Why buy a dog and bark yourself?
If you invited a professional plasterer into your house would you then proceed to tell him how to hold his trowel? How to use a smooth motion
to ensure no smears, how to fashion his mixture to the perfect consistency…no?
Then why do so many companies hire a creative consultancy to come up with strategies and ideas and then tell them exactly the idea they
want to see and ignore any thoughts which stray from this prescribed vision?
Talk about buying a dog and barking yourself!
Of course I understand the client wants the best result for the brand and lets face it -it is they who has to face the music directly if the campaign fails.
I even understand that there are some irresponsible creatives out there, who looking to build their portfolio sometimes conveniently ignore the brief!
However, to get the best results you have to trust your chosen creative partner, believe me they will appreciate it and feel doubly responsible
for delivering a good creative result . Creatives also do like to be inspired by the client’s product vision but NOT to be tethered to a preconceived idea,
which can be stifling and will not deliver the bold innovative campaign that will help sales explode. It will instead only serve to stifle creativity and exasperate
both the client and the creative team.
Like all of us, if we feel ownership for the creative direction, we commit to it for all we are worth and that’s how great ideas are born!
So work in a team with your creative, give them the freedom of a tight brief and then sit back and prepare to be startled…woof. woof!
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A rant in favour of creative marketing
This week Apple were reported as the largest business in the world worth over £565 billion.
Apple is renowned for it’s creative approach to product development and marketing.
Their chief designer (an English Chap) Jonathan Ive, has been given massive license to continue
to create brilliant and innovative products like the iPhone and the iPad.
Their advertising campaigns are fashion orientated, fun and funky. So you would think with
this beacon of creative success would encourage more businesses to stimulate their growth with wildly creative
ideas and strategies, that they would encourage and reward creative thinking,
that they would treasure consultancy’s where creativity abounded…but apparently not.
More likely the marketing manager is so pressured by the board of directors they are scared stiff of using any
creative approach which doesn’t mirror those of their competitors.
So much so, that more often than not they become obsessed with mentioning their competition in their own ad’s!
Too many campaigns rely on repetition to get the message across because the creative approach is simply dull, dull, dull!
So why not buck the trend and be inspired by Apple, lead from the front, credit your target audience with some intelligence
and feed them stimulating ideas and then let them make the purchasing decision for themselves.
In- house marketing do you need it?
An in house marketing manager or creative director could cost you up to 30-50k a year
So why not simply hire the resources only when you need them?
Big Stick Marketing Consultancy Package Offer
In the present climate, shelling out for a full time accomplished marketer to drive sales is somewhat of a luxury.
And then, what skills do you hire? A creative to do the marketing work? A marketer to plan the strategy?
A copywriter or social net worker to promote the business?
The Big Stick Consultancy package offer is a potential easy option. An opportunity to outsource the function(s) you need,
for one day a week or several days a month, as and when you need it. So you have the skills on hand without a permanent overhead.
Big Stick’s award winning Creative Director can help formulate your strategy, write it, deliver the creative spark and generate it’s
production into the marketing vehicles you need to develop a successful campaign.
Be it online or offline strategy, Big Stick can provide creative solutions and provide hands-on consultancy
to help build your brand with the right USP and benefit messages.
Sometimes using an outsider as sounding board helps give you the perspective and confidence to realise your instincts were correct!
So if you aren’t ready to invest in a full time marketing/creative person, talk to Big Stick about a bespoke consultancy package designed to suit your needs now.
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Fancy looking 10 years Younger?
A photo feature for ‘Berkhamsted Living Magazine’ required Big Stick photography to click away with Editor ‘Claire’ and make her look 10 years younger.
First she had botox treatment, teeth whitening, make-up and hair styling. The result was a shot of the modest Claire looking stunning. (*judge for yourself-see the before and after shots below)
It makes it all the more enjoyable when the subject is an ‘ordinary’ person and you see them bloom under the lights as they become more relaxed with camera and photographer. The unpredictability also makes it exciting, with a professional model you know exactly what you will get and to be fair you generally get a good result pretty quickly.
With an ‘untested’ model it is all down to the subject feeling confident in the surroundings and trusting the photographer won’t make them feel foolish or embarrassed. Consequently the shoot takes much longer but the results are often startling and you realise not only that the subject has latent model potential but that they have a naiveté which lends the picture a unique charm-
a potential models first time under the lights can be an empowering experience for the ‘model’ and not having to suffer the diva moments of a professional helps the photographer feel 10 years younger too!
Claire's portrait before she gets the full beauty treatment
portrait of mag editor Claire
- a model is born!
How the marketing mix affects your website…
Websites have become the hub of most clients marketing activity and rightly so .
However, when the site is done and it has awesome functionality, great navigation, all the connections to social networks, a whizzy visual device to hold attention, a contact on every page twice! and more key words than you can throw a stick , ask yourself this…
Does it help position and differentiate your brand? Does it provide a platform for you to us the same visuals and messages on your other marketing vehicles, so you have a cohesive campaign across all your marketing activity and have you planned a campaign of activity to market your new site?
I ask this because designing a website is not simply a graphic exercise demonstrating this years fashions in type and the latest web tools. It is potentially a platform for your whole marketing campaign. Consequently the brand values should be clearly differentiated and the whole website considered in the context of your total ‘marketing mix’.
The marketing mix helps you define the marketing elements to succssfully p0sition your market offering. Essentially, delivering the right product in the right place at the right price at the right time. To determine the optimum mix, consider the 4 P’s as they are commonly referred to;
Product (or service) Place, Price, Promotion.
The Product decisions involves establishing exactly what the customer wants, which need your product or service fulfills. Place is researching exactly where your ‘target’ looks to find your product or service. Price is determining the value the customer is prepared to pay for your product and Promotion is where and when can you get your marketing message across ie via Direct mail, TV, press advertising PR, Web or a combination of all of the above. Get this formula bang on and you have major success on your hands. Get one element woefully wrong and you can miss the boat entirely.
So when you consider the redesign of your website think about differentiating your brand, think about creating a cohesive marketing platform that will work cumulatively, giving your target audience greater opportunity to recall your brand values and buy into your positioning. Think about all the ingredients in your marketing mix and most of all think about using a Big Stick!!
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