Exam” to put “Dr. Internet” to the test. Held on the same day as the national official residency exam for doctors, Vice journalist Popescu, along with hundreds of real doctors, took the exam with only access to the Internet. Popescu had to answer 200 questions in four hours. His score? 36 correct out of 200.

Then the Regina Maria ad campaign opened the challenge to everyone with an online tool. When people failed the exam, they received a voucher they could use at Regina Maria clinics. McCann says, they even hijacked Google “by targeting the most common symptom searches in Romania and encouraging people to visit a real doctor,” while the media turned their campaign into a public interest story.

Greta Redeleanu, marketing director of Regina Maria, told Little Black Book:

As leader in the quality of medical services, we have a responsibility towards patients, and we believe it’s our duty to invest in educational and prevention campaigns. Even if we are not doctors, but marketing professionals, we understand the responsibility we all have: not just to do good, but to develop relevant campaigns and initiatives to change mentalities, to raise awareness regarding the importance of going to the doctor for periodical health checks and screenings, appropriate for every age category.¹

I’m sure you don’t want the graphic design, branding, or ad campaigns you commission to score a 36 out of 200.

That’s why I wrote Strategic Creativity, to help you better understand the creative side of advertising, branding, and graphic design well enough so you can commission, evaluate, collaborate, and effectively interact with creative professionals, contribute to the creative process in a meaningful way, and get effective solutions to drive the results you, your company, or your clients need. After you read this book, you’ll be the only business professional in the room who can explain the origin and meaning of your agency’s campaign, which will set you apart and above your peers!

“Business professionals are the customers of advertising, but rarely understand or contribute to what they are ‘buying,’” said Donald Fishbein, a senior biotech and pharmaceutical executive. Mr. Fishbein went on to say that the type of knowledge found here enhances a business professional’s ability to communicate the “why” throughout their organization. He said, “If only I had read this at the start of my career!”

Lots of people are creative, and most have the potential to think creatively (put a twist on things or see things anew) or even imaginatively—think of original ideas or things. The value of outstanding creative work produced by art directors, creative directors, copywriters, designers, and brand designers is that it is not born just out of “talent,” but out of strategic creative thinking. I say “outstanding” creative work because there’s a lot of average work being conceived and commercialized for a variety of reasons. This book will help you see what constitutes outstanding solutions that employ strategic creativity.

If you are sued, you are better off being represented by an attorney. I suppose there are people who represent themselves in court. Hmm. Sadly, there are loads of people who are not graphic designers who design their own websites.

This book will teach you how to get what you need from creative professionals. This is not an attempt to equate years of creative studies to a one-volume book, but it is a field guide to idea generation, creativity, copywriting, branding, graphic design, the creative side of advertising, diversity, inclusion, equity, and building a culture for results.

What Constitutes Strategic Creativity and What Doesn’t

Together, you and I will explore what constitutes strategic creativity. Right off, it involves C.H.O.I.C.E. Thinking—housed within the idea, there ought to be some emotional or functional (practical) benefit for people, otherwise they will not pay attention or will tune out. There’s too much going on 24/7 for anyone today to mind what a brand has to say if there’s nothing in it for them or for someone they care about. C.H.O.I.C.E. is an acronym for Context, Humanistic, Observational, Interesting, Craft, and Empathy. I’ll explain more in Chapter 2.

Likewise, the worthwhile nature of strategic creativity falls within (or close to) S.U.I.T.E.S. of Benefits. The S.U.I.T.E.S. of Benefits are social good, utility, information, temptation, entertainment, and shareworthy. Of course, I will explain more about this throughout the book.

When I was a consultant to a CMO at a national beverage company, providing a second opinion on the ad campaign they were getting from their agency, I explained why the creative solutions they were getting from their agency weren’t working. The CMO asked me, “Would you be willing to teach my marketing team about what constitutes getting it right?”

“I would love to,” I replied. “Caveat: I’d also like to explain to them the consequences of getting it wrong.”

