Creativity is the basis of marketing and branding. Long ago, there were fewer sellers and fewer buyers. Things were simple. As the number of sellers grew, they felt the need to differentiate from the rest by packaging their product creatively. The same applies today as well. If you just did what your competitor is doing, you would not stand out to create a mark in the consumer’s minds.
Thus some level of creativity is essential in developing the marketing strategy for every brand. While using creativity to create your promotional messages, make sure you keep the following points in consideration, so as to make the optimum use of it.
1. Marketing Mix
Creative marketing doesn’t apply only to the promotion but to the entire marketing mix which includes product, price, place and promotion. Thus, creativity can be applied to the product design, product packaging, pricing strategy, discount offers, mode of buying, point of purchase marketing, etc. This means that there is no limit to the ways in which you can do creative marketing for your brand or product.
2. Be sensitive
Do not cross the thin line between thinking out of the box and hurting the sentiments of the audience. Imagine a marketing campaign for a funeral service. One can be creative in advertising it but talking about death too blatantly can hurt people’s sentiments. Humor is good, only till it doesn’t point at someone directly.
3. Create a link
While being creative, try to establish a link between the message and the product. You don’t want to be remembered just for the message but you want the product to be recalled too. So involve the product seamlessly in the creative message and establish a clear link between the two. This will help generate higher recall value. Consider the Bingo Mad Angles ads. The ads are creatively made very silly, yet involve the product attributes in the message. This ensures that when the audience remembers the ad for all its idiosyncrasies, remembers the product too.
4. Get them thinking
Remember the TIME magazine ads where the bill boards had red background and just a clue. The ads were very creative but didn’t give out the answer to the clues easy. It got the target audience thinking and inquisitive. It was a perfect blend of creativity and a thought instigating message. It instantly became a very popular advertising campaign in the business magazine category. The campaign emphasized very strongly on what TIME stands for.
5. Make sure they understand
The marketer’s creativity level should match with the target audience’s creativity level. The message should not go unheard or un-understood. Thus it’s important to test market the campaign before launching it in the market. A pre-launch pilot study can be helpful in determining whether the creative advertising message is perceived by the audience as it’s intended to be by the marketer.
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