Creativity…Gone Amuck!

Companies and individuals spend a good bit of time and money to be creative. That creativity is expressed in everything from interesting logos to the entire corporate culture. Some companies like the design firm IDEO, are known for their creative cultures that allow employees to express themselves to benefit their clients. They create products and services for clients that solve problems for customers. Always, the customer’s pain is at the center of the creative process.  This helps the folks at IDEO generate very creative ideas that support the client’s brand and solve problems.

Some local companies try to do the same thing. The group I practice with, the Ad4! Group, takes these same concepts and principles to solve problems for our customers, but always with the customer’s brand and pain at the heart of the process. That allows us to be creative without giving the customer a solution with which they are not comfortable or portrays them in an unfavorable light. This kind of creativity almost always leads to happy customers.

Sometimes, however, ad agencies or in-house marketing personnel lose focus on the customer and get creative just for the sake of being creative. Today, I received in the mail, a 6” X 9” hand-addressed manila envelope. The envelope had my name and company and address as well as the sender’s address, but no name or company listed. The envelope had a stamp, not postage machine affixed postage. So far so good. They got me to open the envelope.

Inside was a 6” X 9” card with a web URL, and an instamatic photograph. You know, kind you take in a pop-open camera and pull the cover sheet off to expose the image in about a minute. This picture was very dark and I was just able to make out what looks like a Sasquatch. That’s right, a big foot.

Now I’m thinking, what the heck? Why did someone send this to me? They took the time to hand address the envelope and attach an actual stamp. Normally, I would have thrown the whole mess away and thought, these fools. What a waste of money. But today, I needed a blog post idea, so I went to the website to see who these fools were.

So it turns out that this big database management firm has hired a marketing firm in the Dallas area to create a clever marketing campaign. From my perspective, I think they totally missed. They sent me a photograph of big foot. Trying to be clever, they out thought themselves. The theme here is you have to see it to believe it. But my perspective is they have been extremely “clever” just for the sake of being unusual. The end result is they missed the mark and have a stupid campaign that doesn’t support the customer’s brand or their pain.

Marketing isn’t about being clever. Sure, being clever is good, but it can’t be about just being clever. It has to be about the customer’s pain and solving it within their brand. Those things have to come before the clever part, or it turns out like this campaign.

If you need help with your marketing strategy or need to refresh your branding, give us all, we’re here to help.