Nike is an American multinational company engaged in the design, development and manufacturing, and sales of footwear, apparel, equipment, and accessories. Established in 1964, the company is also known for its riveting marketing campaigns backed by a sound creative strategy.
The iconic Nike Equality campaign encourages athletes to respect and be fair to each other on and off the field. The ad features stars from the sports world like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe, Dalilah Muhammad, and Gabby Douglas.
The campaign focuses on the idea of using Nike’s voice and the power of sport to inspire people to take action and racial discrimination.
How do you Define Creativity?
…”creative” refers to novel products of value, as in “The airplane was a creative invention.” “Creative” also refers to the person who produces the work, as in,? Picasso was creative.” “Creativity,” then refers both to the capacity to produce such works, as in “How can we foster our employees’ creativity?” and to the activity of generating such products, as in “Creativity requires hard work.”
-Creativity – Beyond the Myth of Genius, by Robert W. Weisberg
Creativity can be defined as a tendency to get to ideas or alternatives that may be useful in solving certain issues, communicating with others, and entertaining others or ourselves.
People are primarily motivated to be creative when –
- There is a need for varied and complex simulation
- When they need to communicate ideas and values
- There is a problem to be solved
Creativity is a crucial tool. It helps to pave a unique roadmap on the grounds of competitive advantage by adding value to the product and services and differentiating your brand from the others.
The story of IBM is a classic example of how creativity contributes towards a transformation of business operations. In the year 2012 IBM walked towards reinventing itself to become a design thinker. IBM enhanced design thinking at the organization enabling $18.6M in increased profits.
What is Creativity in Marketing?
The typical goal of installing creativity in marketing is to enhance engagement with the consumers with the end objective of selling a product or service. Creativity in marketing can help improve the establishment and understanding of the brand.
Creativity in marketing helps the teams to better align their marketing strategies with the overall objective of the business.
What is Creative Strategy?
An Adobe report suggested that people felt increasing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work. As per a survey analysis, 80% of surveyors in the UK and the US felt the same way. A creative strategy is a better way to inspire better problem-solving, new strategies, and fresh ideas.
Creative strategy is simply the guiding principle for the team to develop marketing content. It is a blueprint created to enable planning for meeting specific goals and objectives. It helps to build brand identity, marketing, and long-term business growth.
Creative strategies are an intentional approach adopted by an enterprise for developing and deploying a set of procedures to support long-term business growth. The creative strategy acts as a call to action for teams.
Source: Creative Strategy Planning and Development
Top 10 Questions to Ask Before Building a Creative Marketing Strategy
For an effective content marketing execution, it is necessary to ensure a creative strategy that is unique so that you can outclass competitors. The best way to define your creative strategy is to ask these 10 questions yourself –
- What is your brand voice?
- What is your objective?
- Who is your target audience?
- What does the customer need?
- What is the main message that you want to deliver?
- What CTA would you want to use?
- What marketing collaterals will you use?
- What marketing channels will you use?
- What is your budget?
- What is the timeline?
The 6 Steps for Writing an Effective Creative Strategy
- Define Your Goals
Study the goals defined under your collective marketing strategy before you go ahead with building your creative strategy. Everything under the umbrella of marketing goals should influence the creative strategy.
It is helpful if the goals are SMART –
- Specific
- Measurable
- Actionable
- Relevant
- Time-Bound
- Writing a Creative Strategy Statement
A creative strategy statement is like a mission statement that focuses on the purpose of the creative strategy and the people for whom it is being written for. The aim here is to mention every minute detail without missing any major points.
- Select the Metrics
Metrics help you to check if your strategy is performing as per your plan or not. The knowledge of metrics can help you determine how best to track them. For instance, you may want to track the open rate for an email campaign, the lifetime value of a customer, etc.
- Determine the Message and Target Audience
The message and target audience are directly impacted by your creative strategy. Preparing a winning message involves creativity. Also, the tone of the message will be determined by the choice of your target audience. There are multiple criteria to identify the target audience. Some of them are mentioned here –
- Demographics Features – Age and gender help with choices like font size and types of images
- Geographic Characteristics – They influence creative choices like featuring the messages outdoors vs. cityscapes
- Advanced Psychographics Features – Preferences of the target audience, pain points, and behaviours, can allow help to make pinpoint adjustments in anything from the copy to the “hardness” of the graphics
- Defining Budget
The next step is to define your budget. Check what you need for the success of your creative strategy. You may need cash for –
- External vendor or a freelancer
- Paid advertising
- ERP/ marketing software
- Service fees
You can keep your strategy under strict budgetary check by selecting tour deliverables carefully, estimating the cost of each deliverable, keeping a check over the flow of money, and giving up on performing strategies.
- Decide a Timeline
Decide a timeline and stick to it. Sticking to a legitimate timeline can assure you that you stay within budget and that you keep the end user happy. For instance, as a service provider, if your client expects you to deliver a project by a certain date, make sure that you respect the timeline or else risk a loss in business and reputation.
Conclusion: Developing a Successful Creative Strategy
As per a Hubspot survey analysis, 55% of marketers prefer blog content creation. At the same time, 74% of marketers use visuals in their content. A marketeer in the pursuit of creating a truly creative strategy, needs to make several calculated considerations of the different options before putting the items in the bag.
To achieve desired results, considerable thought needs to be invested in what and how things should be done. When it comes to creative strategy, the approach should be three-pronged –
- Follow a goal-oriented and focused approach
- Be careful of the time at hand and make sure to add a timeline to your strategy
- Share it with all the stakeholders. Collaboration of the necessary stakeholders is healthy for the achievement of a broader goal
Creating a strategy that helps in the unique positioning of your brand is a creative process. A professional marketing research platform is like a secret weapon that can help you with better decision-making.
Maction is a leading market research agency which provides the best technology-driven survey platform available. With our considerable experience, we can help you drive suitable consumer insights necessary for designing your creative strategy.
Contact the expert consultants at Maction Consulting today.