It is more expensive to be safe than it is to be brave.

—Jake Yrastorza, Managing Partner, Gigil

When you don’t employ strategic creativity, you run the greatest risk—a pedestrian solution that draws a big yawn from the target audience, if they notice it at all. The riskiest idea is the one people will not notice. If people don’t notice, then there are no sales, no growth, no earned media, no buzz. Nada.

There are lots of poor options out there—poor ideas, harebrained ideas, off-brand ideas, copycat solutions, safe “we did this before, so let’s do it again” ones, formulaic ideas, meh designs, dull copywriting, pedestrian art direction, uninspiring brand stories, wrong concepts for the audience, poor executions, and the biggest sin of all—damaging ideas and executions.

Employ an Effectiveness Scale

1. = Destructive or negative: The solutions hurt the company, the brand, the entity, or society
2. = Un-noticed/pedestrian: Nothing destructive, except that you’ve wasted money and won’t get promoted
3. = Decent idea/decent execution: Doesn’t build the brand; doesn’t get you promoted
4. = Creative: Gets some buzz but doesn’t build growth
5. = Strategically creative: Gets the brand right; gets the audience right; builds equity and growth; earns media attention; more likely to earn a promotion or a Clio.

From my years of research, teaching in higher ed, working in the creative disciplines, and working as a consultant to CMOs, brands, ad agencies, and brand studios, I’m here to offer a guided tour of strategic creativity. To get it right, come with me.

Quickstart Field Guide to Strategic Creativity

What follows are thirteen pointers so you can get started and get back to work feeling empowered. If you were hoping for a luckier number, say fourteen pointers, please feel free to add one yourself. And if you do, please let me know what you added; I’d like to make this a conversation.

1. Strategic Creativity is C.H.O.I.C.E. Thinking.
   Attention is valuable. To grab and keep people’s attention, any graphic design, branding, or advertising solution must be strategically creative.
   Creative solutions are interesting. Strategically creative solutions are relevant and resonate.
   Strategic creativity relies on C.H.O.I.C.E. Thinking:
   • Context (fits into people’s lives, appropriate perspective)
   • Humanistic thinking (people-centered thinking, altruistic)
   • Observation (based on an insight into people’s behaviors)
   • Interesting solutions (appealing, attention-grabbing)
   • Craft (skillful execution of the idea)
   • Empathy (compassionate, identification with others)
   
   Strategically creative ideas and solutions move the needle from relevance to essential. Ask: Does the creative solution surprise you? Does it cut through? Is it relevant to its audience? Will it change the conversation? Call people to action?
2. Becoming Strategically Creative.
   Strategic creativity is the power to conceive something that solves a problem, anticipates issues, aims empathetically and appropriately at the target audience, and ultimately benefits people.
   In Chapter 3, you’ll find an explanation of the S.U.I.T.E.S. of Benefits, which are social good, utility, information, temptation, entertainment, and whether a solution is shareworthy.
3. It’s All About the Audience.
   People purchase products and services to meet basic needs. Beyond that, they’re purchasing fantasies. Every brand sells a fantasy—the ideal this or that, a personal or societal transformation of some kind.
   Who is the audience? Demographic? Psychographic? What are their pastimes? Which social media platforms do they use most often? Where do they shop? Where do they vacation? What do they spend their money on? What are they saying about the brand on social media? What does the data reveal?
   I asked Dr. Fred M. Feinberg, Handleman Professor and Area Chair of Marketing at Ross School of Business and Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan, “Why are insights into the audience important?” Dr. Feinberg replied,

   In Marketing, we often teach that advertising can reach the wrong pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Why Strategic Creativity
• 2 Thinking Creatively
• 3 Strategically Creative Ideas
• 4 Strategically Creative Copywriting
• 5 Strategically Creative Design
• 6 Branding & Art Direction
• 7 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Purpose-led Marketing
• 8 Building a Culture for Results
• Index