A lack of creativity is stifling global marketing, says Carla Johnson, a top influencer in the global content marketing business and Chief Experience Officer at Type A Communications, a US-based content marketing firm.
She says marketers must go beyond storytelling and create interesting, entertaining and engaging content that solves customers’ problems. So, next time you create that bland news release after having 10 people sign off on it, just think it’s dead. Instead, be creative and develop a continuum of emotions across print, digital and social that will make your customers feel good.
“Dropping emotional content in your brand is very important,” Johnson said in an interview. She gave Nike’s “Better for it,” campaign launched last year as an example of how creative marketing can work. Nike began with a simple concept focused on inspiring women to be active, stay fit and achieve their personal goals.
The campaign showed that “women are better in all aspects of going to the gym and working out,” Johnson said. They didn’t design it as a one-off campaign and are determined to keep it for the long haul, tapping into the huge emotional aspect of “I can do it. I can stay fit.”
So, what holds back marketers from being creative? According to Johnson, they still live with their old habits and are afraid. “They do things that they know that they can do and keep doing the same thing again and fall into default. These habits stay on and it’s difficult to change these,” she said.
Fear also holds them back. Some are afraid of loosing their jobs for trying something new as it might give a different result. “A lot of companies provide a lot of lip service for taking risks, but nobody dares,” she said.
Johnson shared a recent success from Emerson, a 150-year-old US-based engineering firm that had to revamp its marketing to attract new talent and give the brand a new identity. Emerson found that it could not attract engineering talent, as it was not a “cool” company compared to Google or Netflix. So, they started using an innovative idea focusing on an unconventional theme of advocating that science can be sexy.
Today, their Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) theme has connected well with a millennial generation in the US. This unconventional approach has enhanced employee engagement, recruiting and it has emerged as a “cool” company to work for.
Yet another business that has successfully changed marketing to focus on the customer experience is outdoor clothing manufacturer Patagonia. Early this year, Patagonia’s Chief Story Teller, Vincent Stanley talked of how the company has “changed relationship of customers’ around cloth.”
Addressing a conference in Phoenix, Stanley talked about how Patagonia relates to a customers’ interest with the experience around clothing for the outdoors and not around the product. Customers are bonded to the concept and they recycle and refit products that they have purchased from Patagonia. Today, they own the largest clothing repair facility in North America.
Johnson says businesses should strive to understand the buyers’ journey and figure out how to solve their problems and educate them to make purchasing decisions.
Successful businesses are now integrating marketing and sales so that they understand the business objectives clearly and know how to educate buyers. “Marketing and sales should understand business objectives and need to grow out of their silos. A comprehensive understanding of the buyer’s journey is important for successful marketers.”
So, when you head to your marketing shop, try not to conquer the world all at once. Instead, take small ideas and test them as one day, they will crescendo into big opportunities. Be creative consistently doing small things at work. Instead of sitting at the same spot in a conference room, change your seat. Instead of having a usual meeting, do a walking meeting.
At the end of the day, forget all the tactics that your boss and team have been doing forever. Be creative or perish.
