Creativity is something that is cherished in our business, almost worshiped even. Sometimes we forget our original purpose: that a client is paying us to help them sell their product and make more money, not to make a great piece for a book or reel. That’s why as much as creativity is cherished, so is problem solving.
Now don’t think I’m about to go off on some Rosser Reeves-style rant about how creativity doesn’t help sales and we need to focus on repeating a simple slogan over and over again. I absolutely love being a creative and coming up with the most creative solution to a client’s marketing problem. I believe whole-heartedly that a high level of creativity has a direct link to sales — that’s been proven several times over. However, in our collective zeal to be the most creative and wacky and funny, we can lose sense of the product we’re selling. All too often these days we see print ads, commercials, web banners, and microsites hiding from their product, not showing it in the ad, not discussing what it does, thinking that it inhibits the creative potential. But it doesn’t. The real creativity, the real problem solving, isn’t in running from your product but in embracing it.
Think back to how many Nike commercials you’ve seen. High production values? Yes. Highly creative? Absolutely. And even more impressive is that all of the advertising is about the shoe. “Just do it” is only possible when wearing Nike shoes. Anybody still remember the Spike Lee character Mars Blackman holding the shoe right in camera center and saying it’s “gotta be the shoes”? Could the messaging be any more direct?
Now that you have an example, think about the most successful campaigns and see how many are creative just for creativity’s sake, and how many use creativity to make you see the product or brand in a new light. Volkswagen? Check. Got Milk? Yep. Apple iPod? Check. You can literally reel them off: Mini, Time magazine, Harley-Davidson, American Airlines, Kohler, Porsche, Taylor Guitars, Lee Jeans, Mastercard, Burger King, Norwegian Cruise Lines…
Go back to the 1960s, a time that a lot of older folks refer to as the “Golden Age” of advertising. You’ll see the same results: Hertz, Avis, Volkswagen, Levy’s Jewish Rye — all of them based on the product. In the case of Burger King and Lee jeans, both campaigns even used an old brand icon and put a fresh twist on it. Talk about embracing who you are.
The great thing about those campaigns was that they grew both the brand and sales without forsaking the product they were trying to sell. In the case of the iPod, the product has come to mean almost any mp3 player — much the same way Xerox became the verb for copying something and FedEx became the term for sending a package. And it’s in those types of campaigns where the true gold for a creative lies.
When people start making brand and purchase decisions based on a campaign, you have the opportunity to transcend advertising — to affect culture. You can see it when you hear people around you repeating copy from an ad, or copying an artistic style you created. For example, in 1984 when presidential candidate Walter Mondale asked his opponent, “Where’s the beef?” what had previously been just advertising for a burger chain became a cultural touchstone. If you can reach this level, your success is twofold. Your work will always be remembered and recognized, for one thing, and more importantly, your client’s sales will skyrocket.
We all want to be recognized for our creativity, myself included. We all want the Cannes Lion, the One Show pencil, and to be in CA. This desire for recognition drives us to do better work and keeps us from thinking about all the direct mail pieces we worked on that never even made it out of the pile that came in your mailbox the day before hitting the trash, or that awesome print ad we sweated over for weeks that unfortunately got passed over because there was a Brangelina article on the next page.
However, we can’t let that pursuit replace the real reason we do advertising. On the other hand, we can’t lose our balance and forget creativity either. It’s a harder road to travel, for sure, but one that has the far greater rewards at the end. As Ernie Schenk would say, “Don’t think outside the box; think inside the box. That’s where the real creativity lives.” Besides, which is cooler? That the people who read CA like your work? Or being able to tell your non-advertising friends that you did that campaign they’ve all been talking about?
