Creative IS a Strategy.

Creative is more than simple decoration. It’s a strategy. Companies, individuals, hell, even agencies that don’t operate with an understanding that whether your designing a logo, building a website or creating a campaign that does not view creative on the same strategic level as a pricing schedule or a go to market strategy are sure to be lost in a sea of competition. Creative as part of a larger corporate strategy, executed correctly will take most far beyond those simply making a competitive product. I haven’t always approached the work I do in this way. But now I honestly can’t think of it any other way than to think “what will be the business result of what I create”. In my wide eyed days of entering the creative field I simply wanted to make cool stuff. I still am excited everyday I do what I do. But, if you can really help a business benefit from whatever cool may be, well now you have something.

It took a cold slap in the face of being on “client side” to really realize that if you wanted your creativity to actually see the light of day, you had to build it on top of objectives and goals rather than simple aesthetics. No matter how cool the aesthetics maybe, if it doesn’t have a reason or quantifiable business benefit, it should never to be a allowed to fly. During my stints on the client side…I dealt with 2 distinctly different scenarios. 1 who knew nothing about creative, nor cared. Number 2 was the complete opposite, knew and loved design, but didn’t fully understand why.

#1. First client side Creative Director role for me. Goal: Help re-brand global technology company. Things to do: Build internal global creative group to help manage effort. Sounds easy enough. Yeah right. It was a horrendously huge job. They had people doing their own things ( marketing, branding, messaging…) all over the globe…no one had any idea why I was there, or what I was trying to do…and they didn’t care. I was hired by very energetic VP of Marketing who saw the value of creative in relation to the strategy he was setting out to accomplish. I quickly realized I had to make the rest of the company care…and I started at the top. Frequent conversations with CEO really allowed me to create branding characteristics that met the hopes and dreams of the company. This fresh face to the world really let them begin to tell a story of resurrection. We even shot a little movie that showed the results of what they did everyday meant to the world. It was here I saw the power of internal branding efforts, of which we did many. Once they realized that creative was something that allowed them to be re-discovered and that life was coming back there was measurable change in the not only the ledgers, but also in the press and industry at large. I soon had everyone at the company beating down my door to weave strategic creative into what they were doing. This was a blessing and a nightmare. Clearer sales collateral led to more sales, products were familied and repackaged to make more sense to the market. It was all delivered via a corporate strategy that relied on creative.

#2 New world. Instantaneous love affair. Goal: “We want to be Apple”, but don’t know why. Things to do: Change everything. Fast. It was here my door was beaten down instantly by everyone in the company. This company had a personality somewhat like an agency, most everyone there got how important creative would be in the overall strategy of the company. With a clear idea of what their brand was already. The bar was already set. High. As a pioneer in narrow sector of on-demand software, they could afford to be different both visually and the way the did business. In fact they had to be. We even had a regular exercise where we gathered everything we were or had been working on and covered some walls with it. Just to take inventory, and see what our cohesivness was, and how different we were from our competitors. Here again it was important to see where they wanted to go (not only from on high, but the usually more tactical view from down low) so that I could tailor the creative to pave the way…literally. On-demand…means it all happens on the web. Everything. So we set out to make it so that the engineer, marketing folks, sales people and even HR’s lives were simplified by having everything needed there too. A great of what creative did here was explain this new thing just in very creative ways

Those 2 different places couldn’t have been more different in the ways the started. But during those 4 years I decided to be on the “other” side of the fence rally taught me something. What I learned there was invaluable as a creative, as a strategic thinker…and as a salesman. We all recognize companies who have taken steps to incorporate creative creative as a whole and adopting into your business seems like a no brainer…in fact I would say today, those are the only ones we recognize anymore. The ones who see creative as a strategy and not simply decoration. Your brand should never be your logo, and your logo should never be your branding.