All you need to know about Creative Marketing

A tale as old as time. It might not seem to be that way, but the idea of using creative and original ideas to market and sell products and services has been utilised for centuries. No, marketing does not mean carving advertisements on a bronze plate for your family needle shop in China (which is the earliest printed advertising found). It has transformed into something completely distinct and its footprints can be found almost everywhere in our daily lives. In the world of business, marketing is the water and creativity is the oxygen. (Get the poorly administered chemistry reference? Marketing wouldn’t have existed without creativity the same as water wouldn’t exist without oxygen)

So, without further a due, what does the use of creativity in marketing entail?

• Branding: One of the main goals of creative marketing is to present a brand as a collective identity. This identity likely alludes to our primary senses, the main one being visual. Take a second to think about Coca Cola. Did you think only of the taste of the carbonated drink? Or, perhaps you imagined red, the trademark colour of the brand. Did you happen to remember a Coca Cola sponsored festival? As you can see, many famous brands like associating their products with experiences alluding to many senses. A lot of creativity goes into this process: design of the logo, music in the advertisement, imaginative thinking for the identity the brand would like to associate itself with…
• Promotion: Creativity is the lifeline of advertising and promotion. Businesses rely on creative thinking and original ideas in their attempts to gain attention, convey a message, and differentiate their brand in the industry. For reference, let’s look at Old Spice’s extremely popular ad campaign from 2010, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. The video has been watched over 56 million times due to its originality, amusing script and, hence, the creative work behind it.
• Products and Services: Brands usually enter markets with target audiences in mind. The next big step is to find a way for their product to appeal to this target. This could be done through creative design in packaging, expert understanding of user interface and so on. Creativity also helps respond to internal and external challenges. In 2018, KFC released a new bucket design where the company’s initials are strategically misspelt as “FCK”, responding to the UK chicken shortage. So, creativity not only helps you build and promote your brand; it helps you respond to trends and utilize them in your benefit.
• Using Social Media: It is 2019 and there are over 3.5 billion active social media users. How do creative marketers respond? They make use of it! Social media added hundreds of shiny new toys to the creative marketer’s toolbox. Using relevant hashtags, creating memes, incorporating amusing “national days” into the brand’s promotion campaigns, inviting audience engagement through polls… The possibilities are endless.

In marketing, one idea has the potential to translate into thousands of views, pounds, clicks, subscriptions, you name it. Creativity feeds into the process every step of the way. From branding to the promotion, maintenance and even the creation of the product or service itself, one can look out for traces of creative work everywhere.